I can’t believe how much trouble I’ve had trying to create an HbbTV App
This a relatively short post this week, as I’m sure some of you will be glad, we’ve been working on the garden and due to the amount of work it is taking to level it, I’ve not had as much time as I usually would to sit down and write.
Whilst I was studying towards my degree I was asked to investigate what it would take to set up a Radio Station. The College has just got a new principal and he was keen on the idea of setting one up having had great success at his previous college. I loved this idea and dived straight into figuring out what equipment was needed, what licenses were required and looking at possible ways we could run the station. Unfortunately, when I delivered my initial findings the idea had been shifted to the back burner due to the college merging with another education partnership.
Since then, all of that research has been kicking around my head and, like many of my other thoughts, has taken on a mind of its own. For example, what if it wasn’t just a radio station? What if it was a full-on media publishing business ran by the community, Web/Print, Radio, TV (both live and prerecorded) as well as the radio side of things (including podcasts)?
I know there are companies like Global and Bauer who do this at a commercial level but what about at a community level? Around here I know of only one community radio station (Beverley FM) and I’m sure there’s some podcast kicking about (they seem to be everywhere) since Estuary TV closed its doors a few years back we no longer have a somewhat local TV station (they were based in Grimsby), we only have Your TV which seems to be a national TV network masquerading as a local TV station (similar to how Bauer and Global have taken over the local radio stations and now only run a few local bit of programming each day under a national brand (Hits Radio & Capital)).
This of course got me thinking about how folks could tune into each of these theoretical community services. The first thing that popped into my head was a website that could feed an app for phones and tablets as well as integrations for smart speakers. That would easily cover the Radio and print side of things but what about the TV?
I had some hope that Freely would be the answer, for those that aren’t aware of Freely it has been created by the group behind Freeview and Freesat, Everyone TV, and runs over the internet rather than through Satellite or Arieal. I initially thought that it would work on a similar standard to Freeview and Freesat which both work on variations of the DVB protocol.
There is an IPTV version of the protocol called DVB-I. I have found various open-source projects based around DVB-I and found that I don’t have a clue about any of the programming languages used or where to start with their demo applications. Something for another time then.
There also isn’t a lot of information about what protocols Freely uses as their current plan seems to be working directly with device manufacturers such as Vestel and Hisense on brand new TVs rather than releasing an app for existing TV and Smart TV Boxes such as the Apple TV or Google Chromecast etc.
My next thought was about the apps that come preinstalled on most Smart TVs. How do they work? Well, it turns out they use a system called HbbTV or Hybrid Broadband Broadcast TV. After looking into this method I found that it’s basically a wrapper for smart TV to show websites or web pages as apps and uses web creation tools such as PHP, HTML, CSS and javascript.
This I thought might be a simple solution. Create a website and somehow find a way of getting it on to my TV for testing. As I have a rebranded Vestel TV this was relatively simple. Add a .txt file to a USB stick with the web address inside and I can see the site and have basic interaction with the website.
I’ve been searching for tools to make the app creation process simple, and I thought I had come across a solution in a PDF on the HbbTV website. The solution was called MPAT and it has its source code available on GitHub. The only problem is that when I tried to install the software on my webserver, I got errors everywhere and after playing whack a mole for a day and a half, I gave up with a plan to learn a boatload about compose and the other things involved to get it to work. I was really hoping everything would pan out with MPAT as it was based on a fork of WordPress called Bedrock. I had thought about possibly installing bedrock and somehow finding a way to install MPAT on top but again I’m not sure how I go about doing this.
In the end, I used one of my holding sites (https://jabi.uk) and created a basic app that had a holding message and a live test card from the BBC’s R&D team. If you have a Vestel-manufactured TV and would like to give the app a go and see its development over time, there are instructions on the app website. If you don’t have a Vestel-manufactured TV that supports HbbTV then you should just be able to load it in your TV’s built-in web browser and give it a go.
I’m going to continue playing with both the sites I’ve set and trying to see if I can somehow get the MPAT software to work because I think it’ll be a great starting point to help develop for these TV platforms, be it for this project if it ever comes to fruition or for another project in the future. As I tend to run these things in a docker container, I’ll park it on a repository once I have it running and can always redownload it if I need it. I’ll of course make it public should I ever get MPAT working.
Do you think you could help me get MPAT working? Would you be interested in setting up a community media company? Let me know in the comments (either here or on your social platform of choice) I’d love to hear your thoughts.
As anyone who knows me will know I’m a huge fan of Blackmagic Design and the products and services that they provide. I wanted to look into what product they have that the everyday gamer, Remote Teacher or anyone really could use to help make engaging streams or presentations.
I’m initially going to be basing this setup around my needs. I work as a client trainer with Sigma Connected working from home and as much as I love Microsoft Teams and the features it offers I would love to be able to bring some of my live production skillsets into my sessions.
A great start to this, in my eyes at least, is to be able to bring in outside feeds such as interactive quizzes with onscreen overlays (think Who wants to be a millionaire but on a very tight budget), use multiple camera angles and bring in presenters using software other than MS Teams.
Teams has a fantastic feature called spotlight that allows you to pin one camera feed for everyone so it shows up on their screen nice and big I intend to use this so I’m not having to share my screen unless I need to, for product demos for example.
Requirements
Before I go much further then, I should probably make a list of what I think I may require and then as we go through I can tweak and change this as needed.
