Church Tech Arts

After my previous post, I’ve had a lot of questions about Compressor. It seems a lot of people have never delved into this great little program, so I thought I’d write a quick tutorial. Compressor’s job is simple. It compresses whatever video project you give it into another format. For example, if you need to output your video to the web, you could compress it down to a web-friendly size and format. I use Compressor a lot for setting my videos up to play well in ProPresenter. Before PP, I used it to create AVIs for Media Shout. It’s a powerful program that’s easy to use. Let’s dive in.

I will assume you’ve edited your project in Final Cut Pro (since Compressor is only available as part of the FCP Studio package). Success with Compressor starts in FCP. Once your project is complete, choose Render Both from the Sequence->Render All menu. It’s important that all of the checks are checked except Full. This ensures that all your video is in a properly rendered format. You need to do this even if your project is playing out fine in FCP using RT Extreme. Avoid this step at your own peril.

Now, set your In and Out points at the beginning and end of your program. I like to have a 1 second black Color clip at the front and a 2 second black Color clip at the end. Whatever is between the In and Out points will be rendered in Compressor. If you don’t do this, you’ll get the entire timeline, which you may or may not want.

Next, choose File->Export->Using Compressor… This will create a reference movie of your project and import it into a new untitled batch list in Compressor. It may take a minute, but should launch Compressor, with your file in the list. You should see something like this.

click to enlarge

Note that if you don’t see all the windows shown here, you can add them by changing your view settings from the Windows menu. There are a number of pre-set layouts, and you can also make your own, just like in FCP.

First, notice that your Sequence has been added to the Batch list. I didn’t name my sequence, so it’s listed as Sequence 1- Liar, Liar. “Liar, Liar” is the project name. If you’re better about naming things than I am, that will help if you batch a lot of jobs at once. Right now, if you hit Submit, nothing happens because you have not told Compressor how you want to format the final output. Look down to the Settings Pane. You’ll see Apple as pre-populated a large number of formats to accommodate various workflows.

I have my own Custom preset that I use for formating movies for ProPresenter. You can download it here if you like. (Here’s one for my Media Shout AVI format if you want). To utilize that Setting file, unzip it and drag the resultant .settings file onto the Custom folder int he Settings pane of Compressor. If you just drag it into the pane, it doesn’t work. So our first step in Compressor will be to drag the setting we want to use and drop it on the sequence in the batch list.

click to enlarge

You’ll see that our preset has been added as a line to our sequence. Note that it is possible to drag multiple settings to a sequence. For example, if I needed to make a ProPresenter QuickTime, a DVD and a FLV for the web, I could drag them all onto that sequence file. It will render out multiple versions of the file without further input from me. Very handy.

Also notice that the setting we applied has 3 columns to it. First is the Settings name, in this case ProPresenter. The second column is the destination, currently, “source.” I only use source when I’m dragging movies into Compressor directly and not exporting from FCP. Rendering to source will put the movie into an obscure, hard to find folder on your Mac, so we’ll change it. Finally the third column is the file name. We’ll get back to that in a moment.

A second tab on the Settings Pane is labeled Destinations. Just like it sounds, Destinations gives you the ability to create and save places to have Compressor save your file. You can create new Destinations by clicking on the + sign in that pane and editing the parameters in the Inspector pane. In this case, we’ll use Completed Projects. Simply drag your Destination to the Setting you applied to your file. Because we can have multiple settings, we can have multiple destinations. Set your batch up accordingly.

click to enlarge

Now that we have our Settings and Destination set up the way we want, the final step is to name the file. Don’t adjust the name earlier, as the settings may not stick as you apply settings and destinations. Simply double click on the file name and name it as you want it to turn out. For this example, we’ll use Liar, Liar Final.mov.

click to enlarge

Finally hit “Submit.” Compressor goes to work. If you  want to see the progress of your project, twirl down the triangle on the topmost entry in the History Pane, and you’ll see the progress bar. If you are doing multiple settings, the progress bar is calculated on the total job, not a single preset.

click to enlarge

When it’s done, you can set back and enjoy your new movie. I’ve found Compressor to be quite good at creating compact files with excellent image quality. Once you get used to it more, you can begin to create your own settings, which you can preview in the Preview Window. Experiment to get the best balance of quality and file size.

I hope that helps. Perhaps another time, I’ll delve more into creating presets and other goodies.

When I joined Upper Room, our tech booth was in need of, how to say, a little rennovation. There was a lot equipment packed into a small space. Some of it was hooked up, some not. Wires were coming in from all over the church; some labeled, some not. And there was some equipment that could best be described as “temporary.”

