Michael Webber

Author: Michael Webber

  • Production Switcher to Zoom

    Production Switcher to Zoom

    Blackmagic Web Presenter, the perfect tool for the job.

    After several weeks on backorder, our Blackmagic Web Presenter arrived from BH Photo!

    The “black box” is a simple device that works out of the box. No drives, no software. Simply take the output of your video production switcher, professional SDI camera or HDMI source into the BM Web Presenter. Then connect a USB cable to your PC/Mac and the audio/video signal appears as a 720p HD webcam to the computer.

    We had ours installed and working with Zoom within minutes.

    Program Return for Zoom

    On a daily basis, we’re producing live interview programs and government meetings using Zoom. We need the guests and participants on Zoom to be able to see our in-studio hosts, graphics, roll-ins, and graphics.

    Feeding program video from our production switcher through the Blackmagic Web Presenter into Zoom gets this done.

    Avoiding Video Feedback on Zoom

    If you are not careful you can easily create a video feedback situation in Zoom. Once you have the production switcher feed working with Zoom I suggest clicking the three dot menu and select “Hide Self View” to prevent those issues.

  • Stream Deck for Zoom Meetings

    Stream Deck for Zoom Meetings

    UPDATE: My setup for Zoom has evolved and somewhat less dependent on StreamDeck now. You may want to check out my new Blog Post with our updated Zoom setup for TV interviews.

    This week I purchased a Stream Deck XL ($235) to help streamline our video productions with Zoom remote guests.

    Since the COVID-19 crisis hit mid-March our community television station scrambled to adapt and help disseminate important information. Zoom quickly became the go-to platform for setting up meetings and remote show guests.

    In the past few weeks, we’ve produced more than a dozen programs using Zoom. Initially, we had an in-studio host and multiple remote guests displayed on an in-studio monitor. Now, most of our interview shows a produced entirely on Zoom.

    Despite the limitations, we are making every effort to maintain high production values, focusing on:

    • Good Clean Audio
    • Well Composed Shots (eyes on the upper third!)
    • Shot sequencing, Close Ups / Multi-Box Switching
    • Graphics, Lower Thirds, Etc.
    • Open/Close Music
    • Still Store for Inserts

    Our existing television studio was not set up well for the shift in production style. This prompted us to build a temporary video production console on several folding tables right inside our studio.

    Adding Steam Deck XL into the Workflow

    Using the Zoom keyboard shortcuts certainly helps the production value. I find myself using Shift-Command-W (Mac) constantly to switch between Speaker view and Gallery View in Zoom. To me that’s the key to using zoom for video production. You can force a better cadence of switching that matches the conversation.

    I do wish there was a way within Zoom that I could force a certain camera view to appear full screen, similar to the normal workflow of a video production switcher. Zoom does offer a “spotlight video” option which does this, but it’s not mapped to a keyboard shortcut and requires too many mouse clicks to make it useful.

    Another shortcut I use often hides the control panel buttons on the lower part of the screen.

    The Stream Deck XL simply automates the keyboard shortcut process and reduces keystrokes to a single button. Allowing new users in the video production environment to get up to speed faster and with better results.

    TIP – ENABLE GLOBAL SHORTCUT

    Enabling global shortcuts really helps the Stream Deck configuration. This setting allows the shortcuts to work even when Zoom is not in focus.

    We’re also using VLC shortcuts to play intro/outro music.

    Bottom row of buttons on our Stream Deck are all shortcuts for Zoom.

    Then I added several shortcuts to websites we use for our live broadcasts.

    A work in progress, but thought I’d share what we have setup so far. If you’re using Stream Deck for video production I’d be curious to hear your use case.

  • 60 Degree Day

    What a day today, just an incredible temperature jump this weekend. Two days of 60-degree temps in January is rare, so I made an extra effort to get a run today. The Blackstone Bike Path was really busy today, again highly unusual in January. The parking lot had 20ish cars and the traffic along the bike path reminded me of early spring when everyone is excited to be outside.

    View this post on Instagram

    #running #instarunners 60 degree #winterrunning

    A post shared by Michael Webber (@mediaguy4) on

    Today we also started our Pinewood Derby car designs. The plan right now is to complete three cars, my oldest son may also enter a car which would be a fourth car.

    This is our last Pinewood Derby race with Pack 12, in March my youngest son will be crossing over into Boy Scouts, my wife and I will be stepping down from our positions in the Pack (Cubmaster and Den Leader).

    Lastly, we took full advantage of the warm day and cooked on the grill tonight. We used my wife’s Meater “smart” thermometer for the first time and it worked out well. The steak was cooked perfectly, often I overcook meat on the grill “just to be safe”.