As I mentioned I’d like this to be a multicamera setup with at least 2 angles. One main angle will basically be on top of my monitor and another “side” angle will coincidently be focused towards a green screen.
Next up I’m going to need a vision mixer to mix the camera feeds as well as feed from my two laptops and some sort of key and fill that can produce on-screen graphics such as lower thirds or scoreboards and such. I’m going to need a way to get the Key and Fill out of an iMac and into the switcher.
I’m going to need a way of getting the mixed video feed from the switcher into the Laptop. I do have a HDMI to USB adapter that I got off AliExpress for about £20 but if I’m designing a full rack I would like something a bit more reliable.
I’m going to need to be able to insert audio into the mix too so a microphone for me at least would be a good idea.
I could probably do with replacing my dodgy lighting setup (A Desk Lamp, the ceiling light and some Nanoleaf Lines) for something a bit more professional too. Having said that I like the Nanoleaf Lines I may just need to utilise them a bit more.
The Gear
Cameras
Once the cameras are set they aren’t going to be moved or change passion, so I really don’t need a camera with a built-in display or any control really. As I’m wanting at least 2 of them the camera also needs to be cheap. The cheapest camera that Blackmagic make is the Micro Studio 4K G2. It’s a broadcast-quality camera in a tiny body. It has an active Micro Four Thirds lens mount paired with a Four Thirds sensor with 13 stops of dynamic range giving it great low light performance allowing it to produce stunning Ultra HD images in all lighting conditions. It has 2 micro BNC connectors (one for output and one for input (inc camera control) and they support 1-bit uncompressed video up to 2160p at 60 fps and two channels of audio on the output. It can also record Blackmagic RAW files to an External USB-C drive. The Micro Studio 4K G2 has an RRP of £966 according to the Blackmagic Website.
Lenses and Accessories
As this is a barebones camera then we’re going to need some accessories so we can actually use it. First off we’re going to need a lens and the camera has an active MFT lens mount I’d like a small lens that can be controlled by the switcher. I’ve decided on the Panasonic Lumix 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 – MFT (available on CVP for £329) As its name suggests it’s a 14-42mm lens with a variable f stop of 3.5-5.6. Whilst it has built-in Optical Image Stabilisation built in, that won’t be used as it will be permanently mounted. One of my major reasons for this choice of lens is the Power zoom function that will allow the lens to be controlled from the camera.
Now we have a camera and lens we need to be able to mount it. I’ve decided that as the cameras are going to be permanently mounted I’m going to mount them to the wall, One behind my monitor and one to the wall to the right of my desk. Elgato makes a wall mount for cameras and lighting gear handily called the Elgato Wall Mount and it is available directly from them for £29.99. I’m not sure if the mount would give me enough room between the camera and the wall but Elgato dose supply the Elgato Flex Arm L for £49.99 which is a 4 pack of arms that can be attached to the wall mount that comes in a variety of sizes.
Finally, we are going to need to get the video feed out of the camera and none of Blackmagic Swicthers have SDI Micro BNC connections so We’ll need to convert the output to regular BNC. Canford makes a Micro BNC to Female BNC cable that’ll do the job nicely though it is a bit pricey at £58 a cable. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any cheaper options on CVP as the only other options fit the push connect Micro BNC found on Blackmagic’s older Micro Studio Cameras.
Graphics
Well now we have the camera setup, let’s look at getting graphics into the switcher. I’m going to be using a Mac Mini to produce the live graphics with things such as Lower thirds with important information as well as scoreboards and other bits and pieces. I would use the laptops I have been provided by work but one is a Chromebook which is nearly useless when it comes to this sort of thing and the other, while it’s a Windows laptop, is so locked down I can’t make any changes to anything.
I’d love to go with the base model iMac but I would really prefer to have the two additional USB ports and the ethernet connection to make sure I have a stable network connection as I’ll also be using the Mac outside of work for other things, which I may talk about in a post in the future. I’m also going to bump the memory up to 16GB as 8GB is a little rubbish in this day and age and as much as I would like to add more I really don’t want to pay for the Apple Tax. I’m not going to add this to the cost of this setup but for those that are interested the iMac setup is going to cost £1,958 on the Apple Website.
I’d love to go with the base model iMac11 but I would really prefer to have the two additional USB ports and the ethernet connection to make sure I have a stable network connection as I’ll also be using the Mac outside of work for other things, which I may talk about in a post in the future. I’m also going to bump the memory up to 16GB as 8GB is a little rubbish in this day and age and as much as I would like to add more I really don’t want to pay for the Apple Tax. I’m not going to add this to the cost of this setup but for those that are interested the iMac setup is going to cost £1,958 on the Apple Website.
With that detour out of the way let’s look at how we are going to get the graphics out of the iMac and into the switcher. Black magic once again comes to the rescue here. They make a Thunderbolt 3 device called the UltraStudio HD Mini that has a RRP of £558. The UltraStudio range of products gives you the option to be able to either take one SDI feed and feed it into a computer or take a video feed from the computer and send it to the switcher with transparency information (key and fill).
These are great for producing graphics on the fly and I tend to use live graphics at events and productions rather than premade as anything can happen at the last minute. I’m only going for the HD option here as there is no way I’m going to be able to send a 4K stream out of the house with my wife complaining I’m breaking the internet.
I’m going to need to be able to connect the ultraStudio to the iMac. All we need is a single Thunderbolt 3 Cable. Apple Sells a Belkin Connect Thunderbolt 3 Cable for £24.99 that will do the job perfectly.
