Friday, May 29, 2009
The AUMC tech team has always used the bulletins for our order of service. We would just grab one of the folded bulletins that goes to the congregation and we would use it to know what is coming up next in the service.
I hope to end that practice.
I have made a "breakout", a sheet that is designed just for the tech guys to know what is coming up next in the service. Take a look at it and tell me what you think: Link.
Matthew
Saturday, May 16, 2009
OK, yes, Friday I spent eleven hours cleaning the sound booth. What can I say? Not only am I a neat freak, but it needed it! We started installing equipment last summer and we have had 6 Sunday services in there (not counting Holy Week services), and the room has never been cleaned more than vacuuming and emptying the trash. So while you can argue that the 11 hours is a bit much, you can't argue that it needed it. Plus, I like to do a deep clean about once a year, just to shake out all the cobwebs.
WARNING: For most people, this post will be long and boring. It has no real information in it, it is just me talking about what I did for 11 hours, and it has a lot of purdy pictures. I am posting it here because I apparently have too much time on my hands, and because I enjoy reading about similar things that others do, so I assume that others will enjoy reading this. So read on, if you are so inclined. Oh, and of course clicking a photo will get you a larger version.
The "Great Cleaning of 2009" actually started on Thursday, before the Kingdom Kids (AKA: preschool) graduation. I zip-tied the wires going to the camera together so that they look all purdy. I have no before picture, but:
This looks great, and it will work wonders when you are running the camera, the problem will come in when I want to take the camera somewhere and I need a power source... I just need to buy a separate power source for occasions such as those.
Moving on to the computer. I wanted to move all of the wires that run to the computer from one hole in the counter to another (from the hole by the video rack to the hole behind the sound board, look in the second photo below, you will see the grommet that I wanted to run them through), but alas, several cords weren’t long enough, so I wasn’t able to. Here all I really did was wrap the cables.
As I said, I did the above Thursday evening. Friday afternoon I showed up just after 2 PM (I had to wait for Sonic’s Happy Hour) and I got to work on the main rack.
I spent time dusting off the rack and vacuuming under it. I also brought some of those pads that you put under furniture that makes it easier to move and put them under the rack, so it is now easier to slide on the carpet [we have to slide out the rack if we want to open the back door]. I took out the PC and used a can of air on it (it needed it!). I also put a left over pice of black poster board in the bottom of the rack so that now the PC sits on that and not the carpet... makes sliding around easier. After strapping a few wires down, it was done.
Next came the back of the video rack.
This was just a matter of grouping cables together and zip tying them together. Also, there are some extra cables for the switcher, IE: a VGA cable in case we ever need to hook up a laptop. These cables are Velcro-tied together for easy access.
At that point I moved to the other side of the sound booth and did the audio rack.
Lather, rinse, repeat. The one thing I did extra here was I moved all of the wires out of one hole and through another hole in the counter (note the hole in the above photo is in the corner, and the hole in the photos below is by the window). This allows the rack to be closer to the sound board, letting the sound guy have easier access to it. I was also able to remove three cables from this area (note two of them in the photo above) because when we installed the audio distribution amp we ran several replacement wires and the old ones weren’t needed any more.
Now you are starting to see how much of a neat freak I am. With each of the racks, I wasn’t just cleaning, I was doing a deep clean and re-orginization. IE: I am organizing wires, dusting everything off, cleaning the counter, and using my can of air like Bruce Willis uses guns in a Die Hard flick. In fact, I am such a neat freak that I had to reorganize the wires in the back of our audio board:
Did this need to be done? No. But it makes me feel better.
So at this point I had done pretty much everything above the counter, which left below the counter. And below the counter needed a lot of work! I worked each section (between each support for the counter) one at a time, down the row.
Of note: I had a great (well I think it was great) idea to help with cable management: I bought several dowel rods, zip tied them together, and they made one long cable support underneath the entire counter. So all down the line I zip tied cables to this support, and it helped achieve a great clean look. You can see the dowels in the photos below.
Not to be constrained to the sound booth, I also did some work on the choir mics:
The hard work was done, but I still had plenty left to do:
After a thorough vacuum and final dusting, everything was done!
(with the iMac running AppleJack)
I even had a visitor on my way out the building:
And THAT is how you spend 11+ hours cleaning a sound booth. I still need to do some work to the back of the TV in the foyer, but I need someone else to help me take it down and put it back up. Maybe next week...
Matthew
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Last week I ordered a My Book Studio 1TB external hard drive and it came in today. So of course I had to spend time today updating the firmware, formatting it just how I want it, and setting it up.
Right now I have it partitioned into two halves, one for backup and one for archiving, but while driving to my day job today I decided to change that up slightly. The way I set it up this morning there is no backup of the archive. If the drive in the My Book fails, then we loose our entire archive. (The "archive" being a folder with every PPT and audio file that we have ever used."
So I am going to change it so that one partition of the My Book is backup (using Time Machine), and the other is video storage for the many gigabytes of video that I am recording. (Compressed, each Sunday is about 10 GB.) This will allow there to be two copies of the archive folder (one on the iMac, one on the external drive). This doesn't provide a backup for our videos, but they don't need a backup as they are just a "novelty", they are just to have in case someone wants a DVD.
