Recording Gear Deployment

[ _ ] Verify all equipment boxes have the correct room name.
[ _ ] Tripod - next to the Recording Desk so you can reach it when sitting at the desk. Don't spend more than 5 min trying to figure out the best place for it or you will go mad and run out of time.

About my tripods - they look nice but are a bit fragile: you can mess up the leg latches if you twist the leg when it isn't latched. So, do this:

only operate lower leg latch when upper is latched. If the upper is unlatched and you operate the lower, the upper leg that should be firm is loose and the tube can twist inside the upper latch and get jammed requiring the latch to be dissembled to get it un stuck. If this happens, there is an Allan wrench in the tripod bag.
to extend legs: unlatch lower, then upper. Pull legs out. Latch upper, then lower.

[ _ ] open camera case when tripod is ready. Remove from case, put on tripod. (tripod shoe stays on the camera.) (Don't put the Camera on a table or anything other than the tripod. If the tripod isn't ready, leave the camera in the case. Same when breaking down: have the case open and ready before you take the camera off the tripod.)
[ _ ] House XLR to input 1 (top) - Input 1 switch on front: Line (not mic.)
[ _ ] Or, if House XLR is broken: hand held mic XLR to input 1 - switch: mic. put mic near a loud speaker and pray.
[ _ ] Input 2 not used, so switch doesn't matter.
[ _ ] back of camera, behind rubber flap: (#12 in image) camera HDMI out to HDMI Black Magic card in video mixer pc (if using a thin magic cable, camera is "source", black magic card is "display" aka "sink".

[ _ ] camera power chain of stuff: camera, battery clip, little wire, barrel plug, battery charger, figure 8 power cord, power strip.
[ _ ] secure HDMI and XLR to camera hand strap with the wire's Velcro.

camera audio settings - side of body behind LCD flap

[ _ ] Ch1 Select: Input 1 - (house audio) - (Left)
[ _ ] Ch2 Select: Internal - (Right) (this uses camera mic for input 2. poor quality, but dependable.)
[ _ ] Input 1/2 Mic power: off/off (phantom power, not needed.) p48 of manual: (Ch2 shows Input 2, set it to Inter)
[ _ ] both gain to 8 (little thumb wheels behind clear plastic, near bottom edge.) turn up to 10 if house sound is week.
[ _ ] plug in head phones to camera (back of camera, behind flap, next to hdmi, #15 above)
[ _ ] turn on camera, (push don't bother setting date/time.
[ _ ] clap - you should see the lower VU meter, if you clap loud enough, it should get into the red.
[ _ ] If house audio is live, have them say hello to you over the PA system. "Hello James!"

Extra cable (network, xlr, power) coil on floor under tripod. Tripod legs make a nice "stay away" zone.

LCD monitor for mixer:

[ _ ] unbox,
[ _ ] assemble stand
[ _ ] put foam back in box
[ _ ] power to power strip
[ _ ] hdmi to video mixer PC video out (or any video out to monitor, HDMI is not important. VGA to be retro.)

Power on video mixer pc

[ _ ] when booted, click Lucky Cat to launch Voctomix gui. (sometimes lucky cat not so lucky and doesn't appear. Ctrl-Alt-T to open a terminal, run voctogui and carry on.

Sound check #2 - look at VU meters on right side of Voctogui

[ _ ] left (Channel 1) is working: levels are very low (nothing or green) when silent. When someone is talking: orange or a little red – lots of red is fine, except hitting the top is really bad (clipping, makes annoying click pop noise that is very distracting. So less red just to be safe. If there is lots of green or anything when it should be silent, this is likely a problem: there is likely hum, buz or something bad. Turning it down is not the right solution. Find the noise and fix it.
[ _ ] right (Channel 2) is working: levels are orange or a little red. This is the mic on the camera. It will pick up all the noise in the room, which isn't great but there is nothing you can do about it. OTOH it is fail safe.
[ _ ] 50’ or 100' Ethernet cable from video mixer pc rj-45 to front of room. excess cable stays in the back, there generally isn't much room up front.

Unbox hdmi2usb Opsis box.

[ _ ] the 4 hdmi port names/locations: output 0, output 1, input 0, input 1, USB (and then 2 Display Ports that are not enabled)
[ _ ] note: on power up, output 1 will send a test pattern. Use this to verify projector the Opsis can make the Projector display something. If this step fails, hooking up a laptop will not help. The Opsis constructs a 720p DVI video signal to send to both Output 0 and 1. If the projector has a problem with that signal, add an HDMI scaler to convert 720p to 1080i or p or whatever the projector is happy with.
[ _ ] note: input0 and 1 – cable end to use here is marked “TV” or "Display", the other end (somewhere else) labelled "source"
[ _ ] note: due to a design flaw, normal cables only work about 1/2 the time, so don't bother. The directional cables work around the design flaw. Something about not needing signal conditioning if the cable is short, turned out to be a bad idea.
[ _ ] note: the SBC code to connect to voctomix changes the settings on the Opsis as it progresses: start, ping remote box, connect to mixer process. This gives the appearance of it going bonkers, which is kinda correct given once it is connected it won't be doing this. If it disconnects, this is its way of crying for help.

plug cables into ports:

[ _ ] output 0 (far side) to venue projector cable
[ _ ] output 1 (next to 0) leave unconnected.
[ _ ] Use “magic cable” (thin, ends labelled “source” and “TV”)
[ _ ] plug end labelled “TV” into input 1 (next to usb), other end (source) lay on podium for presenter's laptop.
[ _ ] USB port will be empty - there is a 5 pin header behind it that is a nicer way to connect the usb to the SBC (stays plugged in, no plug sticking out or being unplugged for packing.)
[ _ ] HDMI out from SBC to small HDMI display. and power. (might already be setup.) (will assemble something around July 9.)
[ _ ] Ethernet cable to SBC (single board computer - likely RasPi4) rjj-45 port (the other end should be plugged into video mixer in back of room)
[ _ ] test pattern should go away, replaced with red/purple/orange (the solid color means: no input detected, here is some color so you know it is connected.)
[ _ ] Plug in a laptop.
[ _ ] confirm presenter's laptop output on:
[ _ ] confidence monitor
[ _ ] projector screen
[ _ ] Gabber feed on video miser (voctogui) screen
[ _ ] Secure Ethernet and other cables (tape where needed)

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