I Suppose, you’re wondering why I’m going with the iMac rather than a Mac mini. In that case, this is going to be a pretty much permanent install so I’m not worried about portability and I’d rather not have a million wires going across an already wire-filled room… It’s becoming a bit of a hazard. ↩︎
Switcher
As I have at least 6 video feeds coming into the switcher (2 Cameras, 2 Laptops and Key & Fill from the Ultra Studio) I’m going to be going for the ATEM SDI Extreme ISO that has an RRP of £1518. I’ve gone for the ISO version as occasionally I record sessions that will be going out to the company as a whole and would like to be able to edit the session beforehand. The ISO model records each video feed separately and also produces a Davinci Resolve File that has all of the feeds in it already along with an edit that is identical to the live feed. this will massively cut down on the post-production time as I will only need to make a few tweaks here and there.
Getting the Camera feeds into the ATEM is really simple, just a pair of 2M BNC cables (£44.54 each) to and from each camera. As I mentioned earlier this will give me control of the cameras remotely the only thing I wouldn’t be able to do is change their position which will be locked off anyway.
The laptops though are a little different as they don’t have an SDI output on them only HDMI. Once again though Blackmagic has a solution for that. Enter the Terranex Mini HDMI to SDI 12 Converter with an RRP of £558. A 2M BNC cable and a 1M HDMI Cable (£17.99 Each) connected to the converter and to either the switcher or the laptop and away we go.
I went with the Terranex version of the converter rather than the micro converter as again I’ll not be using these elsewhere and they will be installed permanently. I’m going to convert one of my sets of shelves into a mini rack as part of this process as they will fit nicely in there also with the UltraStudio. The downside to this approach is that Blackmagic only makes a 12G version of the converters in the Terranex form factor so no cost savings to be made by going this route.
The Cost
As you can probably guess already, this setup isn’t exactly going to be cheap. That does come with using broadcast gear to produce content though, nothing broadcast is ever cheap.
If you would like to download a copy of this table click the shopping lists link in the projects menu at the top of this page.
Just under £6,600 is quite expensive for what is basically a couple of webcams and a switcher. I don’t know if I would ever go down this route unless a) work decides they are going to be really nice and give me the money, b) someone at Blackmagic sees this post and goes you know what this guy is awesome, let’s send him some stuff or c) I come into some money and this would all be bought as part of a larger kit that I would use to start my own Live production business.
So with that in mind, I think another post in the not-so-distant future may be in order where I look into other solutions. I hear the Elgato have just brought out a new range of products they are calling Neo. Might be worth a look.
As per usual I’d love to know your thoughts. Do you think this is too Expensive? What would you change? What suggestions do you have for a non-blackmagic setup on a cheaper budget? let me know below or pop a comment on your social platform of choice.
Event Rig Series – Part 3: A Small Portable Basic Lighting Rig
In the third part of my accidental series on Rig for events, I will look at a basic lighting setup to go with our Audio setup for last time. (Unless you’re really into broadcasting your gigs from the get-go I don’t think you need to worry about the camera setup at this point).
The goal of the Rig
The main focus of this rig is to be seen in a dark dingy local pub that hasn’t had its windows cleaned for years and, due to the landlord’s “budget-friendly” attitude run 10W bulbs in each of the 3 lights in the bar… That might just be some of the bars I’ve been to over the years though to be fair.
I’m going to design 2 basic rigs for this post, and they can be swapped out depending on the space available at the venue. Might sound a bit odd considering this is meant to be a budget rig but it’s less the lights that will be different and more what we rig them on to.
With the goal of the rig to shine some light on the performers and a secondary goal of adding a bit of colour to the stage. I’ve tried to make this rig pretty basic with no moving light but still using fixtures that we’ve designed for a purpose. A lot of new bands and groups tend to just buy a few LED parcans and think that’s good enough, and if you are only after a very basic wash with no definition that’s fine. If you want the band to stand out for the rest of the stage you going to need something with a bit of punch to cut through the parcans.
The Theory of (Lighting) Everything
I may be slightly biased, having done lights for shows since I was 14, but it bugs me when you go to an event and the lighting person has decided the colours on the stage are more important than the people on it.
That’s why when I design a rig it has a few different types of fixtures. washes, Specials, Effects and Decor.
Washes
A wash is a basic cover of the stage. Before LED light became popular you would have a selection of fixtures that were focused on covering the stage in one colour then repeat again with all the colours you would need for your show, or if you were rather clever you’d create four washes of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and white (either warm or cool depending on the production) and use that to colour mix the look for your wash.
Now though, as LED have become more popular you really only need one wash on the stage as you can change the colour of the wash using the features of the LED. I do still sometimes spec more than one wash even with LED as I still love the look when doing chases of one light fading off and another fading up, but not all shows need it or have the room in the power, space or money budgets.
Specials
Specials are lights used to light up a specific area, set piece or person. Again in days gone by or when you couldn’t afford moving heads, you would have multiple spotlights to light these areas with a soft or hard focus depending on the look you were going for.
For smaller rigs, I still go down this route to cut down on complexity but for larger rigs with room in the budget I’d include a few moving heads but we’ll talk about them in a different post.
Effects
Effect lights are those used to get a certain look or feel such as spotlights with gobos or water effect generators.
These can add a lot to a scene or show but should be used only when needed through the shows to keep the look special and not something that pops up all the time.
Decor
These are light-up set pieces or battens and panels throughout the set that have no other purpose than to add some colour to the place and look cool.
