Video System Update

Hiawatha Woodturning Club,
For members and guest who have missed the last couple of meetings.  It was decided that it was time that the club put together a video system that would 1) provide a better demonstration experience for the audience at live demonstration 2) provide for recording the live demonstrations 3) allow us to take advantage of remote demonstrations if and when this movement takes off with in the AAW community.

To that effect Steve Promo and Tom Cadwalader (yours truly) set off to build a frame to support the equipment and purchase the equipment to accomplish this.

At the October meeting all of this technology came together and was tried for the first time.  Steve Promo did a short demonstrations on making scoops.  In my opinion this is how it went. Those  in attendance my have a slightly different or vastly different opinion, so feel free to use the comment section.

Basically everything worked, but there is room for improvement.  Lots of room for improvement.   We went into this with a somewhat limited budget and there were a few surprises.  I learned that there was a whole lot more to learn about video and broadcasting a live stream than I ever thought I needed to know.

What I see as improvement areas and what we can do.

1)  The first obvious issue was the latency between what Steve was doing live and what was showing on the monitors.  The picture and audio being later takes some getting used to.  The audio was the bigger issue for both the audience and the demonstrator.
     The fix:  I have been working on the latency, Archie and I swapped out the hard drive on the computer with a faster drive I had.  Plus we tried recording to a solid state camera card instead of the hard dive in the computer.  This seemed to help a lot.  But for the audio we need to do what I did during the demo, and that is to mute the audio on both monitors.  Their will always be some delay and in our smaller room, thats not good.

2) Lighting.  The light we are currently using needs to be relocated.  It's too close and there needs to be a second light.  There are deep shadows on the piece being turned and its very difficult for the demonstrator to see what he/she is doing.  We need more even lighting across the entire lathe.

3) Cameras.
 The overhead camera was prone to hunting for focus.  We need to run that camera in manual focus and manual exposure.
The second camera (the one showing the demonstrator with a wider shot)  The footage looked like security camera footage.  As I tried to work through this issue it was a combination of dropped frames and something else.  It was starting to look like it was just a bad camera.  But I deleted the driver (the software that runs the camera form the computer) and used the Microsoft drive instead of the camera manufactures drivers.  This seemed to help a lot.

4)The background is distracting.  Having the office area behind is not the best situation.  I think we would be better off going back to having the lathe by the garage doors.  The lathe table and the video from are only connected by the white 110 volt cord form the power strip.  So both pieces can be moved separately if need be.

So that is basically it.  I have edited the footage form the last meeting and put it in the cloud for members to download.  I would recommend you download it and then view it as opposed to trying to watch it like a uTube video.  I put the file in a dropbox account and that doesn't typically stream video every well.As you watch the movie I think you will see what my concerns are.

The computer we have was $421.  What really need is one that is $2,000.  But with the changes we have made to both the settings and the hard drive we are pretty dam close.  The testing I have done lately has been turning out pretty good video.


The video of the scoops demo can be found here.  I welcome your feedback.
Click Here for Video

Recent work by Tom Cadwalader

Below is a plate that I had turned recently, actually I think it was turned in May and I just finished it recently.  It's kind of a 2 part project.  I have been working at embellishing my turnings with some wood burning  of late and this is the next step in my progression.

The wood is Quaking Aspen and the finish is Helmsman Spar Urethane.  The Plate is about 11 Inches in diameter.

On edit I changed quacking aspen to Quaking aspen. The leaves on the trees quake, they don't quack. My bad.

The picture below is the palate in May.  Notice the knots and the turquoise in one of the knots.

Below is the finished plate, as you can see I incorporated the knots into the image I burned in. 

Art Prize

Turners,  Gloria and I attended Art Prize in Grand Rapids recently.  We spent 2 full days checking out the art.  1453 pieces in 170 different venues.  We didn't see it all...but we did put a big dent in it.
As most of you know our own Jim Rutledge had a piece accepted for this venue.
I took a ton of pictures and put them into a slide show.
I know the pictures are only o the screen a short time, but you can always replay it and use the pause button.  All of the pictures were taken with my iPhone.

You can view the slide show here.

Click here for the slideshow

Video System Update

We had another work session at Steve's place yesterday.  We mounted the monitor brackets and tested the fit of the monitors.  Added some of the cables  and a shelf bracket.

I think we have most of the hardware we need.  I have a signal splinter coming in a few days and that should be the end of the hardware needs.

We have a 40 " TV for the main monitor.  It's mounted on a bracket that pivots and tilts.  The second monitor is a 19 " LED that also is on a bracket that tilts and pivots.  The splinter will allow us to have the same picture on both monitors, so the demonstrator can see just what the audience is seeing.

We have a new ASUS 15" laptop that will run the switching of camera inputs and take care of the recording.

Yet to do:
1)  get the software license.  I have the choice narrowed down and thing I'll go with the Many Cam software.  The vMix software is far more powerful, but we would never use all of the features and it's pretty complicated to get set up.  So unless my testing shows something that's a show stopper I'll be getting the Many Cam application.

2)  test the whole system all together.  Once the splitter gets here (projected for Wednesday) I'll do that.

3) mount a folding shelf on the end of the stand. This is for the computer.  We are short one bracket. It's due to arrive Monday.

4) take the frame up to the Maintenance building and put it altogether. This should happen Thursday or Friday.

5) we need covers for the tv's.  The cameras just need socks to cover them and the portable one has a quick disconnect and can get locked in the cabinet with the computer.

We hoped to be ready for a full blown unveiling at our next meeting Saturday.

One more item,  we need to have some folks trained on operating the system.  What I propose is that 2 or 3 learn it so that we have someone available all year.  The way I see this working is that the demo would be recorded and a copy of the clips could be sent to me and I will edit the footage to spruce it up and then load it up to the cloud somewhere.
At our next meeting we need to discuss what we ant to do with the final product.  Options are:
  1) put them up on uTube or Vimeo and either let them be available to the public or just members
  2) put them somewhere like dropbox and let members view and or download the video from there.
  3) some other way that I haven't thought of.

Please be ready to discuss this Saturday.

a few pictures below.