^faldo^
02-09-2009, 09:05 AM
I shoot a lot of multicam stuff, mostly theatre comedy shows with a three camera setup.
The downside of this is that you wind up with about 40 tapes over 4 nights. And ingest isnt fun when you have to be at the PC every hour or so to change them. You don't learn anything about what your cameramen are doing that you wouldn't pick up in the multicam edit, and it's a waste of time.
So I grabbed myself some balsa wood, a solenoid, a stepper motor, a chain set and a rubber band to make things less labour intensive.
This is the result so far. (http://twitpic.com/1daax)
The electronics aren't attached yet and there's going to be a clear perspex cover over the tape stack, but the plan is to mount the sepper motor underneath and behind the tape stack. This will push an arm out that will slide the bottom tape onto the bridge, above which the track with a rubber band stretched over it for friction will pull it along and into the VTR.
You may have noticed the trap door. When the VTR is done, it ejects the tape and the chain starts in reverse and pulls the tape back along the bridge. The solenoid disengages, and the hinged trapdoor opens. The tape slides out and down a chute into a bucket, and the trap door closes up.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Also to be done is a script, a small C program, an external relay control and a feedback mechanism.
You punch the names of the tapes into the script in the order you load them, so when they're digitised they'll be labeled appropriately. When the VTR is done, the C program tells it to spit out the tape (or rewind and spit it out, its software) and then engages the relays to power the chain in reverse and open the trap door.
Once the feedback mechanism tells the program that the tape is clear (probably an IR beam that gets broken as the tape runs down the eject chute), the program reverses the direction of the chain, pushes the trap door closed and engages the stepper motor so it pushes the next tape onto the bridge and into the VTR.
And so on and so forth.
I'm quite proud of myself, or at least will be once it passes its test run when the build is complete.
I'll keep you all posted on more pics, but if you want to keep up with it and are on Twitter, just add me (faldo) and you'll get the snapshots as I work on it.
The downside of this is that you wind up with about 40 tapes over 4 nights. And ingest isnt fun when you have to be at the PC every hour or so to change them. You don't learn anything about what your cameramen are doing that you wouldn't pick up in the multicam edit, and it's a waste of time.
So I grabbed myself some balsa wood, a solenoid, a stepper motor, a chain set and a rubber band to make things less labour intensive.
This is the result so far. (http://twitpic.com/1daax)
The electronics aren't attached yet and there's going to be a clear perspex cover over the tape stack, but the plan is to mount the sepper motor underneath and behind the tape stack. This will push an arm out that will slide the bottom tape onto the bridge, above which the track with a rubber band stretched over it for friction will pull it along and into the VTR.
You may have noticed the trap door. When the VTR is done, it ejects the tape and the chain starts in reverse and pulls the tape back along the bridge. The solenoid disengages, and the hinged trapdoor opens. The tape slides out and down a chute into a bucket, and the trap door closes up.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Also to be done is a script, a small C program, an external relay control and a feedback mechanism.
You punch the names of the tapes into the script in the order you load them, so when they're digitised they'll be labeled appropriately. When the VTR is done, the C program tells it to spit out the tape (or rewind and spit it out, its software) and then engages the relays to power the chain in reverse and open the trap door.
Once the feedback mechanism tells the program that the tape is clear (probably an IR beam that gets broken as the tape runs down the eject chute), the program reverses the direction of the chain, pushes the trap door closed and engages the stepper motor so it pushes the next tape onto the bridge and into the VTR.
And so on and so forth.
I'm quite proud of myself, or at least will be once it passes its test run when the build is complete.
I'll keep you all posted on more pics, but if you want to keep up with it and are on Twitter, just add me (faldo) and you'll get the snapshots as I work on it.