If you’re doing a music event you can use these to great effect when running effects on the in time with the music.
For our, Slightly advanced, basic rig we’ll be in skipping the last two types of lighting and focusing on the washes and specials.
Rigging
Before we get on to what light we are going to use and what for we need something to hang them on. We have a few options here. T-bars, Trussing and Floor stands. For the more basic rigs, I’d go with a couple of stands with T-Bars on the top set up a few feet out from the grin of your stage area in the corners set at 45 degrees.1.3
If you’re looking to set up a slightly advanced rig keep the T-Bars but as a length of trussing spread over 2 T-Stands towards the back of the audience to give you a dedicated space for your specials to light up the band.
Finally, we have floor stands, which are great for floor-level lighting and can add some depth to your stage without taking up the space of a full-size stand. I’m a big fan of uplighting. It seems to be an angle that many people forget about.
As I mentioned at the beginning I’m going to give options for both of the first two setups. We’ll be using the same fixtures on each setup just more or less of them depending on the setup. We’ll look at the rigging setups first and then the fixtures after.
Basic Setup 1: T-Bars
Most basic T-Bars, such as this setup on Thomann (£189), have 4/8 rigging points if your T-Bar has holes for rigging points you can put a fixture on top and another on the bottom using one bolt doubling your available fixture count.
For my first setup, I would advise having four wash fixtures on the bottom of each bar and two or three fixtures for the specials across the top. If your budget doesn’t stretch that far you can always go for two washes and two specials across the bottom.
With four wash fixtures on each bar, you can get a wash with a great cover over Upstage Right, Upstage Left, Downstage Right and Downstage Left from both sides of the stage. With the two-wash setup, you want to have the lights focused on the opposite side of the stage to the stand, one upstage and one downstage.
Both of these setups allow you to light up each corner of the stage individually giving you a bit more flexibility. The benefit of having 4 washes on each side is that you can almost guarantee that your performers will be lit evenly from both sides, and you can get some cool colour effects if you set the wash covering an area of one colour from 1 bar 1 and another colour from t-bar 2.
Basic Setup 2: Truss & T-Bars
The 2nd basic rigging setup is my favourite as it gives you more flexibility and room to hang more fixtures as you expand. The T-Bars, just like before have 4/8 rigging points but the truss has, whilst not unlimited, a lot more hanging points available. For example, this kit I have selected from Thomann for £155, has three bars on each section of the truss so not only could you hang some profile from one of the bars, but you could, if you expand your rig later on, add some effect lights on top or floods or blinders pointed to the audience on the back bar.
I’d keep for washes on each of the T-Bars and move you for spots to the Truss evenly spread across it. This will give you front light for each performer covering most of your needs without having to play with the angles too much as you would If they were on the T-Bars. If you have a bit of room in the budget double up on the number of spots and have 4 at each end of the truss putting two in each area of the stage to make sure you have even lighting on each performer you need to cover.
The Fixtures
The next thing we need to look into is what fixtures we are going to use here and as this is a basic rig we want to keep things relatively cheap. I say relatively here for a reason. You can go with cheap, cheap light from eBay or aliExpress but you have no guarantee that the colours or brightness on each fixture are going to match each other. I made this mistake when I was really low on budget and bought 8 LED Parcan-style floods and they were great for a tiny space that just needed some colour added. But when it came time to use them for performances everyone had a slight purple glow if they were downstage and you couldn’t see them at all if they were upstage. You really do get what you pay for when it comes to fixtures.
A couple of key things to keep an eye out for here: Brightness & Colour Rendering Index (CRI). We want our fixtures to be nice and bright and light up a small to medium size stage and we want to make sure that the colours on the fixtures are accurate. Not only will stop our performer from turning random colours but it will also mean that your lights are very likely to match each other.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m going to be staying with two types of fixtures for this rig Washes and Specials/Spots. I will be giving two or three options for each that vary depending on your budget. Just a heads up though, if you go with the cheaper fixtures then you are going to, most likely, have a reduced brightness and possibly even a reduced feature set.
Washes
We’ll start with the Washes, The first Fixture we’re going to have a look at is the Eurolite LED BAR-3 HCL Bar. This fixture has 3 powerful 12W mixed Red, Green, Blue, Amber, White and UV (RGBWAUV) LEDs on the front of the fixture, which unfortunately can’t be controlled individually. It has several DMX control modes but I would suggest putting them in Mode 10 so you get the full functionality of the device with individual control of each of the colours, access to control of the strobe feature as well as a global dimmer. You also benefit from being able to use the built-in effects. you can pick them up for £77 each on Thomann’s Website.
If you have more room in your budget then it’s worth having a look at the Eurolite Stage Panel 16 HCL LED. It’s over 3 1/2 times the cost of the LED BAR-3, coming in at £279, but for that extra cost, you now get 16 12W RGBWAUV LEDs on the front grouped into 4 segments that are each individually controllable, even just one of these segments is more powerful than the 3 individual LEDS on the other wash unit. It also comes with built-in barn doors enabling you to stop the light from spilling into areas of the stage you don’t want to cover. The fixture can be controlled by either of the 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 24 or 32 DMX control Modes. Again I’d go with mode 32 here, then you will get control of the master dimmer, Strobe, and Each of the 4 segments, as well as some preset colours and effects.
Spots
When it comes to spots I’ve gone with three different options. One has what Thoman calls an LED Lens, the next has an adjustable Fresnel Lens and the final one is a full-zoom lens.