This is what I walked into when I started. (click on any of the photos to enlarge)

This is the view looking in from the doorway. Welcome to Minnesota!

The video control desk. I’m not even kidding, this is what it looked like.

I have nothing to say about this.

How about that lightboard. Yup–it says Behringer. And yes, those are cinder blocks.

The reason for the cramped table space was this huge rack,
with hardly anything in it. Part of the original deisgn-build.

Clearly I had some work to do. What you don’t see is some really bad wiring (BNC ends not crimped, but put on with heat shrink; DMX cable running next to fixtures with melted insulation; a DMX network with no splitter or DA; a single audio feed from FOH that had 9-count ‘em 9- Y-cords in it; etc.). For the first month, my main task every Sunday was just trying to make things work. I don’t like having to function in such a situation, so I decided to start tearing things apart, and making it better. I wanted to be like Ty and just blow it up. But they wouldn’t let me. So a rennovation was in order.

As the first step, we pulled all of the DMX cables and ran new ones. We had been having issues with lights turning on and off randomly, or not responding at all. Rather than mess with it, we ran new. I also installed a DMX DA to properly split the DMX signal to the 4 dimmer racks and color scroller. Contrary to popular wisdom, you’re not supposed to split a DMX signal without a splitter. Causes all kinds of relections and other bad stuff.

Next, we tackled the audio feed. I pulled all the Y-cords and used a proper DA (which, oddly enough was lying on the floor in a pile of cables…go figure). I also cleaned up the video table with a proper rack, and replaced the monitor. We moved the rack to a better part of the room, and added another table. In the process, we dumped the el-cheapo DJ style Behringer light board for an ETC Express 3 (which, also oddly enough, was sitting in a closet, unused–I wish I had good explanations for this…) Just doing this was a huge improvement.

You feel better already, don’t you?

It’s starting to look like a real tech booth now.

The video desk still has a big clump of wires on the floor, but at least you can put your feet under the desk now and not worry about turning the cameras off (that was a real issue before. I wish I was joking).

The extra table gives everyone room to spread out, and easily accommodates the new light board. I can now stand between the presentation tech and the light tech and see what’s going on in the room. There’s now an iMac on the left side as well, but I forgot to take a picture of that.

I call this phase, part 1. Clearly it’s an improvement, but I knew there was more work to do. It got us through the last half of the ministry year, however, and everyone just felt better coming in to do their thing. It’s amazing the difference the physical space has on how one performs their job. In the old space, which was clearly in chaos and not thought highly enough by anyone at the church to clean up and improve, the volunteers felt unappreciated and didn’t take their jobs too seriously. It was fun watching the looks on their faces when they came in the first time after phase 1. Not surprisingly, everyone’s game improved.

As I said, there was still work to do. Though Cat-5 cable was pulled all over the church, and video over Cat-5 baluns purchased, the system to route the video was a bit convoluted. This made for some challenging times at Easter and a later large funeral. Though we had a tie line between the stage and the booth, using it to send video (or SGA signals) down there was difficult. And we could not easily address the projectors and any other video destination separately.

Audio was also an ongoing challenge. Though I’ve taken to mixing our own mix remotely using Studio Manager (read about it here…), controlling the volume was a challenge. And I found we were sending too hot a signal to the DVD burner, which meant most of our recordings were distorted. While I had sorted out the big problems during phase 1, what we needed was a plan. A holistic plan to accomplish what we needed to, and make it easy. Here’s what I came up with. You can click to enlarge, or view a PDF of the file here.

This plan gives us a lot of options. We can send video to anywhere, in full RGBHV resolution, without effecting any other destination. I can address our sanctuary projectors independently, and can send sanctuary cameras, or computer, or DVD, to the multi-purpose room, fireside room or fellowship hall for overflow–all with the push of a button. Audio can now be controlled properly, and the booth volume no longer effects the record volume. Best of all, I’ve posted this diagram in the booth, so anyone can take a minute and figure out how to get video and audio where they need it.

I also went through and labeled all the cables. I’m a big proponent of labeled cable. It takes no time to do, and saves so much time down the road. One of the interesting things about this plan is that it required very little new gear. Most of the equipment on the diagram was already there, it just wasn’t utilized. Or it was in another room not being used. I did buy a new scan converter, a scaler, a BNC patcbay (so I can turn around our tie line to the stage and use it as an input or output), and I’ll be picking up a DBX 266 compressor to manage levels on the booth feed. Otherwise, my predesessors bought everything else.

After two really long days, this is how the booth turned out.

Finally, it looks like it should. It’s almost Zen-like now, wouldn’t you agree?

Oh, I forgot, I also bought the Alesis M1 powered speakers. And the hardware to wall-hang them. I’m very happy with those. There’s still a lot of wire running down the wall…I may wiremold that some time in the future.