The other good part of this system: Once a year I buy a 500 GB hard drive (cheap these days) and dump the previous year's videos onto it. That hard drive now gets stuck in a back closet somewhere, and we never have to loose any of our information.
OK, I know at this point I am rambling, but can you blame me? It is 3 AM, and I need to get to sleep. I hope you enjoyed reading about the new hard drive as much as I enjoyed typing this post.
=: >
Matthew
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Hey all,
Sorry about not updating the blog more. I keep trying to normalize my life, and I am getting varying results... but that is a post for my other blog.
We got the new audio distribution amp installed. This will help greatly in... well, distributing our audio. See, we were having problems with our many audio needs in the booth, we have: CD recorder, hearing assistance device, camera, iMac, PC, and TV, all that need audio from the board. We were having problems getting the right audio to all of the components, so now with the new amp those problems are solved. Now, instead of having four mixes going to different components (and not really doing a good job at that), we now have one mix that goes to the TV (so that we can play a CD on the TV and not any where else) and one mix for everything else.
So as it stands, we only need a few more wires and the booth will be as complete as I can get it right now. The only other pice of equipment I would like would be a wall mount for our camera, but that will have to wait for now. I am getting excited to say "Done!" on the sound booth. I am thinking about having a pizza party or something, a guy's night out or something... I will keep you posted.
On a different note, I have a note for the sound booth volunteers, of which I already out e-mails, but an additional reminder: Please e-mail me your schedule until the end of the year. (That sentence was much harder than it should have been!) I am trying to create a schedule for Sundays for the next few months, and I need to know when everyone needs off.
Also, for anyone who would like to contact me, feel free to e-mail me at Matthew(at)ArgyleUMC.org. Other forms of communication:
My Personal Blog
Follow me on Facebook
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Or, check out my bio page at the Argyle UMC website.
Matthew
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Today I got some work done in the booth. I feel like I got a lot done, but all I did was solder a few wires. It is amazing how fast 8 hours flies by when you hang out in the new booth...
This weekend Adam and Bill will be helping out in the booth. Give it up for Bill, it is his first week! Woop Woop!
Matthew
Friday, April 24, 2009
So today I spent many hours cleaning out our closet, our cabinet, our deep shelves, whatever you want to call them. I don't have any "before shots", but lets just say that it had become our place to dump thingss. There were literally piles of things in there of things that I had dumped, and it needed an overhaul.
So I did, and now it looks great! Plus it has the added benefit of being able to find things!
(click for bigger view)
Matthew
Saturday, April 18, 2009
I just realized that once again I haven't updated you guys in a week. Apparently Saturday night is now my normal posting night. (Really, I want to post more often, but I have been busy lately.)
Anywho, I spent the better part of today at the new building adding some personal touches to the booth. Things I did today include (but are not limited to):
- I added black poster board (via velcro strips) to the back of our mini-racks so that people looking into the booth don't see a bunch of blinking lights and wires.
- I added a cable run for the camera, so now the cables go up the wall hidden from sight.
- I mounted the ethernet switch below the counter and plugged it in. I can now talk to one projector via ethernet (the other one has a wire crossed in the patch bay).
- I added an extension cord to the audio rack so it now powers on and off with everything else.
- I added a lock to the TV in the lobby so that it doesn't walk off. (Take THAT you bad-minded people!)
- I soldered a cable so that the band's click track now goes directly from the patch bay to the Aviom (in-ear) system instead of running through the sound board.
- I re-labeled the wireless transmitters (a month ago I "temporarily" labeled them with white electrical tape).
- I finished the ProPresenter file, and made sure the text could be read on the light background (I had to add an outline to the text).
In addition to that, tomorrow will see the debut of our new "CD Seller". It sits out in the lobby so that people can pick up CDs as they pass by. For your knowledge: CDs are a suggested donation of $3, DVDs are a suggested donation of $5. CDs from the last month's 11:15 service will be available via the CD Seller in the lobby. All other services are available on CD or DVD via a special request.
And on that note, I have to go design the display that will be in the CD Seller, so I have to go. See you tomorrow!
Matthew
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Wow, I just realized I haven't posted in a week... it is because I have been so busy at my "real" job AND running Holy Week services at the new building. I haven't had any time off! ("Next week" I keep telling myself, "next week"... then again, I have been saying that for three weeks now!)
Anywho, I spent several hours at the new building today (at what point do we stop calling it the "new building"?) setting up the presentation files and hooking everything up to work. This week we were able to get the hearing impaired system to work, and get live video out on the big screen TV in the foyer. There is still plenty of work that needs to get done, but for now everything is working and we are ready to go!
Tomorrow (Easter) we have four services in the new building: 8:00, 9:15, 10:30, and 11:45, IE: it will be a full day! There are a lot of moving parts, but I have the utmost confidence in our team. Speaking of the team, Adam will be running sound tomorrow, and David will be running the computer and the camera. I will be sitting between them running lights and acting as director, making sure they both know what is coming up next (we have three DIFFERENT bulletins for our four services) and keeping them on time. I don't know how well it will work to have the lights/director in the middle, we will find out tomorrow!
