Nebula Awards
So, I haven't posted here in a while - time for that to change!
This past weekend was the SFWA Nebula Awards. Quite some time ago, Steven Silver had asked me to run tech for the weekend, and I said yes. It was an interesting weekend.
The actual tech needs for programming were pretty minimal - a projector, screen, and sound in one of the programming rooms, plus livestreaming the SFWA business meeting Saturday afternoon.
The fun part was the awards ceremony - full lights and sound, video projection, video recording, and livestreaming. The Nebula weekend was at the Palmer House in downtown Chicago - a very fancy, older hotel (sort of laid out like a rabbit warren). Since it's a union shop, it turned out to be slightly cheaper to rent most of the equipment from the hotel (we got a break on the labor that way). I brought some equipment though (like the big projector for the ceremony), which saved us a bundle. Most of what I had to do for the actual awards ceremony was supervise a crew of union operators, and set up and run the streaming.
To do the streaming, we used a widget called VidiU, from Teradek. It takes video and audio in (it has an HDMI input along with an analog audio input), and connects to the internet. It handles all the encoding, and is set up to interface directly with several of the major streaming outfits. SFWA uses UStream, which is one of the systems the Teradek was designed to work with. We sent the stream out in 720p widescreen.
Aside from one internet glitch just as we were about to go live (which cost us about 3 minutes or so), things went very well. The video to start the program off did freeze (I'm not sure why - we ran it about 6 or 7 times during setup and checkout, and it was flawless then), but everything else went very smoothly - which was good, since we didn't really have time to do a full dress rehearsal. It is a real joy to work with professionals, and these guys were some of the best. (I've never had a problem working with the union guys in Chicago - they know what they're doing, are very friendly, and really want the show to go well.)
Now I just have to master the video recording - both to put up on the SFWA UStream channel for later viewing, and for a possible DVD release.
Since the Nebula Weekend will be in Chicago again next year, I get to do it all over again then. It should go even smoother, since I know what to expect now.
This past weekend was the SFWA Nebula Awards. Quite some time ago, Steven Silver had asked me to run tech for the weekend, and I said yes. It was an interesting weekend.
The actual tech needs for programming were pretty minimal - a projector, screen, and sound in one of the programming rooms, plus livestreaming the SFWA business meeting Saturday afternoon.
The fun part was the awards ceremony - full lights and sound, video projection, video recording, and livestreaming. The Nebula weekend was at the Palmer House in downtown Chicago - a very fancy, older hotel (sort of laid out like a rabbit warren). Since it's a union shop, it turned out to be slightly cheaper to rent most of the equipment from the hotel (we got a break on the labor that way). I brought some equipment though (like the big projector for the ceremony), which saved us a bundle. Most of what I had to do for the actual awards ceremony was supervise a crew of union operators, and set up and run the streaming.
To do the streaming, we used a widget called VidiU, from Teradek. It takes video and audio in (it has an HDMI input along with an analog audio input), and connects to the internet. It handles all the encoding, and is set up to interface directly with several of the major streaming outfits. SFWA uses UStream, which is one of the systems the Teradek was designed to work with. We sent the stream out in 720p widescreen.
Aside from one internet glitch just as we were about to go live (which cost us about 3 minutes or so), things went very well. The video to start the program off did freeze (I'm not sure why - we ran it about 6 or 7 times during setup and checkout, and it was flawless then), but everything else went very smoothly - which was good, since we didn't really have time to do a full dress rehearsal. It is a real joy to work with professionals, and these guys were some of the best. (I've never had a problem working with the union guys in Chicago - they know what they're doing, are very friendly, and really want the show to go well.)
Now I just have to master the video recording - both to put up on the SFWA UStream channel for later viewing, and for a possible DVD release.
Since the Nebula Weekend will be in Chicago again next year, I get to do it all over again then. It should go even smoother, since I know what to expect now.