Days to Kickoff: Building a Live Football Broadcast

0:00 Hi, everybody. It is Tuesday Focus Night here on Office Hours. And tonight, my guest is Chris Sabato, who many of the regulars here know well. Chris works in academia, specifically in Albany, Oregon, as a sports professional at the college level. And for several decades, he's been doing, among many other things, Salem Cable's Access Station and their broadcast of Willamette University football. football he's the tech brain behind their very sophisticated streaming operations including what

0:30 chris is going to be focusing on tonight that we're calling 90 days to kick off or how to plan and execute a large public facing yet still budget conscious sports live show you know doing all this without breaking the bank is no easy task and chris is going to talk us through how he approaches kind of doing more with less which is a perfect topic for today for anyone and everyone who is

0:53 asked to do more with less because I think 90% of us has to do that. As always, our Tuesday Focus is a Q&A show. And so if you have a question you want to get in there, here's the QR code I'm tossing up in the bottom of the screen. You can shoot that with a camera or phone or anything else that it's going to take you

1:10 to QR code land. Or you can just type in askofficehours.global. That'll get your questions directly into the second half of the show where Chris and everybody everybody else around here can chat about what you've asked. So all that said, when the questions get in there, Cindy Drozda is going to bring them to us. And I'm going to say hi to Cindy as we move

1:31 into the main part of the show. And I get to say, Chris, it is so good to have you back. How you been? Great. Thanks. I love being here. So it's looking forward to an exciting conversation tonight. And we love having you here because you talk about practical things that people can do. I mean, we don't spend we spend a lot of time on the practical here at office hours, but we also occasionally get into the theoretical stuff.

1:55 And boy, there's nothing more practical than what we're talking about tonight, which is you're given a budget. And I remember you said in the brief that we talked about earlier, in this case, you had like fifty thousand dollars for a season. And they came back to you and said, oops, it's more like 30. You had to kind of put three pounds of sausage into a two pound bag.

2:18 Yeah. Metaphors. We we were we had we were in a situation for several decades where our local cable access station covered our football broadcasts. And they came in and had a big TV truck and it was great. And we kind of fed off each other and and cable the cable industry and what it is now. Now they were, they were struggling and they, they told us that, you know, we can't, we

2:44 can't do this anymore. And so then that to me, that's like, okay, now, now it's on us. Right. And I've got it. And I have to build this broadcast that, that, that we've not, we don't have the equipment for, we've never done on our own before. Um, and I, it like, as I am looking at building all this stuff and I'm like going, I want

3:05 to do this, I don't do this. And we want to do it in a way where we're not, where, where the change. is not less than what it was before right and so they were they were coming in with the with the tv truck and um that's a lot of hardware to bring here that solves a lot of problems just when the

3:22 truck pulls up yep yep and you know they're they're got their big broadcast cameras and their broadcast switchers and all this stuff and replays and and we wanted to not have it be a step down right like like we don't want people who like we've been watching all of a sudden like replicate what they're doing with with the equipment that we can afford and you know and

3:46 so i'm mapping all this out i've got my spreadsheets and i'm doing everything and and i'm like okay this is gonna be about 50 grand is is what i need to do this the way i want to do it and and we got about 30 and it's like okay well let's start taking out that red pen like we can live live without this. We can live without that. Like, and it was, uh, it was, and it was quick

4:11 to, um, you know, 90 days is probably pretty accurate from like when we first found out, like we needed to do it ourselves and I needed to start planning to our first game. It was probably about 90 days. Did you establish priorities upfront? And if so, what were your priorities? I mean, it was at quality of broadcast first and cost third or what kind of, how, where did you

4:33 you think this through from i mean it like i'm gonna start with what i want to do right like and that's where i got to the 50 grand like like i'm looking at what they're doing i want to do similar with with equipment lower level equipment more in line with what we do with some of our other broadcasts but i i didn't want you know they came in with four cameras and replay so i

4:54 want to make sure we have four cameras and replay and and so we kind of start there and and you know as i start mapping things out it's like okay well i you know i want to go remote control these and I want this and that. And, and eventually it gets to the point where, like, like I said, you got, you got to value engineer it, right? Like what can we remove from things? And one of

5:13 the things that we didn't, we didn't get cases. We don't have cases for our cameras because. Oh, interesting. Cause that was just too much. Yeah. Too much non-productive. Cases were going to be five, $500 times four. That's $2,000. Boom. There we go. No cases. Right. You know, we didn't, I was, I was looking at some of the like fancy rain covers that they,

5:33 that they sell the Porter brace sells them and there's some, and it's like, and they were like $600. It's like, okay, well, there's another $2,000 that we're not spending. Right. And, and. Tell me you didn't buy a bunch of hefty bags and just call it a day. Well, pretty close. We, I, I, I know Jeff Keith, he's in the chat and he had turned me on to these,

5:52 these Movo covers that they were, they ended up being like 17 bucks and they're not perfect, but they, but they're also not $400 a case. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. When you got the list initially, how close do you feel like you got to not leaving anything off that really hurt you? How successful were you in getting the thing you envisioned done

6:20 within that new constrained budget? Right. I think we're pretty close. Like, OK, the things that we left off are things that were were probably nice to have things. I mean, the the cases and I can Jeff's rolling his eyes in the chat with that. I have no cases, but I'm not going anywhere. Let me ask you about that, though. Do you have to tear down? Is this something you're this is football.

6:48 So you don't have to tear down. You can leave them in. Well, I mean, I don't. I do have to tear some things down, but I'm not the cameras. You're not leaving the cameras out in the rain, obviously. Yeah, they're just going into a room. They're going into a room in the press box, right? So they're OK. So they're not I'm not moving them.