The first option I have is the Eurolite LED Theatre COB 100 RGB+WW which comes in at a somewhat budget-friendly £129 per fixture. It’s an RGBW fixture with a fixed 60-degree LED Lens on the front. It comes with 4, 5, 6 & 9 Channel DMX modes. Here I’d go with mode 6. This gives us control over each of the colours the master dimmer and the strobe. This fixture does include bar doors so you have some control of the area the light is covering but not how sharp the focus may be. A good very basic option to point some light in a direction and add some extra light.
The second option I have come up with is just under three times the price of the COB 100 and that’s the Varytec LED Theater Spot 120 FC comes in at £333 a fixture. This fixture has a manually adjustable Fresnel lens that can be adjusted from 15-45 degrees. Like the COB 100, this fixture has RBGWW colour mixing. It also has 4,6 or 8-channel DMX control modes, I’d go with the 6-channel here as again you get the master dimmer as well as control off all four colours and the strobe. This fixture has been designed to replace the 500-600w Fresnel fixture you’ll find in smaller theatres and studio spaces.
My Last option is the Eurolite LED PFE-100 RGBW Profile Spot which comes in at £555 on the Thomann website. It’s a full-on Profile Spot with full RGBW colour mixing and built-in shutter blades. The Fixture can accept a gobo holder and iris (both sold separately), a manual focus and zoom covering a range of 14-41 Degrees and is also controllable by the 9 channels of DMX (4 channels for RGBW, Macros – for colour blend, Colour Change and Colour Fade, Strobe, Dimmer Spead and Master Dimmer). Again the 110W nature of this fixture shows that it has been designed to replace Profiles that are in the 500-500W range at one-fifth the power. When I first saw it and read the spec I was instantly reminded of the source 4 Jr… well except for the shape that took me back to some of the fixtures from the early 90’s a good thing I love that aesthetic.
Power
Now you’ll need to be able to power all of these fixtures and managing our power is going to be important if we want to keep the venue managers off our backs. Doing some quick maths, and using the Phms Law Calculation (Power (P) = Current (I) x Voltage (V), each 13 amp socket you plug into here in the UK (running 230V) gives you 2990W of power, kind of. All the sockets on one ring main will, usually, run to a 32 amp breaker. Using the same calculation we need to make sure that we put no more than 7360W of equipment onto any ring taking into account any other devices that the venue may have plugged in.
With that in mind, we best have a look and see how much power each of the above fixtures uses. For some of the fixtures, this is going to be as simple as looking at the website or spec sheet and the figure will be there for the others we are going to have to do some more maths. Again the maths is simple though, Power of each LED x Number of LEDs + a little bit extra for the LED Controller and other gubbins in the fixture. This will give us a very rough approximation of the fixture’s energy use. It’s time for a table.
Fixture
Power Use (If Known)
Number of LEDS
Power Per LED
Extra power budget
Total
Eurolite LED BAR-3 HCL Bar
N/A
3
12W
14W
50W
Eurolite Stage Panel 16 HCL LED
N/A
16
12W
18W
210W
Eurolite LED Theatre COB 100 RGB+WW
100W
N/A
N/A
N/A
100W
Varytec LED Theater Spot 120 FC
120W
N/A
N/A
N/A
120W
Eurolite LED PFE-100 RGBW Profile Spot
100W
N/A
N/A
N/A
100W
With the figure above now worked out we can have a look and see what part of our setups use, power-wise. First of all, let’s have a look at one of the T-Bars in our 2 T-Bar setup. Let’s say we have 4 of the LED BAR-3 Fixtures and 2 of the Theatr Cob 100s, that would give us a total power usage of 400W per T-Bar so 800W for the full setup. Looking at the other end of the scale with our T-Bar and Truss rig, We have 8 Stage Panel washes on each T-Bar so that’s 1680W plus the 8 PFE 100 Spots using 800W gives us a total of 3280W.
Now T-Bar setup can easily run off a single 13 Amp plug socket and we’d need a second socket for one of the T-Bars in the larger setup, but for my own peace of mind, I’d be running each part of the rig to a separate socket. When it comes to distributing power though we’re, going to need some cabling.
For connecting between each fixture, Thomann supplies these handy the sssnake PC 1,5 Power Twist/DMX Cables that include both power and DMX cables for £24.90. As all of our fixtures have both power in and out as well as DMX in and out these are ideal to keep the rig nice and tidy.
When it comes to getting power and DMX to each part of the rig there is a 25M variant Sommer Cable Monolith1 Power Twist/DMX 25m for £196. 25M should be long enough to get back to our lighting console in most small-sized venues. All we’d need to do is cut off the grey power-twist connector and replace it with a 13 Amp Plug.
We’re going to need to be able to split the feed from or Light Console and send it to each part of the rig. Thankfully there are DMX Splitters for this purpose. The Eurolite DMX Split 4 Mini Splitter 3pol is a good option for this at £89. You can put this next to the Lighting Console, pop power into it and pass that through to the console, pop the DMX out of the console with a short 1M DMX Cable, such as this pro snake TPD-3 2 FM for £5, and the plug run a length of DMX from the splitter to each of our Power Twist/DMX Cables using a small single DMX Cable like this pro snake TPA 1003 FM5 for £3.44 that will convert the 5pin DMX out of our lighting console to the 3pin DMX Required for our splitter and fixtures.
