5. ideas to try

Tue - January 10, 2006

Basecamp - online project collaboration and project tracking tool

Recently we have started using the Basecamp online project collaboration tool to plan live video events and it has been very successful. Here are some questions and answers about that product and how it might fit in to a live video event planning.

Basecamp is a web service run by 37 Signals.

What problem does it solve for you?
-------------------------------------

We provide technical services for live events, using our own equipment,
equipment hired from suppliers, using volunteer crew, working for
clients who also have distributed teams working in their spare time etc.

The normal phonecalls, emails, SMS messages, approach wasn't really
working so we needed a better way of collaborating and communicationg
and organising ourselves.

What is it?
-----------

A project collaboration and project management service based on web 2.0
technologies

Synthesis of stuff you are probably doing in other ways, but brings it
all together And adds considerable value in the process because all
aspects of BC are designed to encourage communication and collaboration.

You get a url to log into, and can add other people in your company,
suppliers, clients etc and control who gets access to what.

What does it do?
----------------

Messages - Email really sucks for managing projects - no viewable
archive, so if you weren't copied into the thread you are stuck. Someone
coming late into a project e.g. graphic designer doesn't misses out on
the info.

BC - messages are all kept and are available to read, comment etc.

To do lists - do do lists that everyone on the team (including customers
can read, add to, tick off when completed, add comments to etc.

Say have a production meeting, can create to do list of the actions,
assigned to the people responsible, and as they do them they can tick
them off in the list or you can update the actions etc.

File sharing - can attach to email, lose control. Can put on website -
not so easy. BC allows you to attach files to messages or just upload
files - either to their server (10MB limit) or to your own ftp server.
Can control access to files So you could upload a draft intro sig, that
only the team see, or a proof of a script for the client to approve.

Milestones - in my day job I am used to cranking up MS project or
similar tool to do full on PM, but that's just overkill for most video
projects

BC lets you set milestones, to associate to-do lists, messages and files
with those milestones and it lets you know if milestones are
approaching, or have passed.

So you could set up milestones for the pre-production meetings, the
shoot, the rough draft edit, the first approval version, the duplication
deadline etc etc.

Time tracking - if you bill your clients on hours worked, you can use BC
to track that for projects.

Writeboards - online editable documents with version control. E.g.
script for voiceover, or credit list or song lyrics etc.

Dashboard - quick overview of all your projects, with just your to dos
if you like.

Access control - control who gets to see what.

RSS - can get RSS feed of all updates on the project.

Why would someone want to use it?
----------------------------------
If you are trying to run ANY kind of project which can be adequately
controlled by to-do lists, milestones, messages and shared files and
that has client interaction, then you need to seriously investigate this
tool.

I like to think of it as 'just enough' project management.

How much does it cost?
-------------------------
It's a service, not a product. You pay a montly subscription (at
different levels)
- they manage the service
It's really easy to set up and there's a free try out mode where you can
set up a single project and try it out.

Are there any limitations that you are aware of?
------------------------------------------------
- Messages can only be created on the website - can't email to a
'mailing list' for example.
- No SMS support - can't get text saying a new item
- Email notification - some limitations - e.g. if you comment on a
message you can't control who gets the comment - everyone on the
original to: list is copied.
- 10MB file size limit for their server - easy to put in details of your
ftp server - any web space provided by an ISP will do.
- if you stop using it you can get messages out but not to-do lists or
milestones.

These are all minor things

Overall we are very happy using it and recommend it.

Finally if you do sign up as a result of reading this post, please use our affiliate code of "room3" and we will get some money off our fees.
Thanks

Dave Chalmers

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Tue - October 4, 2005

Split Quicktime Movies over multiple screens on a Mac

Another useful Mac app here- this one is called MaxiFrame and it lets you play a QT movie across multiple monitors or projectors from a (fast) Mac.
READ MORE for how this could be used for VLOBLIVE gigs, and how it could be improved.

Regular readers (if there are any) will know that I am a bit obsessed with doing multi-screen widescreen video/graphics on the cheap. It is just something that is ONLY the reserve of the big gigs at the moment and it would be great to find a lower cost solution that would allow the same superwidescreen effect for VLOBLIVE gigs.

here's on possible step in the right direction.
MaxiFrame could be genuine competitor to multi-screen playback systems that cost many thousands of dollars. (like Dataton Watchout for example) It's ability to split a quicktime movie over multiple monitors, or in this case projectors enables the use of two relatively low cost XGA projectors to display high resolution HDV widescreen material on a large scale to really get the benefit of the extra resolution available in this new and upcoming video format.

If you think about it a normal standard XGA 4:3 projector is 1024 x 768 pixels. If you put two of them side by side that's 2048 x 768, which is a little bit TOO widescreen for HDV which is 1800x1080, but with some cropping you could really get the use of those extra pixels.

Of course you would have a join down the middle, but hey - that's scope for some creativity in filming!!