7:05 I'm not putting them in a truck and going to another venue there. They're in the room in the press box. I take them out of the room and press box and set them up on the tripods like that. Yeah, that seems reasonable other than dust occasionally or something like that. You don't really have any wear and tear there. Yeah. And so it's not it's not as huge of a deal as we did that we don't have cases. But it that was something that like when when it comes down when the season's over and I need to put these away for the season, they're going to end up on a shelf in a closet instead of a case. And that's not ideal. But it is it's one of those things where like that was something that we could give up. And I would rather give up that than sacrifice a camera.

7:40 Now, what about all the incidentals? That must have been really tough, like managing four cameras back to a central hub. Is that the topology here? Are you using wireless? What are you doing? Yeah. So we're half and half. The way we have it set up, the best way that we can cover it in our particular venue is we have a two high camera and a two low camera. And our two high are in the center. And so with the two high, one is our wide sweep and one is our tight follow. And then we have two other cameras on sticks down at either end of the end zone.

8:16 And those the ones that are up in the too high are SDI back to our switcher. And the other ones are we're using a Hollyland Cosmos C2 wireless system to send those SDI feeds back. Now, football field is big. What kind of lensing is are you able to get to? And do you have any constraints in terms of those? Yeah. So fortunately, like we are not a big school.

8:44 And so our stadium is not ginormous. And so we're not that far, right? Like the cameras in the end zone are literally four feet from the end zone. And so they're close. And so we're using the Panasonic CX370s, which are just the, they're just ENG style cameras. And I think it's a 20X lens is what they come with. And I have not I have not seen anything where it's like, oh, these are just really too.

9:11 I just don't get enough reach on them. So so they've been they've been great for us. And yeah. What do you do about that now? You're obviously covering offense and defense. Do you split cameras in terms of watching a play unfold from there or do you keep one wide for. Well, the flow of the play that this is one of the things that I that I really struggle with.

9:31 right because okay when we do basketball we've got we've 25 basketball games a year and so like the first couple i can kind of get my gears and get organized and with football it's after five we're done right so it's like i don't have time for like season yeah so i don't really have a lot of time to really get comfortable with anything and so um i've got all new camera people and you know we

9:55 We have we don't you know, one of the things that we don't have budget for is like review sessions and in-depth training. And so it's we the camera people get there an hour before the game and we spend about 15, 20 minutes just kind of like reiterating, you know, when you're you're the low camera behind the play, your responsibility, you know, on kick on a punt.

10:20 Your responsibility is the punter and a kick field goal. Your responsibility is a kicker. make sure nothing happens to them once you're sure nothing's going to happen to them then you can go find other things and and kind of just running through some of those scenarios and it's it's one of those things where like i i keep running into like i don't have enough cameras

10:37 right like i want you to do this and i want you to just wait you can't do both of those at the same time like i need another camera in there and so that's always a struggle is trying to figure out what the flow is and what cameras are doing what when and and um me understanding that it what that is and then being able to convey that to our camera people that like this is your

10:57 responsibility in this particular situation and we don't always have you know i said like these are all we have all new camera people i don't think yeah i was gonna ask you about that that seems to be the hardest thing of all man do you have like a rotating people or are they at least a fixed crew who they will get better over the course of multiple games i i've been lucky that i've had

11:18 on all the brothers been there's been three people that have been on all the broadcasts so far we're through four so far and so then so yeah so they are getting better each game they get a little better um and it's like they're all first years so hopefully they'll be back again next year and they'll be even better next year and um you know we can get some other people and kind of intertwine

11:38 them and um but yeah it's one critical piece of that is obviously comms and things like that what's your solution for talking to your camera operators and everybody so for for comms we are are using an HME wireless comm system that is actually an old system from our football coaches. It's last year, maybe it was three years ago, our AD like walked into my office with two Pelican,

12:05 three Pelican cases. He's like, here, you want these? Like I was cleaning out, I was cleaning out the football stadium and I found these. I was like, well, let's open these up. And it's like, Like, what the heck? I'll see how they, they're old. They're, you know, they're way into service. And, but I plugged them all in. The batteries work. They're, I mean, HME is ClearCom.

12:23 So it's high end, higher end stuff, right? It's in, so it works. And that's what we've been doing. We've had no issues. I think my first Com package was a ClearCom manual wired with XLR cables. But I think it was 20 years old. And I've been through two owners before I got it. And it worked like a truck for the 10 years I had it.

12:44 So it's not as convenient as having wireless everything, but they sure do sound great. So talk to me a little bit about you're getting close to the first game. What were you most concerned about and how did things go on first kickoff time? time i we were i was still wiring camera putting cameras together about a week out yeah and i was

13:10 i was you know one of the one of the things that just kind of threw me for a loop is um is the panasonic cameras uh the the connector is not a standard dc i mean it is a standard but But it's not the same as like every other like 12-volt thing you buy that all have the same ends on it. So it has one of the standards.

13:36 Right. It is a standard, but it's not the one that everyone else uses, right? And I was just planning on because what I end up doing for my camera rigs is we're splitting off 12 volts. So 12-volt power the camera. 12-volt can power our wireless transmitters. that kind of stuff and so I was just planning to like plug and play and I got these and I was like

14:01 this does not work and so then it's trying to figure out then it took it took me probably about a week of scouring the internet and reddit and using AI to figure out like oh my god you were looking for pinouts of old gear well no it's really it's like what standard is this like what oh okay what plug is this because I need to order one but I don't know which one to order and and

14:21 And so I ended up, I found one on Mouser and I found one on Amazon and I ordered four from each place. And I'm like, I hope one of these is right. And they ended up working and we got them in and it all worked out in the end. But I was kind of sweating a little bit there with about a week to go.