The final thing I would add is to make sure that you include a DMX Terminal Resistor at the end of each DMX run to stop any dodgy signal from messing up your show. you can pick up a pack of 2 ADJ DMX terminal resistor Set 3Pin for £3.88.
Lighting Console
When it comes to the lighting console there are plenty of options but what we need to figure out is how many channels of DMX we need as that will set the minimum number of DMX universes we are going to need in our lighting console. So it’s time for another table.
Fixture
DMX Channels
Qty
Total DMX Channels
Eurolite LED BAR-3 HCL Bar T-BAR
10
8
80
Eurolite Stage Panel 16 HCL LED Truss
32
8
256
Eurolite LED Theatre COB 100 RGB+WW T-BAR
6
4
24
Varytec LED Theater Spot 120 FC T-BAR
6
8
48
Eurolite LED PFE-100 RGBW Profile Spot Truss
9
8
72
Total
T Bar – 104/128 T-Bar & Truss – 328
The Number of Channels you’ll need will vary a bit depending on the setup you go for but if you go with any of the setup options I have laid out today you won’t need more than 1 universe of DMX. This keeps our options wide open for our choice of Lighting Console.
I’ve narrowed the field myself with my personal preference for Chamsys Lighting Console. I think they are great budget-friendly easy-to-use options that do not leave anything on the table even when running on a small setup like this. They have Console options that range from just running the console software on a laptop or computer using their FREE MagicQ Software and a USB-DMX Dongle, right the way through to their latest and greatest MQ500M+ Stadium console.
We’re going to go towards the bottom of the list of options that Chamsys provide by using the free MagicQ Software paired with either their ChamSys MagicQ Mini Connect that comes in at £1015 or if you have room in the budget I’d recommend going for the ChamSys MagicQ Compact Connect for £2269. The Copact Connect may be over twice the price but the physical interface you use is a lot better suited for live shows with its extra encoders and buttons to help you produce a show on the fly.
The Cost
I’m going to do three different cost listings here for the different setups that I think make sense. The first is a 2 T-bar setup with 6 Washes and 4 COB Spots.
I think this isn’t a bad starting point for a good quality rig that can be used not just for bands but also for smaller events, for example, whilst I was studying at university a rig like this would have come in handy not only for the interviews that I filmed but also when I was helping provide tech support with the drama students. you can get a very good full-stage wash and 2 specials all with colour mixing for just under £3000 that can all be plugged into 1 13 amp socket, though I’d still recommend separate circuits if at all possible.
Next, I wanted to create a slightly more advanced 2 T-Bar rig based on everything we have discussed here and there are three main differences first is that I’m Swapping out the washes for the larger Stage Panel. Second, Swapping out the Theatre COB Spots for the Theatre Spot 120s and finally, I’m changing over to the MagicQ Compact Connect.
A fair jump in cost but with the jump in cost you also get a jump in power output and control. As I mentioned before having the MagicQ Compact Connect rather than the Mini Connect is going to give more options when it comes to busking a show. You don’t need to make this change if you are preprogramming your shows into a cue list or working with set scenes and chases that won’t change from gig to gig.
The final setup I’m going to look at today is the Full T-Bar and Truss setup. This is the kind of like the money is no object small band setup That
This setup has everything but the kitchen sink and is really more for band that are starting the progression from pubs and clubs into more dedicated venues but want to use their own lighting right. It’ll actually be the first setup of my next bunch of lighting setups in the next light part of the Event Rig Series.
One of my favourite things about this setup is its versatility. For example, because you have that front truss not only can you put all of your profile out front and your washes on the sides but you can do a bit of mix and match. For Example, Take 2 of the washes off each T-bar and put them on the Truss as the 2 outside lights on each side and have 4 profiles in the middle. Split the last four remaining Profiles and replace the 2 Washes on each bar with them. This can give you some additional side spot that can either be used to light a band member at an interesting angle or used with a gobo to add a bit of break up to the mix.
Summary and Final Thoughts
I’ve skipped atmospherics during these setups as a fair few of the pubs I’ve worked in over the years have flat-out refused to let us use Smoke and haze whilst putting on a gig, which was a pity as I think it could have added so much to some of those gigs. I’ll be covering a few of the options in the next lighting installment of the Event Rig Series so keep your eyes peeled if you want to add smoke and haze to your gigs.
I think we have three good starting blocks here depending on the size of your band and budget. If I can ever get a Windows machine to stay working on me for more than a couple of days then I’ll create some renders in WYSIWYG of what each of these setups could look like.
Not that anyone requested it but I’ve started adding all of my shopping lists to a single Excel spreadsheet that you can download from the link in the menu at the top of the page. If your interested in any of these rigs it may come in handy and you should just be able to edit the qty for each item and the totals will automatically update. It won’t automatically add cables and do power calculations for you though… maybe one day in the future if I have time to figure all of that out.
What do you think of the rigs? Would you change anything? let me know in the comments or on the socials and I’ll be happy to have a natter.
In my last post, I described how I have had an idea for years about building an eco-village and with the help of Generative AI I was finally able to get some of those ideas onto paper. I wanted to share another idea that I had with you that may be a lot more achievable even if I don’t have the money to fund it myself.
Those who know me know I love the arts and love working behind the scenes to make sure everything runs smoothly during an event. Over the years I have got to work on a wide variety of entertainment formats including Radio, TV, and Theatre as well as other large-scale events such as concerts and festivals. What I would love to do would be to build a multi-purpose venue with theatre spaces, Film/TV Studios, Recording studios and Radio Studios.