Well, I can hardly type any more (I keep hitting the wrong keys), so I am off to bed, nice and early tonight. See everyone in the morning!
Matthew
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Well, this morning we had our first service! Everything went great, I can't wait to praise God for many years in this new building.
But before I go into the report about today, I have to give a great big "THANKS!" to everyone that helped: James Nance for a great sound system and install, Carter for helping at any time of day when I call and for helping me to run the first service, Adam for hanging out with me and learning the system, Mike and David for your willingness to help at any time, and for your dedication for the past many years, and the rest of the volunteers that have been learning the new system. THANKS for all that you have done, the services couldn't happen without you!
So this morning I was the first person at the new building at 7:15 at which point I snapped the above photo (the new header photo). (For more photos of the first day of services, click here.) I then parked in the back and got in and turned everything on. Carter and James showed up soon, and we troubleshot the hearing impaired system, which wasn't getting a strong signal. (I think we finally decided that the problem is the board is sending the signal too soft, -2dB instead of +10dB. A fix to come shortly.)
Then, before you know it, the first service started, and we were off! The first service went almost perfect, behind a guest speaker breathing too hard into his lav mic. The middle service was awesome; it is now our "modern" service, and it was the largest service of the day! It was great to see 265 people worshiping God in our new sanctuary! After that came our third service (choir led). This service had a problem when one of the choir mics went spastic and started spewing static during the sermon, but we got it muted quick.
Overall, it went very well. Not 100%, but better than hoped. We learned a lot of things today, such as we need to have the band as a group on the audio board, and don't fade to a black screen with words on it during the sermon (it just looks empty).
I also learned something for us sound guys. Those of us that have worked in the old building are used to multi-tasking, we did EVERYTHING that is media based for the service. During the service, our main jobs were: audio, PPT (IE: lyrics on the screen), and once in a while pointing the camera in the right direction or playing a video.
The bad part of this is that we have all become accustomed to this multi-tasking, and I found myself multitasking in the new building. Carter was running audio and it was my job to run ProPresenter (the new program we are using to display the lyrics), the video camera, and the lighting board. But I found myself continually listening to make sure it sounded good, and I kept messing with things on the audio board. At the same time I was neglecting the lights on the stage and the camera (which would just sometimes point at nothing).
I learned today that we (or maybe just me?) are going to have to reprogram ourselves in what our jobs are. If I am running the video/lighting side of things, I need to ignore the audio unless something is glaringly wrong. If I am running the audio, it is not just my job to make it sound good in the sanctuary, it is also my job to make sure it sounds good on the computer, the camera, the CD recording, the hearing impaired system... It might take a few weeks before we get used to this new mindset, but eventually we will.
The other reason to get into this mindset (past it is more efficient) is that it puts respect on the people you are working with. If I am running video, I have to put trust in the audio guy, that he will do his job right, that when it is time for me to play a video he knows it and already has the line un-muted. I will make my point using a sports analogy. In the old building we were a bunch of guys that would do our jobs separately and without consequence to the other volunteers. We would work our one Sunday alone, and not work together as a team. We were like a baseball team, a bunch of guys working individually to achieve a common goal. (I have always said that baseball isn't a team sport, it is an individual sport where people rarely interact with others on their team.)
Contrast that with our new AV team. We have to rely on other people to get their jobs done so that ours works. If the audio guy doesn't un-mute the computer, then when I play the video it won't have any sound! I have to put my trust in others, not just myself. I liken this to football, where you have to have 11 people on your team running every play exactly as they are supposed to or the play won't work. It anyone on a football team does not make their required block, the play will go from a 10 yard gain to a 10 yard loss. Everyone on a football team has to trust that others are doing what is requited of them, and our AV team is going to have to learn the same kind of trust.
The problem is that we are a bunch of baseball players trying to learn football. We are used to standing out in left field waiting for a pop fly, and now we are being thrust into a teamwork situation. I don't consider this an insurmountable object, I think it is great that we are all learning new skills, not just in the booth, but also teamwork and trust. I look forward to seeing the "AV volunteers" transform into the "AV team".
Well I am done rambling for now. See you guys next week!
Matthew
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
OK, yes, so I haven't updated in a few days, so shoot me. I have been running 10+ hours per day for two weeks now, the week before that I was out of town, and this weekend I am going out of town... very busy.
But all of that works means that the sound booth is now closer to being done than it was two weeks ago, yea! A lot of work has been done, including (but not limited to): soldering ends to the wires I ran under the stage, a preliminary EQ for the room (thanks to James), the PC is in the booth and has VNC and streaming live video working, and it is a lot cleaner than it was a week ago.
But there is still plenty of work left to do, like running some wires in the booth and working on the PC. I will be up there most of the day Thursday and Friday getting everything finalized, Saturday I will be out of town all day on a job, and Sunday is our first morning services in the new space! I am so excited!
Anywho, I am off to bed so that I can get lots of work one in the morning!
Matthew