What was once an unruly mess is now a comfortable workspace. I even left some desk space open to put my laptop on Sundays. There’s an 8 port network switch tucked back there, so I can go wired.

This rack used to be half-empty, and what was there was not all that effective. I’ve moved all of our RGBHV routing, switching and distribution here. This keeps the runs short, and makes it easy to wire. The Cat-5 video also leaves from this rack now. Future updates will include moving the Clear-Com base station up here (from FOH), and additional Cat-5 video baluns, as well as the aforementioned BNC patchbay.

So there you have it. Already, people who have seen it feel really good about it. It’s much easier to work in, and it just feels better. There’s so much to be said for having a workspace that feels productive. And when you raise the bar in your physical plant, the people who work in it will step up as well.

We still have some gear that could be upgraded. Our camera package is essentially a security camera system. Our video mixer, the MX-20, is getting a bit long in the tooth. And some real broadcast monitors would be nice. But given what we actaully do with video right now (which is not much more than archive), the current gear is fine. And I want a new PA first.

Personally, I feel really good about it. Many were thrilled with Phase 1, but I knew it was only 1/2 complete. Now that it’s done, I’m ready to go on to our next project. I’ll be telling you about that in the coming weeks. For now, I’ll just say that this was good practice.

I’ll admit it: I’m a Compressor fanboy. Now that it’s all grown up to Version 3, it’s more useful than cootie repelant at a Miley Cyrus concert. It can package your movie into any one (or more) of a dozen plus formats (including FLV if you have Flash installed), or your audio into MP3, AC3 and Dolby Digital. While it’s a super-easy program to use, it’s simple interface belies the power beneath. Apple has thoughtfully included a number of workflow enhancements that make your life esier–once you know about them, that is.

One of my favorite features is the ability to save compression presets. Compressor comes pre-populated with a number of useful presets for a wide variety of workflows. But after some playing around, I came up with one that worked really well for creating videos in the right format for ProPresenter. I like h.264 for my codec, and I tested various data rates to come up with a high quality image. I set up various other settings like de-interlacing and progressive scanning, frame sizes and audio settings. After I was done, I saved it as my ProPresenter preset and I’m done.

You can come up with presets for a wide variety of formats, then apply them with one-click ease.

Now, once a video is completed in Final Cut Pro, I select Export via Compressor from the File menu. FCP creates a temporary reference movie of the video and imports it as a new project in Compressor. I drag my ProPresenter setting on the clip, change the filename and destination and hit submit. In all, it takes under 30 seconds, and my videos come out in the looking great in the right format every time.

Now that I have my preset worked out, I can send that preset file to anyone who may be creating videos for us. As many of our volunteers are using Final Cut, they drag the settings file into their Custom list, and their videos will match my specs exactly.

Another little trick I’ve been using more and more is the Droplet. Kudos to Dave Smith at Creative Ideas for Twittering about this some time ago. I don’t use Droplets as much as I use presets, but I value them nonetheless. A droplet is essentially an icon version of your setting that you can drop a video on. The droplet launches Batch Monitor, which will compress your video using the settings in your Droplet.

Creating is one is a piece of cake. Simply select the preset you wish to Droplet-ize (I just made that up), and select the obscure icon for “Save Selection as Droplet”

I put my Droplets on the Desktop where they’re easy to get to. It creates an icon like this:

Drag a video onto the Droplet and, bingo, up pops Batch Monitor, ready to do your compression.

When it’s done, it goes away, and you have your newly compressed file ready and waiting. Droplets are very useful if you receive a file in a format that doesn’t fit your intended need. I use them as part of my archiving workflow.

Every few months, I create a DVD of our recent video projects. Since I play my files out as h.246s, they need to be converted to MPG2/AC3 streams for DVD Studio Pro. If I have the source files still on the system, I can simply run the videos back through Compressor and create the DVD files. But often I don’t, so I simply drag my archived h.264 copy onto my DVD Droplet and bust out the MPG2. If I have a bunch to do (which I normally do), I drag them all in and let it go to work. One could argue that it’s another trip through a compression engine and quality suffers, but h.264 videos look so good to start with, they convert to MPG2’s pretty well, especially at high bit-rates.

I also have a ProPresenter Droplet on my Desktop for transcoding files that come in from outside editors (who have not yet adopted my specs).

So there you go. Another couple of time-saving tips brought to you by a guy who eats the same thing for breakfast every morning just so I don’t have to waste time trying to decide what to eat.