It sounds like a lot I know especially as I would like all of the different parts of the complex to be able to work with one another by sending audio and video feeds through the building so that live events can be recorded in one for the studios and also sent out via the radio or a live stream to youtube at the same time. I thought I would spend a little time getting some of these ideas down on paper, so to speak.
The Land
The first thing we are going to need is some land and I think I have found a really good spot for this. It might sound odd at first but bear with me. While doing my driving lesson a couple of years ago, like many other learner drivers in the area, I was taken up to the Carnaby Industrial Estate to find my sea legs. I noticed a few small plots available to build on when we first entered the estate. As we progressed around the many roundabouts and got to the end and found a couple of larger plots of land ripe for development. the site I have chosen is at the very end of the estate and is around 170 Meters wide and has a depth of 114 meters, which is around 19,000M2.
Now you may be thinking, Jim, Why an industrial estate 5 miles from the nearest town? Firstly there is nowhere else nearby that I could build something on this scale. But also due to its location, we’re less likely to have complaints about noise or traffic due to the area being used for industrial purposes. The land also already had multiple high voltage lines coming into it to enable us to power all of the spaces I would like to set up, another challenge we may have encountered if we could build the main town.
The other benefit to this plot of land is that it has an access road surrounding it. now, the front bit of the road doesn’t give access due to the massive pond at the front of the land that I’d ideally like to keep. The other benefit is that there are two other plots of land available too. One is just to the left of the plot above and one is opposite at the bottom. Not that I plan to build on these just now but they are good opportunities to expand in the future. I have no idea how much this plot of land is currently going for as it is a Price on Request job from the council (so probably more than I can afford).
The spaces and venues
I mentioned my plan in broad strokes but let’s have a look in a bit more detail. The first thing I’d like to add is a theatre. That may sound odd as I’ve already mentioned a couple of filming/TV studios but there’s something to be said about having a dedicated theatre space with a flying system, and everything that goes with it, that is always ready for production. Not only does this give a space for theatre-based performances without having to recreate the wheel each time in one of the studio spaces but when it comes to filming certain types of events such as standup shows or stage-based shows it looks a million times better having a purpose-built space for this. Plus I always felt more at home in a theatre space than I did in a studio or arena space.
I wouldn’t be using any of the round stages for the theatre but I kept them in this selection of AI-produced renders because I thought they looked really cool.
I’ve modelled the theatre on one that I know very well and loved working in. The Spa Theatre in Bridlington is just down the road from the site. I joined the team just after the full complex had had a multimillion-pound refurb where they stripped the place back to brick and started from scratch. In the process, they installed fully automated flying systems in both the theatre and the Royal Hall (called a mini-stadium), fully replaced their ageing dimmers and desks with the latest from ETC, replaced both sound systems and had them tuned for each of the spaces. making a huge difference from the audio in the spaces before. There was also a boatload more work protecting the venue from the elements and the spas lurking under each of the stages.
I’ll be using the dimensions from the theatre to give me a guide to the theatre space in the Caranaby Project, though I won’t be making the auditorium quite as big, as after all the space is meant for small audiences for recordings rather than the large shows the Spa puts on each week. The theatre’s stage is 16M wide (including the wings), 12M deep and 12.5M tall with the fly floor at 6.5m off the deck. The auditorium is 18m wide and 12 meters deep in the stalls and seats 275. There is a circle with additional seating for 400 but we don’t need to worry about that here. These are the dimensions I’ll be using for the theatre space for now though I will be adding a bigger loading dock on Stage Right as at the time it was a massive pain in the backside having nowhere to store set pieces when they were not in use. Something else that will need to be considered is the dressing rooms and green room. The spa had 5 dressing rooms of various sizes and no green room. I’d add a couple more dressing rooms and two green rooms, one for the actors and one for the tech team. These little extra spaces make a huge difference when preparing for a show.
The Studio Spaces
When it comes to the studio spaces I would like two multi-purpose spaces that can be used not only for TV broadcasts and recordings but also for larger events such as concerts or larger format shows (for example the Anquire roadshow style or Award shows) the reason for two is a bit of future-proofing real as eventually, I would like to be running at least 1 24-hour live broadcast from the project (be that on youtube or the upcoming Freely). Having the two studios would allow us to do two live shows back-to-back without a massive upheaval that needs to be done in a few minutes.
Along with the two studio spaces I’d also like to setup a Virtual production environment too. Virtual Productions is become more and more popular not just with productions on a small budget but all larg hollywood movies too. The basic idea is that you use a green screen or LED backgrouund, cameras with trackers and software, such as unreal engine, to produce the backgrouund in real time based on the camera tracking data. You can then either replace the green screen with the virtual background or use LED walls to show the background in real time. Having a dedicated space for this will mean that we would be able to not only shoot virtual production but teach it too without inturuprting the other two studio spaces. (I’ll be diving deeper into Virtual Production in an upcoming blog post.)
Again I’ll be using the Spa for a reference here, but rather than the theatre, I’m going to use the Royal Hall as a base, in part because I know it well and it has hosted a wide variety of events. I’ll be using the measurements for the full size of the hall 44M wide and 30M deep it’s also 10.3m. This would give us plenty of space even if Jools Holland wanted to come along a do his Holiday Hootanany and use up the whole space with multiple bands.
