The Biggest Production Of My Life Part 4 Grinding the gear!
The NPPA Best Of Photojournalism contest was hosted at the University of Georgia on February 24th and 25th and it was easily the biggest production of my career. Six concurrent live streams showing contest submissions along with the judging panel and their comments. All was well. We had the equipment, the plan, and the team was ready to make it happen. I am officially a part of the IT department, which I should be, so we had our department head, Jonathon, our “computer” guy, Chris, our “camera/microphone/gear” guy, Jim, and myself. We were ready to go.
I had a plan and it was a good one! We tested it and everything was good to go! I was going to use the equipment in the room as the main image source for the projector and the live stream. Here’s the plan.
But as the great philosopher, Mike Tyson, once said “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
The day before the event… I let out a string of words that I am highly embarrassed by (and won’t repeat). As we were setting up for the event, Chris said “yeah…I don’t think this computer can send two video signals out at the same time.” And he was right…
As with all institutions, upgrades and improvements on technology happen in waves at UGA. We have an entire lab of “older” iMac and the rest of the building has the M1 iMacs. The “older” machines can send several video signals out via USB while the M1 units can not… The problem was that the M1 Macs were the computers that were “attached” to the room and were the primary presentation tool for the room. We had a problem because the plan was to not have to change computers for the room presentation and just tap out of them for the live stream. We went back to the drawing board (after lunch and a three hour break to produce our weekly sports show).
While we were prepping for the event, I knew I would need to connect 12 computers but “that voice” that we all have told me to buy extra capture devices and HDMI cables. When I sent in the order, the director of the event asked why we needed extra equipment. I told him that we may need to expand in the future and some of the devices may not work…
The “driving” computer quickly became the “streaming” computer and the entire wiring plan was shifted on its head. The older computers now had to be rewired to the house audio and projector. This was the second time that expletives flowed. We realized that each of the rooms had a different workflow for how to connect audio and video for the room. If you read the second part of this series, you know that I bought extra equipment because of “that” voice. That decision saved me on this one.
As we started to finalize the deployment and close the day, we realized that we have to have audio in the room AND in the stream. My brain defaulted to “Photojournalism” and “photography” despite building all of the graphics, labeling the broadcasts, and all of the other things that should have prevented such a stupid move.
This is where the updating of technology in phases bit me. Some of the rooms had a simple set up that meant getting audio to the room and the stream wasn’t going to be a problem. Meanwhile, three of the six rooms were going to be a problem… Those rooms use an AV distribution set up that doesn’t allow for the audio to be carried over two HDMI cables. We had to come up with a different plan!
As you would expect, I ran to my shop to grab a frankenstein way of splitting the audio using submixes from our audio mixer. I wasn’t looking forward to it as a solution but it was all we could think of. After getting the adapters cables, etc together, Jonathan took a look at the extron box and saw it had an open HDMI out. We grabbed another Cam Link and gave it a shot.. It actually worked. We had to use the additional Cam Link and HDMI cables to get the audio from the AV distribution box into OBS so the viewers could hear the judges in the room.
We had tapped out all of the USB inputs on the computer as well as all of our capture devices. We were right there on the edge of not being able to make it happen but listening to that voice made it possible. “That” voice is there for a reason and I try to listen to it no matter how dumb it sounds because more often than not, that voice will save you.
Meet the Author, Tom White
Tom White is the Broadcast Engineer at Grady College of Journalism and Communication at the University of Georgia. Prior to that role, Tom taught at Morgan County High School and Rockdale Career Academy where he and his student produced thousands of live streams for sports, news, and community events.
Tom’s program at the Rockdale Career Academy received the NFHS Network Program Of The Year in 2016 and his program at Morgan County High School received the New Program of the Year title in 2018.
Tom has been a long time contributor to many publications and is the host of Teaching to The Test Pattern Podcast.
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