14:40 So tell me a little bit about, we've talked about your planning. It was obviously a very intense process to get this going. How many people are on the crew, first of all? How many total people do you have involved in this? Six. So there'll be a director. I mean, in my parlance, the director is everything, right? The director is also your A1, your V1, your TD, your producer, your replay.

15:04 Person in charge of signal getting from. Yeah. And then we have four camera operators and one play-by-play person. Wow, that must be interesting. And so there's no A1. on you're you're having to do all the audio all the video literally just keeping track of everything yep yep and that's it's you know that's kind of the the nature of the level we're at and

15:32 that's not not terribly uncommon but it also means that you know sometimes my eyes are bigger than my stomach right like like i have these ideas of things i want to do in a broadcast but when one actually comes down to it, actually executing that while I'm doing replay and managing audio. And, you know, like some things get left behind. Well, but in these days of, you know, once upon

15:55 a time, I remember that I had six people on virtually every crew I went out with and all of them had areas of responsibility and they didn't move outside of that. But now I look around and you've got two people and they have to each do, you know, four of the things that the six people did before so that there's overlap in case somebody new has to come in.

16:13 It just seems like a different environment. What do you think about the quality of the people that you have coming in who are young to hold these jobs down? Do they have decent foundations in things like sports coverage or things like that? Or are you just taking people who are literally coming up off the street and you have to teach them everything?

16:36 Yeah, that's it. And it's not. They're not interested in the most people. Most of my student workers are not particularly interested in like, I want to do this in the real world. Right. It is there. It is a student. It is a work study job. They need a paycheck while they're going to college. And this is the one that was most interesting to them. Right. Okay.

16:58 That makes sense. You know, and so, you know, they'll come and they'll do. And I've had some people that ended up being pretty good and they learned and were interested and were engaged and try to get better. And I've had others where they just weren't in. They wanted to come up and run a camera, collect a paycheck, and go home. And that's kind of the nature of the beast, and that's what you get.

17:20 So you said you're four games into the season now, and you've got a total of five, so you've got one more game to go. We've got one more game to go, yep. Now that you've been through four of these cycles of putting the game on, one more to learn from, what is at the top of your list for next year? Are you going to try to revamp stuff or practices or what's turned out to be important in your brain as the after action report from this season?

17:46 I think it's one of the things where I struggle with all this stuff is I'm an engineer. And so I like I like I EIC is kind of what like I like building it. I like plugging everything in. And then when it comes to the actual production, I can push all the buttons. But where we struggle a little bit, and part of it is because I'm not great at it.

18:13 Part of it is because I don't have the time for it, is storytelling. And storytelling in sports is a big thing at the high level. And that's not something that we're just really great at. And a lot of it's time. You can't tell a good story unless you have time to research a story and to lay out a plan and stuff like that.

18:31 And so always being able to fine tune some of that stuff. And, you know, our play by play person is great. And sometimes he has ideas. And sometimes it ends up being where he has his like run of not really run a show is doing a lot of work there. He has an idea of what he's talking. He's going to cover during a broadcast. And it doesn't always align with what I think is going to happen. And because, you know, we don't have production meetings, we don't have time for any of that. We don't like so like being able to kind of sync some of that stuff up, I think is one of the things that I'd really like to do a better job of.

19:10 It sounds like you're having a little bit of a crunch between being reactive, which you have to do because you're going to sit on the seat and make this thing happen now, and being proactive in terms of let's plot out where we want it to go. Am I reasonably accurate in saying that's kind of one of your pain points? Yep. Yep. No, it is.

19:31 For many of our broadcasts, I have not thought anything about the broadcast until 30 seconds before. It's like, all right, we're going. Right? Right. And it's just and it's reactive and it's and it's it's the basics of of the visuals and not not much storytelling. You know, it's interesting you say that because I've been involved in a couple of things recently where I went in.

19:53 The audio book thing that I'm doing was one of them. I went in with a lot of preconceptions about how I thought it was going to work. And boy, when I got there, I realized that 50 percent of what I thought through in advance of my doing, it turned out to be completely unimportant. and things that I never considered turned out to be hugely important.

20:10 And I'm wondering if you've had the same kind of feeling about this. It's kind of reinforcing my thing that no matter how much you try to psychologically or mentally plan for things, that plan doesn't really survive the first couple of games when you go, oh, man, I spent all this time on that thing and it wasn't important at all. But these other three things are critical.

20:33 Have you had that kind of experience with this? Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. Like one of the things I like, I've, uh, we've built some custom data driven graphics and, and it's one of those things where it's like, we, I have the data, so we should use it. Right. And, and, but actually like getting that into the broadcast becomes harder. And, um, you know, I've got this sweet graphic, that's like this ball control graphic that compares two teams.

20:56 And, and it's just, it, it, without, without storytelling, you don't really like, I'm just just kind of sticking it in there. You know, it kind of seems out of place and or because I'm sticking in there because I want to use it, not because it fits. And so I struggle with that sometimes. It's like, OK, well, I spent a lot of time on this and so I want to use it because I

21:16 spent a lot of time on it, not because it's actually needed. That seems so real to me. I'll tell you a very quick story. I was doing a commercial for our local baseball team, the pro team, the Diamondbacks in Arizona. And I thought I had one of the ballplayers and he was going to come out and do this thing for the big sponsor. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to get a jib

21:34 and we're going to set up the jib on the baseline and he's going to come out and he's going to do his thing with the background and I'm going to have this great sweeping pan shot. And he got out there and he was way overbooked, had like three minutes. And I remember I had to say the worst words I ever had to say, which was lock it down. I don't have time to do anything. I could

21:58 Could have brought the cheapest tripod in the world. I would have had exactly the same shot I ended up with because all of my thinking just went out the window in terms of facing the reality of what I had to face. So, yeah, we're going to, you know, that's just that's sports is like that sports. You make all the plans in the world.