Each studio space would have a separate control room but all of the audio and video feeds would be fed from a dedicated server/plant room that runs to all areas of the building, not only does this keep all of the noise kits out of the studios and control rooms but is also going to make it easier to do cross-platform simulcast broadcasts.
Radio Studios & Recording Studios
As well as the theatre and studios, I’m also including 2 Radio Studios and 2 Recording Studios. Again, having the two radio studios is for a similar reason to the 2 Studio spaces. I eventually want a 24/7 radio station running and being able to allow the presenters to set up whilst the other broadcast is taking place will make these changes over a lot easier. Each of the radio studios will also have multiple cameras rigged in them so that as well as the audio feed being sent out a video feed can also be sent out to Youtube or else where so listening also have th eoportunity to see their hosts and any guests that are visting.
There will also be two recording studios in the project. The idea behind these is that they can be used as a studio space for Live-Lounge-like sessions for both the radio and TV shows but also can be used to provide live music to the theatre. The spaces can also be individually used just as recording studios.
Who’s running the show?
So here’s the fun part, I know I couldn’t run this as a full-time job not because I wouldn’t have the time as if I had this kind of money I wouldn’t need to work. But I just couldn’t manage a venue of this size, and I’d rather be working on the different projects in the venues. This is where my latest idea comes into play. Partner with local education establishments. They have tons of students who want to learn how to produce shows, create graphics, make films, do accounting, manage businesses etc so let’s give them a full hands-on experience from the off with access to top-of-the-line kit that is used across the industry the lecturers and members of their administration teams to help manage the building and the business.
As a section of the building is already going to be for office space so we can use the extra unused space above the offices for classrooms, computer labs, workshops and the like and produce amazing content on-site from scratch whilst teaching the next generation. Not only would this benefit the project by having a constant group of people that want to work in one of the industries covered it would also provide facilities for the educational institutions with facilities that would be up to and above industry standard to teach their learners in.
Multi-format productions
As I’ve mentioned a couple of times one of the big goal with the project is to be able to hold cross platform events. so for example if we have a concert in one of the studios we should be able to broadcast it not only thorughout the venue but to Youtube and/or TV as well as over the radio at the same time.
To do this all of the equipment used to produce shows or content in each venue will be housed in a centralised location with remote control surfaces and device inputs in each space. all audio and video feeds will also be transferred via various IP standards such as dante for audio of IP 2110 for video. Not only will this reduce the number of different types of cables we will need to run through out the venue but it also means that we can send these feeds to any point in the building and even multiple points at the same time.
In my eyes this is something that should be done in every multi-venue space as it adds a ton of possibilities to the types of events you can produce using the same equipment. Imagine being able to have a festival and broadcasting the best bits live just by tapping in the feed of that venue.
So that’s an overview of the Carnaby Project. As more Ideas come to me or I try and figure out how I would need to set up each venue, I’m sure i’ll write some posts about it in the future. What do you think of this idea? is it completely crazy? Do you think it has the potential? What would you include or change? Do you know of anyone that would help me make this dream a reality? let me know.
Using AI to help me visualise a grand plan I’ve had in my head for years.
I’ve been playing with a few Generative AI tools over the last few weeks to generate images for my blog posts as I don’t always have time to get Photoshop fired up on my aging laptop. having AI tools available to be able to do this is amazing, and to be honest my design pales in comparison to the things that these AI tools can come up with.
This got me thinking, rather than asking Meta.ai, Microsoft CoPiolt, Google Gemini or OpenAI to create a rather simple featured image. Could I get some of my old ideas out of my head and onto “paper” without having to spend weeks crawling inside Blender or Photoshop to show you one of my grand ideas that cost way too much? turns out I can. So I thought I’d share some of the images that the different Generative AIs came up with and tell you all about one of my massive ideas that I don’t think will ever see the life of day.
The Eco-Village
I’ve had an idea in my head for a fair few years now. The basic idea is an eco-village that is laid out circularly with a venue at its centre that has shops built into the lower levers of the venue that are used for the things villages may need daily. There would then be 4 rings of building and land around the venue.
The first two rings would be houses for the villagers. The next ring would be filled with workshops and community spaces for the owners of the shops and the villages to use to work on projects or products for the shops. The final ring would be land used to produce food for the village to make it as self-sustaining as possible.
Each of the buildings on the site would have solar panels, grass roofs and skylights. Ideally, I would also have no roads but still allow cars to get to the properties using an underground road network. As crazy as that may sound I always wondered why there was a tunnel system under the streets that could be used not only for traffic to keep the streets clear for pedestrians, it would also be a great way of getting services to the properties and allow easy access to them if repairs needed to be made rather than digging up the street. Each home would also have a basement linked to the tunnels that would also be used as a garage for any cars or other transport. A bit of a pie-in-the-sky idea but hey it’s a dream scenario right?
With my background in events, of course, the centrepiece of the village is the venue. Not massive by any means but big enough for all of the residents to attend if they want. This would be a multipurpose venue not only covering live shows but also a studio space and a couple of radio studios along with a couple of recording studios.
I’ve always believed that the arts have a huge part to play in helping build a community, though I could be a bit biased considering I’ve been involved in the arts in one form or another for over 20 years. Making it the Center of the village not only gives folks a place to meet and enjoy live entertainment but would solidify the village as the go-to place for artists to live in the UK.
What do you think of my ridiculous idea of building an eco-village with subterranean roads and parking? Is it too madcap to even think about any more? Do you know someone who would be willing to bankroll something like this? Let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