I’ve done a lot of green-screen work in my career. At my last post, I did several videos that were almost all shot on green screen. For one client, we shot 20+ interviews, all on green, then composited them over the graphic background in post using Serious Magic’s (now Adobe’s) Ultra 2. It looked really cool, but took forever!

The other day, I was poking around Joe Wiggleston’s site and noticed some new clips he put up. One was a 10B4 that NorthPoint uses each week. The host was keyed over the background, and it looked pretty good. So I asked Joe what they were using for the key. He told me that NP uses Keylight from The Foundry. I’ve played with this software, and it’s good (and it comes included with After Effects CS3 Pro). It is RAM and processor intensive, though, 

Then he told me he personally likes dvGarage’s dv Matte 3 Pro Studio for keying right inside of FinalCut Pro. Being the curious sort, I checked it out. I didn’t plan on spending 2 hours at their site, but I did. Let me tell you, the software looks amazing. The green screen removal it does is so clean, so fast and so easy, I was stunned.

DV footage is notoriously hard to key because of the 4:1:1 color space. That means that the color information is only 1/4 of the resolution of the luminance information. Because keying traditionally relies on color info, when you key DV footage, you end up with a rough and jagged key. Their software uses information from the luminance channel to help clean up the key, and it makes a huge difference, even with HDV footage (which is 4:2:0, but compressed with MPEG2, not a keying-friendly format).

They have another product called dv Matte Blast that does green screen removal in real time! Another product, Conduit Live, will take any video input you have, and remove the green screen live (!), and allow you to test it out over a background. They even keyed water, live, over a background! Very cool. 

While I’ve not had much occasion to do a lot of keying here at Upper Room, I’d really like to. Once we roll over to the next budget year and I have money again, I would like to get a flexible green screen and start shooting interviews over that. Then, if we want to put people on black, white or a background, we can. I will definitely be looking to pick up dv Matte 3. Once I do, look for a full review. They also have full trial versions available on the website, so check them out.

Submit to Digg | Submit to Del.icio.us | Submit to StumbleUpon

Back in the day, when I owned my video company, my partner and I were sticklers for image quality. To be sure we had properly exposed and color balanced shots being laid down on tape, we traveled with a pretty expensive field monitor and a handy little device called the Hamlet Micro Scope. The Micro Scope was a portable waveform monitor/vectorscope, and would overlay the scopes on top of the video signal. It was especially useful when shooting on green screens, as we could see how even our lighting was. I miss my little Micro Scope, and it turns out they still make one, as seen here. But that’s another post.

I’m still a stickler for properly exposed shots. Problem is, the GL-2 I have to use at church doesn’t help much. The exposure meter is dubious at best, especially when shooting people against a black background (which we do a lot). There are zebras available, but they are not the nice dual-stage ones I much prefer. And since you can’t calibrate the LCD, and the brightness changes radically depending on angle of view, there’s really no way of knowing what your exposure actually is.

Somewhere in the last few weeks I read of someone using their MacBook Pro and Final Cut Pro as a field monitor and scope setup [Edit: Source located; I read it at Dave Smith's blog creative | ideas—thanks, Dave!]. It seemed like a good idea and I had a shoot today, so I tried it. 

Man if it didn’t work like a charm! All I had to do was take the FireWire out of the GL-2 and shove it into the MBP. I launched FCP and entered Capture mode. In the Clip Settings tab, I activated the Video Scopes. And there you go! You get a decent sized preview of the shot (which is much easier to check focus with than the GL-2’s low rez LCD), and full waveform/vectorscope monitoring. As a bonus, the audio meters also work, which makes it easier to tell exactly where you are level-wise.

Look at my nicely exposed image…and oh look, my color balance is off by a few degrees…
(click to enlarge) 

I wish I could take credit for it, but I can’t. I will, however, use this technique as often as I can. I think I’ll even look for a longer FireWire cable so it’s easier to set the rig up. The only real downside is that there is a slight delay in the preview, and it’s a bit jerky. I can live with that however, knowing that my shots are now properly exposed. Give it a try next time you’re out on a shoot. I’m no longer jealous of Adobe’s (formerly Serious Magic’s) On Location—though I’m still going to look for the install discs, I know we have them around somewhere.

Submit to Digg | Submit to Del.icio.us | Submit to StumbleUpon

I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing, too. I read a review of the Fig Rig a year or two ago in DV magazine or something. At the time, it seemed rather silly. A steering wheel looking device with a bar across it for mounting your small camera. And a bunch of accessories for, well, accessorizing. “What’s the big deal?” I thought. Here’s the thing.