22:14 Then what happens on the field happens on the field. And you've got to be flexible and reactive and get it done. Let's get into our questions. That's the most fun of this show as always. And we have a solid group of questions backed up. So I'm turning it over to Cindy. Cindy Drozda, dive in for question one. And while Cindy is doing that, I'm going to punch the button on my little thing here so that the QR code comes up.

22:35 If you don't have a question in, use that, and you will find Cindy reading out your questions just like she's going to do with this first one. Cindy? And our first one is from Guy Cochran in Seattle, Washington. So what if you would have got 100K? What would you have done differently? Robotic everything. Tell us. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously I would buy cases.

22:57 I would buy proper rain gear, like all the things that got cut out. Like one of the things that I had originally wanted, but, but didn't get was a, was an, was an RCP panel so that I could remotely shade the cameras. I ended up actually building something that kind of does that. So it turned out all right without it. But having one of those, if I could have our lower cameras hardwired so that, so that I'm not relying on wireless.

23:23 so um probably running fiber to various places um the the comms stuff has actually worked fine but i was really nervous about that i originally wanted to use use dante belt packs um that's what we use in in our other venues um so if i had if i had about a hundred thousand dollars i'd be able to i'd be able to do that and make sure all the the the comms and stuff were were dante belt packs

23:48 And probably probably one or two more cameras. So you're not saying it would have been too hard to get up to one hundred thousand dollars. No, no, no. Like that's like I like we we have we have a rights deal with Flow Sports. And so our broadcast all go on to on to Flow Sports and they're all their places and their apps and their website and everything like that.

24:16 that. And they pay us for that. And it's great. It is. It's one of those things where in small college athletics, it's a lot of money. But in broadcast terms, it's not a lot of money. And like trying to like like when we were going through this process, like, you know, talking to my boss and I was like, I could spend every dollar of that today in 10 minutes. I could

24:37 walk down and spend it all. And our broadcast would not be noticeably different because this stuff is just so expensive right it's like it would it would it would be easy to get to a hundred thousand dollars and not be extravagant you i mean at a hundred thousand dollars you you're probably if you look at what we do now spending a hundred thousand dollars for that project it it doesn't

25:03 look extravagant but you're not wanting right it is it you would get everything you wanted and um you know you're not getting you know grass valley switchers and grass valley cameras and and all that stuff. But you could do a lot with the $100,000. Yeah. I wonder a little bit too, because I'll never forget, I had a friend who has a government

25:24 broadcast job and they do a lot of big things. And I remember the first time I walked in there to do voiceovers in that studio, I looked down and said, oh, great, you have a TASCAM ADAT machine and you're going to have eight channels of record audio. And then six years later, I was still doing voiceover from, I remember asking, have you ever turned that on? They said, no. It was just one of

25:44 those things that it had been great on the spec sheet and they really did honestly, legitimately think they were going to use it for recording multi-channel audio and then just never did. That's not how the thing shaped up. Let's move to the next question. Danny Campbell is in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Danny used the QR code to ask, Ask what happens when Chris Sabato leaves Willamette and someone else has to run the show?

26:11 Ah, succession planning. Have you given any thought to that, Chris? I have. I've thought about it in ways where when I a lot of times I build things that are like I understand. Right. And no one's going to come in and understand them. It's just like there's things that I've built for me and they fit in my particular workflow and no one's going to come in and do that.

26:39 And so I've been trying to do some things in a way that like that aren't specific to me. But it is it's hard. Right. Like I am. I'm a one a one man show. And in order to do that, I need to do things that are like specific to me and and specific to like how I can accomplish that. that, right? Like I have workflows that I use that would not translate to sitting in, you know,

27:07 a big TV truck, right? Like it is things that if I said, well, this is how I do it, they'd be like, well, that's the wrong way. And I, you know, it's like for you, but for me, it's not because I am so constrained. There's things that I need to do that are not standard. And, you know, I just, that's what I need to do to get them done.

27:29 Can you do much documentation of the system as it stands now? Or how much time do you devote to writing things down so that somebody else could step in if you were, God forbid, sick? No, no, because I don't have time for it, right? It's one of those things where it's like, we can either do it or we can document it. We can't do both.

27:49 Yeah, I hear you. I hear you loud and clear. And that is, I can't tell you the number of shops I've walked into and you go, well, do Do you have anything that tells me how to do it? No. I'll tell you once. You have to kind of get it and move on from there. All right, let's go to the next question.

28:03 Next up, we have Paul Valhus in Austin, Texas, asking, Chris, football season is here. What is your audio, video, and software setup like for your small Northwest college, and how does it compare to the big boys? How do you characterize it? You know, you're working on a different level, and God knows, NFL and the big boys have unbelievable technology and support and everything else.

28:27 So nobody gets there except them. Yeah, I mean, we're we're small potatoes in the whole sports industry. Right. And, you know, we're like I said, we we've built my my cameras are built on the Panasonic CX370. Let's see. And so that's that's this doodad right here. And I build them kind of on rails. And actually, let me. So this is the camera right here.

29:05 And it's like I've built it with these. I don't know. Alex would call them convenience panels, right? And so because I'm dealing with students, right? And I don't want a student plugging and unplugging a cable from the camera because if that connector goes bad, the camera's gone. Oh, yeah. If they don't understand how to do the quarter turn to the left on a BNC, they might just try to pull it out like it's an RCA cable and then you're done.

29:36 Yep. And so we've got these little boxes and there's all the cables from the camera go into that little box. And then we just any cable that gets plugged and unplugged from the camera goes into that box. And so if something breaks, I can just replace that piece. And anything that's plugged into the camera, it just stays plugged in and it doesn't get unplugged.

