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The Right side of the transmission chain – acquisition

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

The right side of the Transmission Chain is at the event itself.  Transmission chain is a term used to describe the route that a signal takes from an event venue to the device on which you are watching an event. As a camera operator the right side of the transmission chain for me is at the event itself.

Belaying

For the IFSC World Cup in Villars this year I was both a camera operator and a belayer. Belaying at a world cup event is an interesting experience because it’s rare to clip and unclip from so many climbers in such a short amount of time. Climbers have a limited time to get up the route. They have six minutes. This means that every 12 minutes or so you’re belaying a new climber as they progress up the wall. It’s a great task for introverts. You observe what the person is doing. When they need rope you’re ready to give it. If they’re struggling you make sure to amortise their fall. When they make it to the top or come back down you help them untie the rope and then you start again.

Camera operating

Aside from this task I was camera operator during the semi-final and final of the climbing competition.  This means that whilst most people were standing in the crowd watching the competition I was on a podium in the middle of the crowd filming the climbers as they progress up the wall.

From here you see the crowd and you see the climbers from a privileged point of view. You can see the climbers and what they are doing comfortably. You’re also more attentive. You’re following their every move, watching as they clip and progress. You see them progress and you hear the commentator and hear the crowd cheering.

When you’re on the “wrong” side of the transmission you’re hearing the international sound and you’re seeing what the vision mixer is seeing but you’re not seeing the event in context. The image below illustrates this.

In television broadcasting you usually have the cameras, an OB van and an SNG truck or fibre connections. These go from the venue to the Network Operating centre. The signal is encoded either for web streaming and sent to the content distribution network or it is sent on to national broadcasters. On that side of the transmission chain you are in an air conditioned office as a passive observer ready to react if there is an issue and waiting for the event to end.

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Prison Architect Game Play videos fill a niche.

Byrichard

I sometimes envy people who produce gameplay videos because the barrier to entry is so low. In theory all you need is a microphone, a gaming PC or console, a capture card and the ability to talk without being asked questions. In essence you are providing an interior monologue whilst staring at a screen and playing a game. Prison Architect Game Play are an example of this trend.

The purpose of this game is to plan and then build a prison. You make sure that you stick within the budget, that the prison is clean and that you make enough money to survive and possibly even thrive. As you build one prison you can then sell it and keep the money to build a new prison.

Some game play videos are interesting because you discover a story at the same time as the person whom you are watching play the game. In other cases you watch people build parks or prisons and you get to live their experiences through the video. It brings us back to our youth when we watched our siblings play computer games. In this case though, the game player can have from two hundred thousand to four million people watch their videos.

On youtube these videos are monetised but I have not researched how much they make but view. I also noticed that if you watch these videos via Chromecast you do not see any of the adverts so I question how they monetise these videos when they are viewed on a television.

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Perm 36 YouTube Video Visit

Byrichard

Last night I watched a video about a visit to Perm36 but it covered just the trip. The video below is far more complete and informative. I am currently reading Gulag by Anne Applebaum, rather than The Gulag Archipelago, like she mentions. I started reading it decades ago but never finished it. I read A day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch in a single day.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgtjgPtGmx0


Reading Gulag, The Gulag Archipelago and other books helps give some context to what Soviet Russia was like. As I read Gulag by Applebaum I get the feeling that Soviet Russia was about enslaving people to make profit for some whilst everyone else suffers. From this perspective what the Soviet Union would morph into, at the end of the Soviet age would make more sense.


I recommend watching this video. It is informative.

The best edit suite is the one you have with you.
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The best edit suite is the one you have with you.

Byrichard

You remember the old saying. The best camera is the one that you have with you. Today the same can be said about “edit suites” that you carry in your trousers or jacket pocket. I’m speaking of edit suites that work with your iphone or ipad. Lumafusion is one such example. 



It differs from other mobile editing solutions in a number of key ways. The first is that it allows you to edit on a timeline with three video sources at once This means that you have more control. It allows you to split audio which allows you to overlap sound from one clip to another and provide a better finish. 


clips in the top left, playout monitor in the top right and timeline in the bottom left and options in the bottom right.


This includes the option to add graphics, idents and other visual content. It allows you to provide a finished product, ready for broadcast or distribution. 


Another nice feature is that you can record your voice over directly to the timeline once the edit is finished. This means that vloggers and people who like to record commentary rather than natural sound, can capture natural sound, and add commentary later. 


I played with this editing solution with footage shot on an iphone SE at a music festival as well as other footage shot on an iPhone 8 Plus. The edit suite was my iphone 8 plus while lying on a couch. 


I like this editing solution because it allows for a high quality turnaround of mobile phone footage for a number of platforms without carrying a laptop. This is ideal for hiking, climbing and other types of video content. It costs 20 CHF so once you’ve spent several hundred on an iphone it’s cheap. ;-). It allows export in h264 as well as h265. 


Caveat


I tried importing greenscreen footage via Google drive from a PMW-200 that had been converted to mp4 but the video codec was not recognised. I have yet to try greenscreen quality. 

Day Twenty-seven of ORCA in Switzerland – River Walking
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Day Twenty-seven of ORCA in Switzerland – River Walking

Byrichard

My shoes are wet and my socks are wet because today I tried river walking. If a child was to do the same it would be called immature and irrational but when an adult does it then it’s adventure, and trying something new.