As much as I hate to admit it, I really miss my nice, big, 16-pound shoulder-mount AJ-D700 DVC-Pro camera. It was a great camera. And while I think I may have permanent back damage from lugging it around, the thing was a breeze to shoot handheld with. It’s weight and form factor, and the fact that it sat on my shoulder made it a cinch to get steady shots. Because I shot with it so much, I got quite good at bracing myself for handheld shots that rivaled being on sticks.

But no more. Right now, all I have to shoot with is a GL-2; and while I appreciate the light weight, it’s almost impossible to get a smooth handheld shot with it, even with the optical image stabilizer. The problem is physics. It’s so light, it has no mass to stabilize it, and the form factor demands that you hold it out in front of you, which means you’re relying on muscle power to hold it steady, not bones. And switching to a low angle shot requires a rather lengthy grip change over.

Enter the Fig Rig. It looks like a steering wheel, and is about as big. As a camera support system, it’s a model of simplicity—and this turns out to be a good thing. The wheel is padded at 3 and 9 (where you’d hold the wheel to “drive”) and there’s a bar with various holes—some tapped, others not—across the bottom to hold the camera, a monitor, mics, and whatever you can rig up to it. That’s it. It’s made from anodized aluminum and weights just a few pounds.

Like I said, when I read about it, I thought, “Whatever, I still miss my 700.” However, today I took it out on a shoot. What a difference! It is truly amazing how much easier it is to shoot with a small camera using the Fig Rig. For basic shots, that is at about eye level, you hold the rig in front of you, with your elbows braced against your sides. This is an inherently stable position. Try it—even without the rig, you can see how much more stable your hands are than if you have your right hand floating in the breeze as you would when holding a camcorder.

If you need to walk and shoot, pull your elbows off your side, bend your knees and walk. It looks almost steadi-cam like. Perhaps not quite as fluid, but hey, we’re talking just over $300, not $10,000. One cool trick is sitting down and resting the rig on your thighs. In that position, you can pan and tilt almost as smoothly as with a fluid head tripod, and with fewer constraints. You can also set it on any flat surface for horizontal support, and twist it to pan. Tilting is just as easy. The variety of shots you can pull off fluidly is quite amazing.

Because I was shooting kids (OK, that sounds bad, I was filming children playing on the floor with adults…), I went for a bunch of low angle shots. I’ve not ever been able to get decent shots like this with the GL-2. There’s simply not enough mass to stabilize it when hanging off my arm. With the Fig Rig, I just shifted my grip to the top of the ring and held it down low. No bending over, and really smooth shots.

What’s not to like? Not much, really. The thing is so simple and works so well it’s hard to find any downside to it. Ours is equipped with a Bogen quick-release plate adapter, which means that when I order our new tripod in a few weeks (with a Bogen 503 head), I’ll be able to slide the camera off the Fig Rig and onto the tripod without changing the plate. They make other adapters, check to see if your tripod head’s plate is compatible. They even make an adapter to put the Fig Rig on the tripod. And, now that I’ve used it, I want to look into getting a shotgun microphone mount, preferably the shock-mounted one.

Rarely do I come across a product that is so simple and so useful. It’s very affordable so if you’re shooting with a small, non-shoulder mount camera, you should get one. Seriously, it actually made shooting more fun today (and everyone comments on it, so you’ll feel really cool). Check it out here.

Submit to Digg | Submit to Del.icio.us | Submit to StumbleUpon

It’s half-way through sound check. So far everything is running along fine, but then it happens. You get to the acoustic guitar played by the worship leader and…nothing. She fiddles with her settings, taps the tuner and…nothing. You check your settings on the board, all appears to be OK and…nothing. This may never happen to you (wink, wink), but it’s happened to me.

Some days, it seems all I do is solve problems. Perhaps it’s just part of my chosen profession, my strengths makeup, my inability to say “No,” or just something I’m really good at. Either way, I do a lot of troubleshooting. It’s even to the point of regular troubleshooting sessions via phone or e-mail with friends in different parts of the country. Not that I mind, really. I enjoy the mental exercise of tracking down what is wrong, and the satisfaction—however brief—that another problem is at bay. With that in mind, I thought I would jot down a few notes about what I’ve learned in 20+ years of troubleshooting AV systems. For this article anyway, I’ll focus on signal path issues, as those tend to be the most common in churches. While I’ll use examples from the world of sound, the principles are equally applicable to video and data signal lines.

Stay Organized
One of my first rules about troubleshooting has nothing to do with troubleshooting at all. Staying organized will help you troubleshoot should the need arise. If during a soundcheck a mic isn’t working, and you have a huge pile of cable on the stage and don’t remember what’s plugged in where, finding the problem will take an inordinate amount of time. If you set everything up in a clear, organized, logical manner, finding the offending part will happen much sooner. I could tell you how to do all that, but that’s another post.

