Cutshaw
Moderator
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2004
- Messages
- 7,274
The last fifteen days have been nuts - to the tune of 12-18 hour days. I run the engineering department for a major TV hub based in Indianapolis, with the local station in the hub having a heavy news presence... they're playing a football game here this week, if you haven't heard.
We've got four live stages - field studios basically, that are set up at the SuperBowl numerals in city-center, another in the NFL Experience, another in NFL Village and another in the Domestic Media Compound. The feeds come back via ku-satellite uplinks I build or on fiber optic returns. Beyond that, we built live cams around downtown and have remote-live camera crews wandering on foot in the crowds with some technology that allows us to go live-to-air directly from the camera without the need for satellite, fiber or microwave. If I talked about it much on a public forum, I would lose my job.
We do around 12-hours of live, local coverage everyday during this week. Far more than our competitors and they look to us for what they do next. It's been a helluva lotta work but still fun.
Why am I telling you all of this? Cause three days ago the news director called me and asked if we could move the truck from the powered/fiber location in the Domestic Media Compound to a party on the outskirts of downtown for a party. "****, no. **** you." Was my legitimate initial response. Turns out it is for a Jim McMahon party (I had to ask if he was the McMahon on the J Carson show... only a so-so football fan, here.) I don't give a honey-badger's butt who is there... No!
It's a benefit, he tells me. The Wounded Warrior project with all proceeds going to injured veterans. They want me there to downlink a triple-hop feed from a unit in Afganistan who is in a province bordered on three-sides by Pakistan, then downconvert the video to a consumer level inside for a video cinema screen and PA feed.They don't have the financial resources to rent a satellite production truck with the competition of SuperBowl in town.
"Don't worry about it. I'll make it happen."
The unit was an "agri-business" unit. Farmers?! Well, yeah. Four of 'em from Indiana are some sort of ag-science, teaching Afgans to grow something other than poppies for opium. The other eight members are security-ops for the four farmers! ;-)
I started at 10am, taking apart the compound site, navigating traffic in the leviathan, parking the beast the wrong way on a one-way street for southern satellite exposure, discovering that the control system for the generator starter had failed while the truck was on shorepower and I had to jumper between the battery and starter terminal to make it run, feed mil-spec fiber in four-hundred feet, down-convert from an IRD HD-SDI to HDMI to feed their rental projector and audio to their rental PA. Turns out their consumer gear didn't play nice and I had to pull some of the video switching and audio gear out of the truck, that would normally be used for uplink only, and into the venue to make it work. Ignoring the fact that DVIDS (defense sat system) apparently has trouble figuring out the spec difference between MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video, I finally got it all working about an hour before the actual event feed.
Come 1945, I'm on the phone and talking to an assembled group of servicemen gathered in a tent in Afganistan. It was 0530 in the morning there. The four ag-science officers were in their fifties. The eight sec-ops were like giggly kids in their late teens, early twenties. I found a Mom of one of the sec-ops kids in the venue room, brought her behind the stage and let her talk in private. Well, private from the party anyway. She cried. He cried. I kinda got choked up too.
2000 hours sharp and we began. An emcee asked questions, the party enjoyed the humor in the 12 second delay from audio comm out of Indy, it hit the speakers in the Afgan tent, until we heard it bounce back from Afganistan. With that much delay, you don't even get audio feedback! Before the 30 minutes were up, most of the soldiers cried, half of the party cried and I must've got something in my eye. The party was a mix of celebrity football players and injured veterans. I saw guys with no legs. I saw one guy whose face looks like melted candle wax. The veterans were beautiful, noble men.
I finally got the satellite truck back in position, power restored, satellite reacquired for normal operations and fiber rerun from the stage at 0200.
It was worth every damn minute.
We've got four live stages - field studios basically, that are set up at the SuperBowl numerals in city-center, another in the NFL Experience, another in NFL Village and another in the Domestic Media Compound. The feeds come back via ku-satellite uplinks I build or on fiber optic returns. Beyond that, we built live cams around downtown and have remote-live camera crews wandering on foot in the crowds with some technology that allows us to go live-to-air directly from the camera without the need for satellite, fiber or microwave. If I talked about it much on a public forum, I would lose my job.
We do around 12-hours of live, local coverage everyday during this week. Far more than our competitors and they look to us for what they do next. It's been a helluva lotta work but still fun.
Why am I telling you all of this? Cause three days ago the news director called me and asked if we could move the truck from the powered/fiber location in the Domestic Media Compound to a party on the outskirts of downtown for a party. "****, no. **** you." Was my legitimate initial response. Turns out it is for a Jim McMahon party (I had to ask if he was the McMahon on the J Carson show... only a so-so football fan, here.) I don't give a honey-badger's butt who is there... No!
It's a benefit, he tells me. The Wounded Warrior project with all proceeds going to injured veterans. They want me there to downlink a triple-hop feed from a unit in Afganistan who is in a province bordered on three-sides by Pakistan, then downconvert the video to a consumer level inside for a video cinema screen and PA feed.They don't have the financial resources to rent a satellite production truck with the competition of SuperBowl in town.
"Don't worry about it. I'll make it happen."
The unit was an "agri-business" unit. Farmers?! Well, yeah. Four of 'em from Indiana are some sort of ag-science, teaching Afgans to grow something other than poppies for opium. The other eight members are security-ops for the four farmers! ;-)
I started at 10am, taking apart the compound site, navigating traffic in the leviathan, parking the beast the wrong way on a one-way street for southern satellite exposure, discovering that the control system for the generator starter had failed while the truck was on shorepower and I had to jumper between the battery and starter terminal to make it run, feed mil-spec fiber in four-hundred feet, down-convert from an IRD HD-SDI to HDMI to feed their rental projector and audio to their rental PA. Turns out their consumer gear didn't play nice and I had to pull some of the video switching and audio gear out of the truck, that would normally be used for uplink only, and into the venue to make it work. Ignoring the fact that DVIDS (defense sat system) apparently has trouble figuring out the spec difference between MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video, I finally got it all working about an hour before the actual event feed.
Come 1945, I'm on the phone and talking to an assembled group of servicemen gathered in a tent in Afganistan. It was 0530 in the morning there. The four ag-science officers were in their fifties. The eight sec-ops were like giggly kids in their late teens, early twenties. I found a Mom of one of the sec-ops kids in the venue room, brought her behind the stage and let her talk in private. Well, private from the party anyway. She cried. He cried. I kinda got choked up too.
2000 hours sharp and we began. An emcee asked questions, the party enjoyed the humor in the 12 second delay from audio comm out of Indy, it hit the speakers in the Afgan tent, until we heard it bounce back from Afganistan. With that much delay, you don't even get audio feedback! Before the 30 minutes were up, most of the soldiers cried, half of the party cried and I must've got something in my eye. The party was a mix of celebrity football players and injured veterans. I saw guys with no legs. I saw one guy whose face looks like melted candle wax. The veterans were beautiful, noble men.
I finally got the satellite truck back in position, power restored, satellite reacquired for normal operations and fiber rerun from the stage at 0200.
It was worth every damn minute.
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