My motivation to river walk came from the pandemic, or more precisely from how people behave during a pandemic. When I walked yesterday I had a runner pass right by me and then spit on the ground a few meters ahead of where I would have been going. When I walked through the woods yesterday I could hear groups of people so I avoided walking along the same routes.


That’s why I placed both feet, and the shoes they were in, into the river and walked. I didn’t get that far. In fact I was only able to walk a few dozen meters before finding that the river would have required wading. I wasn’t prepared to do that. We’re not in a heatwave yet.


Channels are dug into the rocks


Although you can’t really see it in the image above grooves have been worn into the rock strata. As a result you shouldn’t spend all of your time looking forward because you’ll be caught out. River walking requires you to look at where you’re placing your feet. In the image below you can see these erosion patterns more clearly.


Grooves in the rock
Grooves in the rock


I’ve walked along the routes so much that now I’m starting to get to know the details. Now I know that the river is beautiful and that if you’re willing to get wet you can see some nice features. There are a few places I need to return to, and document through photography.


This morning I was looking through to see if Thru-hiking had started and to see whether people would still try to thru hike any of the main trails in the US and from what I see most people have not started and those that did have postponed their hikes for now.


As a follow up to this I listened to this episode of the Hiking Thru podcast. It’s about Chris Smead going for a lesser known Thru hike with eleven lenses, seventy five batteries and a monopod to document a hike with a group of people. The hike sounds like an interesting experience. It also makes a nice change from listening to so many news and current affairs programs. A moment to dream.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=161&v=dbkE6UbIiAU


I will keep exploring. To a large degree I treated today as if there was no pandemic and that was refreshing. I still washed my hands as soon as I got home. I just didn’t stay cooped up indoors without treating myself. Exploration is a treat.

Social Media Glossy Magazines via Facebook and Twitter

Social Media Glossy Magazines via Facebook and Twitter

Byrichard

Recently I spent time on Twitter and Facebook and I was reminded of that horrible feeling you get when you’re looking for posts and tweets by friends, to interact with, and see crappy adverts instead. Imagine if you walked into a pub or conference and instead of having personal conversations you were harassed by marketers rather than human beings looking for a human connection.


The reason I dumped FaceBook and then Instagram is that I got tired of not only feeling that I wa wasting my time, whilst making myself feel lonelier, but on top of that someone else was making a profit from me being lost in the time wasting corporate social media landscape.


Twitter and People Selling Crap


Most of the stuff that is being sold via Twitter ads is crap now. You look and it’s con men trying to sell cons, from cryptocurrency, to privacy, to other crap. It’s ironic that they would sell this crap in a place where anyone with any decency, would no longer use.


It’s not the Owner, But The Spam


Of course it bother me that Facebook and Twitter are owned anc controlled by immoral people, and I could look beyond that, if I could find pleasant conversations, rather than see ads. What gets to me about social media is that it’s about making money for people that don’t value us as human beings. That’s why I switched to blogging, rather than social media. With blogging I might devote an hour to per day, but rather than make money for people who see me as an addict, I give people a reason to surf to my website. I also get to explore ideas in the process.


A Feeling of Being Used


Several times I have looked through Facebook, Instagram and Twitter timelines but I quickly become demoralised by the ads, the reminders of what my life isn’t and more. It’s not that people are using Facebook and Instagram to converse, they’re using it to broadcast. No one is listening. Everyone is being made invisible by the algorithms, and ignored by those that do see posts. For so little engagement I can write blog posts.


The Apathy of Mastodon


Two days ago noise pollution was making my afternoon hell, and I said so on social media. Rather than empathy though, I found apathy. The beauty of social media is that empathy doesn’t cost anything, whereas apathy can ruin someone’s experience. If we come to social media it’s to find empathy, or at the very least vent, and be ignored.


Networking for Projects


I see people write about using Twitter to make money from the content they create. That’s the wrong attitude. You should be making contacts to work on projects with people, rather than making money from social media. Too many people are utilitarian about social media, which is why it becomes a waste of time for human beings. When everyone is trying to sell, then no one is conversing, and without conversation a blog post would have the same impact, without enriching the wrong people.


A Reminder


I was reminded, while writing this blog post that the reason I became tired with Twitter is that people use it, and the community, rather than participate within it. People are busy promoting themselves and their ideas, without engaging, without investing time in friendships and more. The same people are on Mastodon and the Fediverse.


And Finally


There is a difference between what I want social networks to be, and what others want social networks to be. I will never find social networks that achieve what I want because society labels as social people on the web as addicts, and corporate social media profit from wasting our time in the hope that we will see more ads. I don’t use Facebook for moral reasons. The issue is that it has a monopoly so I am isolated, for not using Facebook.


Today Twitter feels just like Instagram. I know that if I spend too much time on Twitter it will become toxic, so I know I need to moderate how I use it.


Althought the Fediverse is an interesting project I think that the community is still weak. I can go for hours without my timeline refreshing, and when I do engage I am either trolled or ignored.


Some toots did well, but mostly likes and re-shares rather than conversations. What I want to find are conversations.

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