What Changed?
My first question is always the same, “What changed?” If something worked yesterday and now it doesn’t, what changed? If it’s a wireless mic, the obvious first answer is a battery. A sound or video system could have been re-patched. If you can answer the question, revert back to the pre-change state and see if it works. If it does, you need to determine what negative effect the change has. If not, you have other issues.

Go Linear
Random access is great for video editing and brainstorming, but not so great for troubleshooting. The best approach is to start at one end of the signal chain (I like to follow the direction of signal flow) and work your way to the end. True, sometimes by randomly changing out a cable or a DI you might get the result quicker than I would with a linear approach, but the truth is it’s a lucky guess. And you can waste a lot of time (often other people’s time if you have a stage full of musicians, and a house full of tech staff waiting on you) running around trying things that might work.

Eliminate the Bad Component
By starting at one end of the chain, the goal is to find a point where it works again. Once you’ve found that point, back up one component and you’ve got your culprit. This concept should become more clear in the examples to follow.

Tools and Tips
When starting the troubleshooting process, especially if time is of the essence, take everything you may need to fix the problem with you the first time. Acoustic guitar not working? Better grab a 1/4″ cable, a DI, a mic cable and a mic. Why the mic? To test the line. You could also use a signal injector if you have one. As I said earlier, I like to find something that works, then back up a step. Again, the examples should make it clear.

It’s most efficient to start at the source of the signal and work your way to the destination. I say this because it’s my experience that most often, the sources are the problem. It’s pretty rare (in fact, I can’t recall it ever happening) that an amp goes bad. So, starting with swapping out an amp is not an efficient step. And if an amp really has gone bad, you’ll get to it before long.

No Acoustic Guitar
This problem happened to us this past Sunday. During soundcheck, the worship leader started strumming and….nothing. Not a slight tickle of the meter. First, let me give you an overview of the signal chain. Acoustic guitar —> 1/4″ instrument cable —> tuner —> 1/4″ instrument cable —> DI—> subsnake —> subsnake —> house patchboard—>patchbay—>M7 (I didn’t say it was a simple chain, or even a good one, but it’s what we have for now…). So here’s how we troubleshoot. First, make sure the battery is good in the guitar (I’m amazed at how often this is the trouble). Next, we check the tuner to see if it’s getting a signal. It is. Make sure the guitar is plugged into the input of the tuner, not the output. I’ve seen this on more than one occasion. Move on to the next part.

Now, at this point we have two options. We could grab a cable checker and check the instrument cable. Or we could just swap it out (because we brought one with us before we started, right?). This turned out to be the problem, but let’s assume it wasn’t. DI’s rarely just fail, but it’s good to check to see if it’s an active DI that needs phantom power, and be sure phantom is turned on. If that hasn’t fixed it yet, we have issues with our lines. Here’s how we check those.

First, unplug the DI and plug in a mic. Do you have signal? If so, you’ve got a bad DI or you need phantom. No signal, try swapping out the cable between the mic and the first subsnake. Still nothing? Go to the second subsnake and be sure you’re patched properly. It that looks good, unplug snake 1 and plug in your mic (you could have a bad line in your subsnake). Nothing yet? Head back to the patch panel and check that patch. Then plug the mic into the patch panel. If you don’t have signal yet, you have a house wiring problem, or the back of your board is re-patched. At this point, I would quickly verify that channel 15 is actually plugged into channel 15 on the board. If it’s still not working, pick another channel and get back to work.

Hopefully that example illustrates the process. The goal is to find some point that works. We could have changed it up a little and made the first step unplugging the DI and plugging in a mic. That would have told us that the problem is between the guitar and the DI. Noting the signal at the tuner, we would now have as suspects an instrument cable (a common point of failure) and a DI (not so much). Swap the cable and 90% of the time you’re back in business.

In any case, the point is to make the process as efficient and logical as possible. If you’re new to troubleshooting systems, work your way all the way through each time. As you grow in your knowledge base, you can begin to test common points of failure first.

No Sound in the Speakers
I got a call from my former church last weekend as well. They had been hit by a storm which knocked out power, then surged back on. Everything seemed to come back up, but there was no sound coming out of the speakers. They had checked everything they could think of, but still no sound. Thankfully, I wired the system, so I knew the signal chain. Here’s what I talked them through.