30:00 And it's just that way all the time. So big lesson there for anybody who's kind of getting into this. You know, think about what the failure points are ahead of time. And if you can fix it before it becomes a failure point, you're way ahead of the game. Let's go to the next question. Another one from the QR code. Juan in Sparks, Nevada is asking,

30:21 in some of your previous posts on X, you showed yourself working and running a production from home. How do you connect to your office equipment from home? Big fan of the work you do. Oh, that's nice. Remy, so remote broadcast and stuff like that. What's your side? I know. Okay, Remy-ish. Yeah, and it's, I call it, it's locally hosted cloud production. which is kind of counterintuitive.

30:47 I can't do it for, I mean, I guess I could. What I'm doing is setting up a cloud production on the Willamette network. And so I set everything up on Willamette's network. And then I can use Willamette's VPN or Tailscale to get into the network. And once I have access to the network, I have access to vMix and Companion and I can do all the things.

31:15 And so it's one of those things where I am, because I'm not a, like, I'm not going places. I'm not, like, our football games are always at our football stadium and our basketball games are always at our basketball. Like, we're not going other places to do those. And so I have the luxury of, I have all the infrastructure. Like, it is a home game advantage, right?

31:39 This is my home. All my infrastructure is there. It's all on our network. and if it's on our network, then I can access it via VPN. And that is something that only, really only happens for baseball. And that's because for us, baseball is set up in a way where it's always set up. The cameras are permanently installed. Everything's set up. Everything's on.

32:03 I can just remote in and turn those on. So you can just turn on coverage for a baseball game. For baseball, yeah. Yeah, but that doesn't work for the football games. Or do you cover soccer and field hockey? Yep, it's the same thing. For all those other things, I've got to take a camera and physically install a camera on a tripod. I have to bring something somewhere.

32:23 I've got to plug something in somewhere. And so that is something where I could, if I had two of me, one of me could do all that while me at home remoted in and did the directing. I could do that. But the real the real the hurdle with that for a lot of our productions is I physically need to be there to set things up.

32:46 And that's one of those that's one of those cases where, you know, the student work I have is not for most of our productions are not at a level where I can just be like, here you go. And so you're that Elon. Chris needs a humanoid robot that he can plug into his neural cortex and it'll do everything he does. Good luck with that.

33:09 Next question. here's one from Courtney Gooden in Hollywood California Chris what are you using for sideline or field action sounds mics on end zone cameras always an excellent question because Courtney I like a lot of the professionals who hang out around here always thinks of how do I get sound covered kind of first almost in front of the visual stuff so Chris what's the deal so

33:33 So this is probably one of those things where I wish I could do more. Right now, we're basically, we just have one kind of ambient mic that is above the crowd. And so we're getting crowd noise. I'm not getting the pops of the pads. I have the ability to bring in the sound from the cameras. but I don't have a budget for mics for those cameras

34:03 so it's just the onboard mics and I played with it and just kind of like let's see if I can just kind of like put a little bit in there and it's just it wasn't good right and so it's one of those things where it's better to not have it than to have bad audio and so that's something where like where when you talk about like what would you do with a thousand dollars

34:20 well if I had a thousand dollars or a hundred thousand dollars like having parabolic mics on each one of those cameras Parabolics and runners yeah Yeah, let's get the line of scrimmage, Clash of the Titans sound. Yeah, nice. Next question. Coming in from Seattle, Washington, Guy Cochran is asking, what is that shoulder rig and rail system? There you go. You were just showing it off.

34:43 Can you give us a little tour of what you, and the why of what you put on it? So let's see if I can, you can look at this one. And so this is one side. So it's just like really all it is, is this it's a CX370. And this is one of the down cameras. And so this is one of the cameras that's wireless.

35:07 And so the transmitter right in the middle at the top of the camera, that is the Hollyland. And so that's our that's our SDI. and the one out in front is actually a Wi-Fi LoRa, which is a Wi-Fi standard for really long distance and low bandwidth. And what that allows me to do is give remote control access to this camera over Wi-Fi.

35:38 And so I could just plug in a regular Wi-Fi connector, but in a football stadium like i don't need all that bandwidth for remote control um it's just it's just it's just low low low low data right and so with low data i can switch to this low raw connection and that gives me the ability to i think it's nine nine hundred feet something

36:03 like that is the is the wireless range of those those low row wi-fi connectors and it's it is not It's nothing proprietary. It's Wi-Fi. It is just a different spec of Wi-Fi that goes much farther. And I think the bandwidth is like six megabits or something like that. So it's really low. But for text, basically text back and forth for camera controls, it works perfect.

36:24 And so that gives us the ability to remotely shade the cameras. I saw the 20X fixed lens. That doesn't have an extender or anything on it. Does it clear it out 20? Yeah, it is. It is. It's the, it's, it's pretty good. Right. It's like, I've not, I've not seen any issues where I was like, this lens just isn't, isn't, isn't good enough for, for me. And you can see in the, in the breakout box,

36:49 we've got, you know, I'm bringing in a power con connector. And that's the only thing that they get, get plugged into these cameras is the power and from the power supplies at the base and shore power or you're running off on batteries. or something yeah so i'm not running off of batteries and again that is one of the benefits of like this is our place right like this is our venue i can i can put the cameras in places where

37:12 i know have i have power i can get power to the places where i need power all the time right and so i'm not messing with batteries if i don't have to yeah good and so that's yeah yeah so the down cameras are literally just power that's that's all uh that's all that's getting plugged in is power and then that power splits off into power the wireless transmitter,

37:36 to power the back monitor, to power the LoRa connector. And it may be rigged differently, but all four cameras are that same configuration, basically. Yeah, they're all exactly the same except for the wireless stuff. The two down cameras have the two wireless. The up cameras don't need it because there's just a network port and they just plug right into that. And so the other part of that is that once a guy learns the camera or the young lady learns the camera that they're going to be shooting with, they can move to any position and know what they're doing.