There are, however, some additional enhancements that would make this product even more compelling for this kind of use:

1. Playlist support: I was surprised to find that you can't use MaxiFrame to display playlists of video clips as you can their other product cinematics. Clearly if you are using this product live, the ability to step through a preset playlist of clips is pretty much essential. You have all the bits already - you just need to join them up.

2. Edge blending - if you added an adjustable opacity control and image overlap function, then that would allow you to blend the images coming from two projectors on one screen, with a small overlapping section with blended edges that are seamless to the viewer. This would allow one HUGE screen to be illuminated by two or more projectors without any obvious joins. The high end products do this already.

3. remote control - some way to remotely trigger the playback of clips and the advancement through the playlist would be great. This could be as simple as extensive keyboard shortcuts (which you might have already), a floating controller window (that sits on a 3rd monitor) or even a network client that lets you trigger things via another Mac using ethernet or a wireless network like this product.

It will be interesting to see if this product heads in this direction.

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Remotely control and sync powerpoint or keynote presentation on a Mac

Here's an interesting little program that lets you control or sync multiple keynote or powerpoint presentations over a network on a Mac:
KeyShowX
READ MORE for some discussion on how this might be useful in a VLOBLIVE gig...

You have all seen, I am sure, those high end video systems split over multiple screens all in sync. Very impressive. A lot of them use products like Dataton Watchout which is very nice and very expensive.

Here is a low cost alternative that gives you SOME of the functionality just by using multiple macs running powerpoint or keynote.

It's called KeyShowX and only costs $10!

So you need one Mac per projector or plasma, and one more mac or PC (yes you can control it from a PC as well) to drive it all.

Control is pretty simple - you can only step forward on ALL the presentations at the same time, but with the use of blank screens, or background screens you could get an interesting multiscreen animation effect going with this. Would be a bit fiddly to prepare but the resulting effect could be very interesting and eye-catching.

It's not hard to imagine a bunch of mac mini's each driving a plasma screen or projector, producing an synchronised presentation that could be very effective. Would be great for a foyer presentation or a self-running show during an exhibition etc.

Have fun.

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Sun - August 21, 2005

Finally! - a workaround to be able to use MS Powerpoint v.X on dual screen Macs

One areas where Mac-using VLOBLIVErs are let down is in running presentations on dual monitor systems. the aesthetically superior Apple Keynote only displays speaker's notes while running on two monitors, while Microsoft's Powerpoint v.X is tantalisingly close to being useful, but in fact is seriously brain-dead, or just broken when it really comes down to it. Here, however, is an original workaround for making it rather more useful.

As everyone who has tried it will know, the implementation of dual monitor support in Microsoft Powerpoint v X for Mac is really really useless.
Sorry Microsoft, but it's true. It would be better if it didn't work at all.
It lets you pick which screen to show the fullscreen presentation on, but if you move the cursor back onto the screen showing the PP app itself and do anything useful there (click a window, resize a view, scroll down etc.) there is no obvious way of getting back to controlling the presentation that is displaying fullscreen on the other monitor. The "view slideshow" menu item does nothing, as does the slideshow icon at the bottom of the document. You can't even end the slideshow. Very frustrating and confusing.

I had a hunt round the web in vain, trying to find some kind of solution, and found nothing but dejection and dissappointment, so I had a go myself.
Through trial and error I have discovered two ways to recover from this - one easy but ugly, and the other much more useful.

Method one - You have to move the cursor over onto the monitor showing the fullscreen slideshow and click once. This will change the 'focus' back to the running slideshow and let you control it again. Be careful not to click twice as a click also advances the slides once the slideshow has the focus again. The downside of this method is that the cursor has to be moved onto the second screen so if you are using a projector, everyone in the audience will see the mouse cursor on the screen which can be distracting.

Method two - The second method takes a bit more setting up, but is much more useful.
It involves adding a new toolbar which contains tools to control the slideshow. [Note:some of my terminology might be wrong here, as I am not sure about menus and toolbars and tools etc. etc. but it is more obvious to do than to explain]

You can click on the tiny arrow at the end of the toolbar to get to the "customise" dialog box.
I then created a new toolbar that I called "slide control" and also turned on the "shortcut" toolbar which has a "slideshow" menu list that we are interested in.
(from what I can tell, the "slideshow" menu list is the one that appears when you right click on a running slideshow and lets you control things)

I dragged the "previous", "next", and "end show" tools from the slideshow menu list in the "shortcut" toolbar into my new toolbar, and also the "by title" one that lets you select slides by title.

I then positioned this new toolbar at the end of my existing toolbar and closed the "customise" dialog box. By default they show up as blank boxes, but if you right click the tool and select properties you can choose an icon and select for the text to be visible.

So what I have done is steal menu items from the rightclick menu and make them available in a toolbar that is visible all the time while running a show on the second monitor.

Here is a screenshot showing my new toolbar in place:

NOW - here is the final bit of info to make this trick work...
These tools will only work when the fullscreen slideshow is 'active' or 'in focus' BUT unlike before, now if do something on the control monitor and then click the 'slideshow' icon, or select 'view slideshow' in the menu, these controls start to work even though they appear greyed out and the normal up arrow, down arrow controls still don't work.