First, I made sure there was actually signal going to the main mix busses of the board. The meters were working and headphones verified signal at the main mix buss. OK, so everything upstream of the board is functioning. That leaves the DriveRack (a dbx DriveRack 260 speaker management processor)and the amps. I had the tech move to the amp rack and tell me what he saw. Input meters on the DriveRack lighting up? Sure enough, they were. So far so good, the board is sending signal and the DriveRack is getting it. I asked if the amps were lighting up with input lights. Nope. Hmmm, DriveRack getting signal, not sending, odd. I asked what program it was set to…yup it’s the right one. I asked if the output meters on the DriveRack were moving. Nope. OK, are the channel mutes on? Indeed, when the DR came back up from a power loss, it muted all the output channels. I’ve not checked to see if this is a protection mechanism or a software glitch but either way, it held up the signal. Five clicks later and sound was flowing freely.

Interestingly, we had set up monitors 1&2 to run through an UltraCurve EQ, and when he got to the amp rack, it’s display was frozen. A quick power cycle fixed that and it started passing signal as well.

Again, the process is the same. We started at point A, the board, and ended at the last point, the amps. Once we found the component that was not passing signal (the DriveRack) we could turn our attention to fixing it.

So the lesson is this; start at one end and work your way to the other, eliminating components along the way. Work logically, and make sure your setup is clear and logical, and you’ll be back in business in no time!

Submit to Digg | Submit to Del.icio.us | Submit to StumbleUpon

Loyal readers of this blog will know that one of my goals for 2008 is to replace our sanctuary projectors. A two weekends ago, this became a top priority. During the 5 PM gathering, the projector at house left decided to turn off. Attempts at remotely re-starting it failed. So as our speaker introduced the video we were about to roll, I trudged back to the projector cove to restart the offending unit. Though it powered up, it promptly shut down again. I tried it again, this time covering the lens, so it wouldn’t distract as much. This time it stayed on for a few minutes. It was just teasing me, however as the moment I unblocked the lens, it shut down again. A final re-start kept it going throughout the rest of the night. All for reasons unknown. During the next week, I placed 4 calls to Barco to try to get help with this problem; not a single one was returned. Doesn’t say much for their tech support team…

Ultimately, the entire affair turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Not wanting to throw good money after bad (or in this case old), I started campaigning to the leadership of the church that we should move on new projectors. We had it in the plans anyway, so why spend anything fixing the old ones, that when at their best are 1/2 as bright as we need them to be, when we could just get new ones. I had been researching projectors already, and had my eye on one that looked really good on paper; the Eiki LC-X80. Having not seen the projector, I didn’t want to just order them up. And again, we were blessed.

A local company has them in their rental inventory, and had them available last weekend. I arranged for a rental for our weekend services. They arrived Thursday night, and I was anxious to set them up Friday morning. Now, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, and there are many things I wish I could do over. But once in a while I do something that works out really well. This was one of those times. My first step was to pull down the projector with the happy on/off circuit, and place the first rental Eiki. I powered it up, made a few image adjustments then fed it some signal. Just for fun, I powered up the remaining Barco. The difference was night and day. In a fully lit sanctuary, with all the windows open, the Barco was barely visible. In fact, if you got off axis, you could hardly tell it was on. The Eiki however, looked like a giant TV. And this was when I had the stroke of brilliance. I started rounding up some of the church leaders, many of whom would be influential in freeing up the funds to purchase the projectors and invited them to take a look. The results were just as I had hoped.

Now, when it comes to gear, I’m a bit jaded. I’ve spent most of my career working around really high level equipment and have just come to expect that level of performance and quality. I’m such a gear snob that I consider our Canon GL-2 a consumer-level toy (I know I’ll get e-mail on that one…). I’ve done shows with some really incredible projectors, and expected we would have to pay a small fortune to get a decent projector in there (small fortune defined as $50,000+). I have to say, my expectations were greatly exceeded with these projectors.

As I said, the look great on paper: 6500 lumens; 2000:1 contrast ratio; 90%+ uniformity; UXGA capability including 1080p and 24p support; DVI, VGA and 5 BNC inputs; a new single bulb design and a really cool self-advancing filter. I’ll come back to many of these features in an upcoming full review once the new ones are installed. For now, I want to focus on the main thing—picture quality.

Put simply, they look great. We’re in a series that requires a lot of use of videos each week. Until last weekend, the videos looked really lousy. They lacked punch, clarity and any level of brightness, even in a totally blacked out room. Last weekend, we ran part of an older black and white film. It looked stunning. Our lyrics for worship looked amazing. In fact, that was one of the biggest differences from the Barco. Whites always looked grey, so they never really popped off the backgrounds. With the Eikis the whites are pure, clean white and jump off the rich hues of the background images. As I stood over our presentation tech last weekend, I had in my lower view the 17″ lcd “program” monitor and just above that, 70′ away, was the 9×12 screen. The Eiki looked better than the lcd monitor right in front of me.

