One Night Only Show

A last gasp of analogue video production?

I was asked to do live video to screen for Brigidine's artistic night "One Night Only".  The hall has two existing projectors with a HDMI input.  An initial reconnoiter established that it was not possible to feed it with anything other than HDMI.

First plan was to feed two analogue cameras into my PC and used VMIX.  There was a power point replay too that could be done by VMIX.  We tried this on Thursday and it had a second or two of delay - far too much!

During rehearsal it became clear that the power point needed to be on its own computer operated by the student.

I then reverted to my old analogue set-up using the AVE-5 mixer and a VGA-composite converter to get the power point in.  On the output Derek loaned me some Blackmagic boxes to convert composite to SDI and SDI to HDMI.  Derek also loaned me a comms system.

We had two cameras.  One on stage left operated by Sky (Student) and one on stage right operated by Tim (Teacher). 

In the end it worked really well.  The only technical hitches were that the output (I think) was 720P and the projectors expected 1080.  Anyway the pictures did not fill the screen.

I was lucky I could still find the bits.  The QUADs that put 4 analoge pictures on one monitor were in a cardboard box waiting for the bin.  The VDA-Composite converter was finally located at the back of the work bench and many of the Coax cables were greasy and dirty from their last use several years ago at Easterfest.

The challenge now is how to do this in the 21st century.