38:07 Yep. Yep. And that is. Yeah. So that so that's another kind of decision that we made when we were going through this whole process. is right i like currently we have two other rigs like this they're both jvc two different jvc models and um it it was one of those things where like i probably could have like if i was really strapped

38:29 i could have only gotten three new cameras and used one of our existing cameras but now but now i've got i have cameras that don't match they're not the same manufacturer they're not the same configuration and so this was one of those things where it's like from to me that was important that we start with a clean slate where all the cameras all match everything is the same on all of them

38:51 well particularly if you can't shade anything that you know one difference in light gathering means that shot three is always going to look different than everything else that's one of those things that i know annoys somebody like you who wants to do the highest quality production yeah well and and one of the other things in is that jeff has kind of commented on this too is that

39:09 And in the question, these aren't shoulder mounted rigs. They're not. They're fixed on tripods or some sort of mounting all the time. They are always on tripods. And one of the reasons is I don't have people that I can give a camera to and they can walk around and have a steady shot with a tripod. These are our first game. Four of our people had never operated a camera before.

39:36 I can't give someone like that a shoulder mounted rig. and expect any decent thing coming. Did you have to do camera 101 and say, this is a pan, this is a tilt, this is zoom? I did, but it lasted about 15 minutes, right? It's like here, we have LAN controllers, and I was like, okay, this side, push the button, this side it zooms in, push the button,

39:57 this side it zooms out. I was like, the most important thing, this is the lock on the tripod head. When your hands aren't on the camera, that needs to be locked. Most important thing. and then they didn't have to balance their own camera yeah yeah and and yeah and so that so jeff is commenting in in uh the chat is it's like why aren't they why are they on tripods if

40:19 why aren't they handheld and right it's because because i can't i don't have kids i don't have people who can do that right i just don't it's not yeah this is this is your real world out there It's the next question. Paul Valhus is up next in Austin, Texas. A live stream glitches and chat loves it. Is imperfection the last thing AI can't fake convincingly or just its next feature?

40:46 I mean, AI can can can is pretty good at faking glitches and things. Yeah. Yeah, AI, there's nothing like, I love AI and use it all the time, but it definitely can have some imperfections. That's just, it's a huge subject. And I would, let's not go too far down that rabbit hole tonight. But do you see things that you know you can use and grab a hold of in the world of our new AI realities?

41:16 I guess what I'm asking is in the little things that you try to fix or whatever, vibe coding, things like that, how much of that's creeping into this very realistic on the ground wired world endeavor that you got going on yeah i i mean a everyone who's followed me knows that i am always tinkering doing something building something with ai and um now i've got it i've actually got a pile of these

41:39 little things on my desk right here these are just these are little esp32 devices um I had built a, I had written a Python program to extract data from our scoreboards. And it worked and it was fine. But then I found out about these things and I was like, oh, if I could, if I could run it on these things, then I don't have to run it on my streaming computer.

42:05 It frees up resources. Like it would just be simpler. And so with AI, I was just, I literally said, hey, here's this thing I wrote. can we make it run in this other thing and it was like sure let's do that and we did it and i i put it and this is these are this is on my desk right now number four and five of the ones i've built

42:25 and um these essentially for me replace a 1500 piece of hardware from daktronics and so for uh 200 bucks i've got five of them um and so tell me how they interact with this is scoreboard management? Yeah. So all the score, they get the data, the clock and the score and down in distance and all that stuff. And there's, they plug into the back of the controller for that. And there's

42:54 a serial feed that comes out of it. And none of these. And so you don't need another set of hands logging all this data, which is critical to the game and changes constantly during it. You just get a feed and there it is. You're leaving it to the refs to get it right on the the scoreboard and then you're getting that and broadcasting it yep yep absolutely yeah yeah

43:15 between that and um you know i i mentioned earlier that we i had originally wanted some rcps to remotely control um the cameras and i didn't get this done for our first two games but um i built this um with ai and it just it kind of looks like an rcp and it kind of looks like you you're a little shading station right there and what this allows me to do is uh remotely

43:44 tweak camera settings um and you know and for most of our stuff is most of our stuff is auto right it's like it's in auto because again i don't have anyone who can manually focus cloud comes over something has to adjust there you are you don't have somebody to to do it. I don't have someone to do it or know how to do it. Right. And so what this allows me

44:08 to do is just kind of tweak some of those audio settings and like, and really what I used it the most, I used it the first time this past weekend and really what it was, it's just kind of tweaking the exposure compensation a little bit. And it's just like, because it's all it's, it's, it said auto, but it just needs to get tweaked a little plus or minus here and there. And, and that allows

44:25 me, it allowed me to quickly do that. And I just reach over, I got a touchscreen laptop and just and make that setting change. And that saved me $5,000. A pretty good deal there. Let's go to the next question. This one is from Guy Cochran in Seattle, Washington. What is the software switcher and what does it run on? Oh, what are you using to actually cut the show?

