Adam Leonard
Forum Replies Created
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Was revisiting this thread to find some small detail and found this request. Simply twisting the polarizing filter in place a little turned out well and solved the problem. Amazing how the same filter has a different impact at different rotations.
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Well, I talked to the person who set up the studio. He said that essentially, the SDI cable only goes through the Decimator box and then goes straight to the switcher. Everything else is more for after that. I think I was thinking a little too much about “connecting” it to the touchscreen version of the ATEM when I was mapping it out here.
He also says that he has a schematic of the setup that only needs minor updates. I’ll post it here if I get a copy.
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Wish this forum would let me “officially” make this post a reply to both of you at once, but it doesn’t look like I can do that. To answer Chris’ question, the camera is a Canon XF405.
As to Mark’s question: I didn’t set this up myself. Did a lot of tracing cables and here’s that I’ve figured out:
The signal starts with an SDI cable out of the camera. It then goes to Decimator MD-HX cross-converter that’s mostly there to flip the image for lightboard shoots. From there it leaves via both SDI and HDMI cables, which both lead to a Blackmagic physical switcher (an ATEM Television Studio HD) , that I usually ignore in favor of the bigger and more elaborate ATEM Software Control. From there it takes an SDI cable to a BlackMagic HyperDeck Studio Mini. There is an SDI cable going back into the switcher and also an HDMI cable going into what I’m fairly certain is this model of distribution amplifier. From there it takes another HDMI cable to this model of streaming media processor from there, one HDMI cable goes through this model of distribution amplifier, and then back to the switcher and the deck with more HDMI cables. The other goes to an HDMI cable that leads to our confidence monitor. A system is set up that connects a USB port that people stick a thumb drive into with the Extron processor.
I kind of ran out of time for the workday at this point, but I just now discovered that a few of the above things are also connected via Ethernet cable via a router (I’m gonna say the media processor, the switcher, and two computers) and as far as I can tell, that includes the computer running the ATEM software.
It’s really a zoo of cables back there. I started out thinking this would take 15 minutes, and it took most of the work day. About 30 minutes in I started thinking that it might be a good idea to volunteer to make a schematic of the whole thing, but now I dread the thought of doing that and would only do so if I really needed it or completely ran out of other work to do. If you need any more details, I’ll be getting them by asking the person who set it all up.
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Uh, how would I know if I am?
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Thanks for the response. I tried turning the exposure up and it looked…well maybe slightly different, but mostly the same. Like the noise is showing up at different places or something. Even tried turning the exposure up to a ridiculous level and trying adjusting it through different methods and that didn’t fix it.
A weird thing I did confirm is that it depends on what’s been keyed into the background. For these tests, I was wearing a gray shirt with lots of tiny black streaks on it. Had a modest amount of noise when I had the screen keyed to a plain black background, but almost none when I had it keyed to a white spreadsheet with a little bit of black lines and text. Does that mean anything?
For what it’s worth, the pearl-colored buttons on this shirt get noisy with either background.
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Thanks for the answers so far. The same coworker who accidentally stumbled upon the “just adjust the polarizing filter” solution to the glare problem in the previous thread found a YouTube video that recommended the free program f.lux for adjusting the colors/whitebalance of the original computer monitor. Then the big monitor screen had the right white balance, but was too bright. I fixed this by putting th emonitor on “eco” mode, which makes it a lot less bright.
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Update: I was having mixed results with just changing the angle of the monitor, and then someone else working on the project was trying to tighten the polarizing filter and he accidentally discovered that adjusting it even a small amount will greatly reduce the glare. That got it down to almost nothing. Right now we’re thinking about putting a polarizing filter on the monitor to kill off what’s left.
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Yes, I like the idea of just rotating it. Especially because both the monitor and the lightboard are on stands that are on wheels, so tilting them isn’t easy. I’ll try a few things like that and report back when I have the chance.
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The monitor is a live “confidence monitor” that shows the professor how their presentation is looking at that moment. I did a test run of the studio today and also learned that it’s good for knowing things like how close you are to writing past the edge of the area that’s being filmed.
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No, the way it works right now is that the camera directly faces the subject, who is behind the lightboard. The monitor is just to the right of the camera. Students aren’t actually there, this is just for online courses. I can sketch it out in Photoshop or something if it’s still unclear.
I’ll try tilting the monitor when I get back in tomorrow, but I’m not sure if the stand it’s on will allow that or not.