At this point, I had not done any calibration or anything else to adjust the picture. I sized it and squared it up, focused it and flipped it for reverse. Yet the colors were deep and accurate. Saturation was excellent, without being overblown. Whites were white and blacks were black. In fact, that’s another noticeable improvement, no doubt a function of the high contrast ratio. When we went to a black screen, it was black. So black in fact, that our lighting director commented that he thought we switched them off.

If it sounds like I’m enthused about these projectors, you’re right. What is exciting and amazing to me is that they don’t cost any where near the $40,000-50,000 I expected we’d have to spend. Remarkably, the pair with lenses, spare bulbs and filter pacs come in at a bit over $16,000 (just $2,000 more than we paid for each of the Barcos 9 years ago—thank you Moore’s law!).

Once we get them installed, I will be running them through their paces and will post a complete review. While we wait for the processing it takes to fund the purchase, we are renting again this week. Seems no one wanted to back to the dark ages. Especially me!

Submit to Digg | Submit to Del.icio.us | Submit to StumbleUpon

Well, since I had a day off, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I just expanded the post and created a tutorial on the website. There, you can view screen shots as well as hear some examples of what I’m talking about. Hopefully it will be helpful. You can view it here.

As promised here is what I learned making a click track video for Christmas Eve. First off, let’s define exactly what we mean by a click track video. A click track video is put together to a song just like you normally would, but then for the service, you replace the music with a click track that is sent only to the musicians so they can perform the song live while the video plays. The click track needs to be in time with the original music score so that the edits fall where they should. Maintaining synchronization is not a big deal if the footage is just atmospheric, but if you are trying to tie certain shots to certain phrases in the song, the band and video needs to be in sync. Here’s how to do it.

For this exercise I used Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro, though you could accomplish the same thing in the Adobe suite. You can also use a dedicated music program like Logic, Cakewalk, Reason or any number of other sequencing software to build the click track, and any video editor you like.

As I said in a previous post, I had a bit of trouble with this at first, and I think it’s because I made it too complicated. So here is my revised method, which worked really well. First, edit the video like you normally would. Next, open up a new project in Soundtrack Pro (or your music editor of choice). Import your song and begin the process of determining the tempo and time siganture. If the music director already knows this, you’re hardest work is done. Most worship tunes (and most rock music for that matter) is in 4/4 time, which means there are 4 beats to a measure, and the 1/4 note gets the beat. If you are unsure, start there.

Tempo is expressed in beats per minute (bpm). Getting the temp right is the hardest and most critical elements of the whole process. Some software has beat detection tools which makes this a lot easier; sadly Soundtrack Pro does not. To determine the tempo and create the click, you need a simple loop of beats. I found that the Wood Block loop works really well. If you use this loop, you’ll notice that the loop has beats on 1 and 3. We’ll fix this later on.

Place your song on one track, then load the Wood Block into another track. Stretch the loop out to the length of the song. Play the song and find the first beat. Line up the first beat of the wood block with the first beat of the song. Hit play. Very quickly you’ll notice if the wood block is beating faster or slower than the song. Adjust the tempo of the project (the wood block will follow along with the project; the tempo control will not affect the song) and try again. Before long, you should have it dialed in. Make sure to check the song all the way through to ensure it doesn’t drift.

Once you have the temp figured out, you can delete the song track. All we need is the wood block. As noted earlier, the wood block loop has beats on 1 and 3. For an effective click track, we want beats on all four beats per measure. This gives the musicians a steady beat to follow. At first I played around with different ways to accomplish this (editing the sample, the Apple Loop Utility, etc.), but the easiest way is to just double the tempo. In my case, the target tempo was 76 bpm. To achieve clicks on all four beats, I dialed up the tempo to 152 and voila! a perfect 76 bpm four beat click.

Export your click track as an AIFF file (or WAV), making sure it’s longer than you need to cover the song. Import the song into your editor and line it up on the beat.

The next trick is to give the musicians a cue when to start. Having a click track is good, but if you put the first click on the opening beat of the song, they will fall behind. So what I did was to put 2 measures (8 beats) in “silence,” meaning before the song actually starts. To further clarify, I used a 1 frame 1K tone at beat one of the first 3 measures. So it sounds like this…

BEEP…click…click…click…BEEP…click…click…click..BEEP…click…click…click… From this point forward it’s all clicks. The third beep is the beginning of the song.

To finish the video, mute the music tracks and export with just the click. When you play that back through Media Shout (or whatever you use), make sure the soundman sends the click to the monitors (in-ears work best, though this works in wedges) and not to the house PA (that would just spoil the ambiance…).

There you have it. A simple way to synchronize the band with a video. All told it takes almost as much time to explain it as it does to do it, so give it a try!