44:48 So we use, for all our stuff, we use vMix. And there's the setup right there. um this is running on a uh puget systems uh custom rack um rack mounted computer it is uh it's a second puget system that we've purchased their stuff is great like it's just it's it's high end it's it's really nice stuff um it got expensive this year um seems like a lot of

45:23 of equipment got expensive this last year. Yeah. And so we had bought, we had bought one last year and this one is the same price, but not as good as the one we bought last year. And so that was kind of like same money, less capability. Yeah. Yeah. Memory and stuff like that. Yeah. It's, it's, I haven't had any issues. It's been rock solid for what we've been doing with, you know,

45:45 four channels of replay and, um, five total cameras bringing in graphics and everything. thing and it's it's it's been it's been rock solid but it was like that was a when we look at like the cost breakdown of what we spent for this football production the there's five big ticket items like four of them are cameras and one of them is vmix and right there word like word about

46:15 about $27,000, right? So like that is most of the budget. It's just the cameras. Three grand for everything else. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, that's that. Well, we've all, most of us have been there at some point or another. Let's go to the next question. And this one's kind of a follow-up on that last one from me, Cindy Droza in Erie, Colorado. I've heard that you use vMix in your sports broadcasts.

46:39 Would you please show us how you use it? Oh, you want to do a little demo? Are you set up for that? I can't do a demo because I turn off all my monitors when I leave. And so I can't remote into them. But I can kind of maybe zoom in a little bit. And this is my this is my general setup, my vMix setup, where the top right is where I have the primary vMix program.

47:04 I'll also have my I have an XR18 as my audio mixer. And so the XR edit software will be in that top right screen. On the bottom right is the replay interface. And then the two left screens are my multi-views where the bottom one is my primary. That's kind of what I'm looking at. It's my preview program, my four cameras in the middle.

47:26 And then we have a booth camera. And then on that sixth slot is a live look in. So what I like to do is if we've got other games going on in the conference, I like to bring in those games. And so like when we come in and out of commercials, we can I'll show a quad view of the you can see it there are our game.

47:51 Fancy. Yeah, our game is the one that has their this because this is before. So the other games hadn't started yet. But those other those those three boxes and that little quad view down there would be three other games going on. And so we can kind of see what's happening in the conference and the top. That's great. Yeah. The top screen is that's more kind of informational type stuff that you can see all the graphics.

48:14 And that's just so I can quickly look up and verify like, yeah, that graphic is getting the correct data. That graphic looks right. The the the black screen in the corner there, that top quad is our data processor. processor. And so I can quickly look up and make sure that that is actually running. That's getting the right data from the right place. It's still operational. And then the other video feed

48:41 in that one is my replay. And so because I am the TD and the replay operator. You're the replay operator. Hey, talk us a little bit about that. How do you store and how far back do you store and how do you call up a replay? Yeah. So with vMix, it's a continuous recording. And so So I can always go back and find a shot if I need to.

49:02 We're capturing four channels of replay. I am using, I originally, I had bought a contour shuttle. Okay, the control ball kind of thing. With the intention of using that. But I also bought the Stream Deck XL Plus. and when I started tinkering with this I was like this is actually I think this is actually going to be better and so what I use for this and you can you might be able to see on on my

49:37 on the far right of my little screens there there's an in and out yeah and so basically when I push the knob below in that sets my in point when I push the knob below out that sets That's my out point. And if I rotate, it adjusts the in and the out. And so for football, in most of our sports, when I'm doing replay,

50:00 it is I'm hitting a budding and capturing a replay that ends when I hit that button. So basically, like I've hit the button. I want the replay to start five seconds before I hit that button. And so I'm capturing the replay at the end and going back. And that's mostly play-based so that you're doing it right as the play starts in case you have to replay it?

50:21 Well, for other sports, it is because it's ongoing, right? Like during a basketball, I don't know when a play's going to start. That's right, yeah. Right? And if you have a replay operator, Turnovers, but outside of that, yeah. Yeah, if you have an actual replay operator, they can just be like in, in, in, in, in, in, oh, here we go, and make some adjustments.

50:38 But if you're on your own, it needs to be quick. And I can't do that. And football is different because it is so formulaic, right? Right. First down, second down, third down. We know what's happening. Everything stops and a new play is going to start. And so in and outs for football makes it makes it a little easier to work that way.

50:59 And so, you know, what I'll do is I, you know, I'm I've got a thumb on the in button and my right thumb is on is the in and out for replay. My left thumb is what is setting the cameras. The red's my program. Green's my preview bus. and the yellow across the bottom is which camera is going to be sent to replay.

51:23 And so my left hand is doing camera selections. My right hand is doing replay in and out. And so it's play starts in, play ends out. I just peek up and give it a little twist for the in, a little twist for the out just to make sure that I'm in the right spot. I'm not being like it's quick. It's just to make sure that I'm actually in the right spot.

51:46 And then I hit the play button that sends it to replay. play and so we can i can send a replay out you know within within a couple seconds of the the play being done and how much talking you've got the live play by people so you're telling them i've got this coming up and that kind of thing and no well no and that is that is kind of you

52:07 know one of the you know gaps in storytelling that we have like they generally our play that person has been around long enough to understand that if something happens we're going to show a replay immediately after. And we probably show more replays than we need to, but that's what we do. If we've got time, we're going to show a replay. Well, that helps the pace of football

52:25 because you're right. When a play is called the whistle blows, it's dead until they set up for the next one. So you've got to cover that with something going on for the audience. And so replay is perfect solution, it seems to me. Yeah. All right. Let's continue on. Next question. We actually still have like six questions to go. Guy Cochran is back with us in Seattle, Washington.

52:47 If remote, how is the latency and quality of the picture? Is there a quality slider to adjust? Oh, what are you sending out, Chris? Now, for me, if I'm remotely doing stuff, it's through Splashtop. And so I'm Splashtopped in, and the latency is good, right? Like, it's fine. Assuming the network on where I'm remotely at is good, then latency is fine. All right.