The only disconcerting thing is that there is absolutely NO visible feedback as to which mode you are in - editing or controlling slideshow, you just have to remember to click the "slideshow" icon every time you want to go back to controlling the slideshow.
(this is analagous to the "resume slideshow" floating button in the windows version - now if only MS had added one of THEM!!!)

So the full sequence of actually driving a presentation would be:

1. open your presentation and set the display monitor for full screen to be the second monitor (in "set up show" and "monitors")

2. Click the "slideshow" icon to start the slideshow on the second monitor. Notice that a different menu list has appeared showing that the slideshow is active.

You can use your usual up arrow, down arrow etc. to control at this stage.

3. If you need to change something, or change the view, click back on the open presentation file in the first monitor (it seems to matter where you click - you'll know it has worked when your toolbars re-appear)

4. Make the changes you want, or set up the view you want.

5. now click the "slideshow" icon again to 'return to controlling the slideshow' as it were.

6. Now you can control the show using your new toolbar, or if you need to edit something or switch views, or look ahead, just repeat this process from step 3. You can switch in and out as many times as you like.

If you don't "return to the slideshow" as it were, by clicking the slideshow icon, then the controls don't work, but if you do "return to the slideshow" then it all works, and lets you step through the slides, choose a specific slide, or end the show, just as you would expect to be able to in the first place had microsoft done its job properly.

Sadly whatever you are showing on the control screen doesn't track the active slideshow, so you are limited to using the thumbnail view to see all your slides while presenting.
You CAN, however, edit the live slide and it will change immediately - very useful for correcting typos on the fly, or typing up responses as they are shouted out or whatever.

OK, this took a fair bit of fiddling to find, and I have never seen anyone else show a way to allow control of a fullscreen slideshow on dual monitors so I reckon it could be of interest to others.
Of course it would be far better if MS just fixed the dual screen support to do what it should, but who knows when/if that might happen.

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Wed - October 29, 2003

Need giant graphics AND detailed video...divide and conquer

If you are envious of the groovy picture in picture modes used by big corporate boys to have a huge graphic backdrop with an inserted live video then think laterally and achieve a similar effect...sort of!

There's something really striking about a HUGE image projected across a big screen or a whole wall.
It is do-able, assuming the lighting can be controlled, with budget projectors, but what if you want this AND you need nice bright IMAG video as well. What to do?

Easy - use two projectors.

Use one (your brightest one) for the background graphic spread over the whole wall, or whatever, leaving a black area on the graphic where you want the IMAG video, then set up another projector to project onto the black area in the graphic, i.e. overproject one image onto the other.

I did this with a big graphic of a computer and put the IMAG on the screen of the computer - worked well, but not when the lights were turned on!! Also I had two 4500 lumens projectors to play with, which really helped.

You can only really get off with giant video images in very low light conditions and with powerful projectors.

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Tue - September 2, 2003

low level reverse camera angle

Don't assume that the cameras always have to get the artists from the front...

Here is an interesting camera angle that I got almost by accident.

I had an extra static cam (Panasonic F15) and couldn't think what to do with it, so I stuck it on a wee baby tripod on the drum riser pointing forward and upwards to get the back of the main singer. I also made sure I got the lighting bar in shot, so it got some groovy lighting effects, and made an excellent live, but almost abstract background to the song words.

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Widescreen video wall on the cheap

Do you eye up those HUGE widescreen walls of video that are so in vogue at the moment for megabucks corporate gigs? Well, here's two ways to emulate that style, in a more modest way...

Have you seen them? Those monster, wider-than-a-very-wide-thing widescreen video backdrops that are all the rage for big corporate presentations. They have picture in picture, floating presentations, soft edges to join all the projector images etc etc etc.

They also need hugely expensive specialist gear to do.

So here are two possible ways to achieve a similar effect on the cheap:

1. Take a fast desktop PC or Mac and borrow some extra PCI graphics cards - let's say three for this example. Install the video cards and extend your desktop to include all three monitors, but connect them to three projectors, not three monitors (or three scan converters if you want). You can then take some widescreen content and maximise the playback window to cover the whole desktop (i.e. all three projectors). You can use the overscan function of your scan converter to loose the window border and get groovy widescreen content playing back on three projectors at once.

Of course you have to line them all up very carefully, and you can't really do anything else useful with the PC, but hey, it's pretty cheap!!

2. A slightly simpler option is to use multiple scan converters, daisy chained to the same PC VGA output, but ZOOMED into different parts of the screen. This way you can pick 3 adjacent segments of the screen (for example) and have content moving across them or whatever.
Of course, your scan converter needs to have a decent zoom function, and you will loose resolution, as you are only taking part of the image, but hey, it's pretty cheap!

DISCLAIMER: I have never actually been able to try either of these ideas for real, so don't blame me if it doesn't work as well as it seems it should.

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