53:15 Next question. Next up is from Kenny Hampton in Greenville, Illinois. Chris, what all-in-one PTZ cameras do you use when not using your camera rigs? What video output do you use for those? Do you do a lot of work with PTZs and other sports areas? Not a lot. We have one PTZ camera, and one of our cameras at baseball is a PTZ camera,

53:41 and that gives me the ability to remote in. um we have at baseball we have a bolin um one of their exu series so it was i mean it was a seven thousand dollar camera but it is it is waterproof it is one of the things that kind of yeah they convinced me is that i was watching some some reviews and some demos and there was a

54:02 guy in a parking lot and had the had the camera on a tripod and he's just standing there parking parking lot with a hose on the just on the camera and i'm like okay all right if it's going to survive that then it will survive the pacific northwest right yeah i was gonna say you're in you're up in the pacific northwest so rain is a serious consideration yeah yeah and so we we use

54:22 the we have a bowl in and it's it's really nice it's really expensive it's the most expensive camera we have, but it's really nice. There you go. Next question. Next up is Jeff Keithley in Texas, of course. So why spend all that CapEx money on a hardware vMix server? You could have done it cheaper in the cloud and spend the CapEx difference on hardware

54:48 purchasing. Explain your entire cash flow and the responsibility of the university to do it this way. Jeff's always pushing me to go to the cloud. And here's the thing, right? For me, it's not actually cheaper, right? You can say, oh, well, I spent 10 grand on a vMix computer. I could spend way less and just have it on a server in the cloud. And we're in Oregon, so the

55:21 the AWS server, they're real close, right? You've got data centers there. They're big data centers. Well, and it's fun. It's interesting. We have, with Flow, for every broadcast, we have to do a speed test between our on-prem and their servers, and they use the AWS servers. And I've got almost a gig of bandwidth to get to this. So I have plenty of bandwidth.

55:44 I could actually do this, right? We have the bandwidth. You've got a big pipe. But here's the thing, right? Right. Like. I still would need to get that feed to the server. Right. So I would need to capture it somehow. I would need other device. I would either need hardware encoders for each camera. I would need another computer with like it for me.

56:02 It as much as I wish it did make sense. It just doesn't. and in where we're in our particular I don't know they would rather spend once and then figure it out in five six years as opposed to setting aside a set amount of money like I think a lot of ways that's higher education works that way sometimes it's like yes we can spend

56:29 institutions everywhere we can spend ten grand now but we can't spend two grand every every year for five years, that kind of stuff. Right. No, I've been around that a good little bit. Next question. This is another one from Paul Valhos in Austin, Texas. The Esports World Cup in Paris ran seven weeks, eight stages, and 35 languages on Readle. Is Esports the toughest live job with a link?

56:58 So this is comms. Readle is huge in comms. What do you think? I have no idea. I've never done Esports. So I couldn't tell you. Yeah. I think that's a big, big, big, big, I mean, eSports World Cup in Paris. That's now small time operation. So I'm not at all surprised that those big companies and Riedel is among them do a great job of that, but not at the level you're working at.

57:24 Next question. Here's one from the QR code. Jonathan in Sydney, Australia asks, looking for information on the Quantel cipher character generator. most famously used on NBC's coverage of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Does anybody know if there's any decommissioned surviving units? Oh, that one's a tough. There are a couple of companies who specialize in high-end reconditioned or high-end old equipment, but 88 is going back a long way.

57:53 Chris, have you heard of any used high-end broadcast equipment dealers that are still out there? And I was nine in 1988, so I don't have any idea what this device is. I'm just, in general, seeing less in the market. I mean, technology has changed so far and so fast that something that's now 10 or 15 years old is considered pretty ancient generically out there.

58:19 I don't see much still in operation that goes that far back, and certainly not to 1988. Last question. Here we are finishing off with another QR code question from Juan in Bogota, Colombia. Do you have first and 10 yards to gain lines overlaid in the wide camera? I feel this feature was a way of reaching for small productions, but AI is changing everything.

58:44 You know anybody who's doing all that overlay through AI through the cloud? Yeah, so we do not. And you're right. I've seen some AI solutions that have come across, and it's just like, oh, that's so interesting. And I saw one, and I think it would end up costing us about $500 a game. And to me, at our level, that's not worth it.

59:14 It's not worth $500 a game for us. Yeah, but I bet with LiDAR, how much is coming in with LiDAR and depth mapping and things like that? And it probably isn't too long in the future when we're going to be able to do things like those projected lines. Yeah. And it's like it's there, right? Like it is a thing that two years ago you needed like $100,000 pieces of hardware to do this.

59:36 But like I said, I've seen at least two different versions that are using AI to do the processing. And they look pretty good and they look pretty interesting. And it's just not like at that price point. It's just not it's not the ROI on it is is low for us. It's something I would love to do, but I could spend two thousand dollars better elsewhere.

1:00:04 I hate to say it, but it's the top of the hour. We've had another great show, Chris, entirely based on the fact that you were able to come in and talk about this stuff. We really, truly appreciate you doing that. Any last things you want to say in terms of wrap up? If people have questions for you directly after you spend so much time learning how to figure all this stuff out, how do they get in touch with you and things like that?

1:00:24 Yeah, they can check out my website, chrisabato.com. I'm on Twitter at Chris Sabato. Those are probably the two places that are easiest to find. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you so much for being here. And thank you, Cindy, for being here to read questions as always. That's going to wrap it up for another Tuesday Focus. We'll be back next week doing the same kind of thing over and over again.

1:00:45 If you had gone around to get your questions answered to the people who answered them in the show, you would have traveled 32,000 miles. That is our Tlaloc traversal for episode 2408. That's 2,408 shows in a row without missing a day. And we're still going. That's 52,000 kilometers or 254 million bananas for scale. Thank you to the crew in the back. Watch the credits as they go by.

1:01:12 I'll be back next week with another Tuesday Focus. Thank you for spending your time here. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. you you

1:02:56 Thank you.