    For me this falls into the extravagant, overkill, bordering on ridiculous category. That said, it’s a really cool device and I can clearly see how it makes the “home gamer” cook better and more efficiently. You can bring the meat to the exact right temperature and it even alerts you when to remove it from the heat, which is just a few degrees BEFORE it reaches temp. The meat rises a few more degrees after removed from the grill and hits the desired temp.

  • FIX: Greyed Out Folders on Mac OS

    Recently I had an issue with my Synology NAS Music folder that I use with Plex Media Server. Hundreds of folders were ghosted or greyed out an inaccessible.

    I was able to access the files through the Synology Disk Station web interface, not via Mac Finder and Plex could not access the files.

    Solution

    All the inaccessible files had a “creation date” of 1984. Multiple websites explain that updating the creation date to something current would fix the problem.

    The quickest way to do this that work for me was using Skytag’s FileBuddy.

    As an aside I attempted a command-line string “touch -t 201911240000 /Volumes/MUSIC/*” but it didn’t work for me. I was able to change the date modified, but not the date created.

    Once you install File Buddy the process is rather simple.

    1. Select all the folders and drag them to top of the File Buddy program icon on the Dock.
    2. Once File Buddy opens, click OK on the Get Info screen if it appears.
    3. You should get a screen similar to the one above. Simply change the Created Date using the drop-down, I just used Current Date and Time.
    4. Click “Change All”. This may take a few minutes if you have lots of files. Once complete the problem should be fixed.

    I honestly don’t know what caused the problem in the first place, but wanted to pass along what I found to be the quickest solution.

  • Christmas Vacation Light Show Tribute

    It’s crunch time this weekend, our Christmas Light Show is scheduled to start next weekend and we’re WAY behind with setup and programmed songs.

    This morning I spent some time cutting together a Tribute Mashup of the 1989 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation movie. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time. I just finished programming lights for the song and I’m kinda excited with the results.

    Stay Tuned!

  • Thursday Run

    Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

    Today I’m sharing a photo from my run this morning. The quiet calm stillness along the Blackstone River, especially in the colder months, is just awesome.

    My goal over the next few weeks is to slowly get back into a running routine. I’ve skipped too many days and I’ve watched my monthly mileage drop significantly this year.

  • Merit Badges

    I’m making an effort to post on this blog more frequently, even if it’s just a quick photo. Tonight I had the opportunity to bring my son to a Merit Badge College where he completed his Welding Merit Badge. He worked on this cool Fleur De Lis.

    Just a proud Dad. He’s learning so much and enjoying all the different experiences scouting brings.

  • Late Night Repair

    Light-O-Rama CTB16PC 16 Channel Lighting Controller

    In helping my son prepare and set up his Christmas light show this year we discovered half the channels on this controller stopped working. This is our second Light-O-Rama CTB16PC controller, both were purchased as a kit.

    Just in case another Light-O-Rama ower runs into this page here’s the troubleshooting we performed and the ultimate solution that fixed our issue. (Spoiler: Assembly Mistake!)

    Symptom: Channels 1-8 Not Working. The controller connects to the network fine, 9-16 working 100%.

    Troubleshooting: First thought, blown fuse. We were setting things up in the rain and assumed it was related to a short.

    Fuse tested fine with a multimeter, swapped the two fuses in the unit, again fuses working fine.

    Used the multimeter to confirm 120v making it through fuse hold and tested each “hot” channel output. Things normal, although no voltage on channel 1-8 hots, as expected.

    After reviewing the Light-O-Rama forums I decided to take the controller completely apart and check for any bad solder joints. Of course, I made this decision at 11 PM. I was really trying to avoid this, such a time-consuming process.

    Success! After a few minutes of careful inspection, I found two pins on an IC that I plain missed completely during assembly, no solder! I carefully applied solder, checked a few other spots and reassembled.

    BINGO! Problem solved.

    U4 IC 20 PIN (74ACT273)

  • Jurassic Park Jeep

    Jurassic Park Jeep – EpicMovieCars.com

    My son had a Jurassic Park Movie themed Birthday Party over the weekend. After watching the original movie my wife coordinated a visit from TWO real-life Jurassic Park cars. These cars were a big hit for the kids….and adults.

    Kids had a ride around the neighborhood and had fun scaring some dogs with the built-in (hidden) speakers that played some classic sound effects from the movie. Just think growling dinosaur with extra bass…fun stuff!

    The vehicles were in mint condition! You can check out their website here: EpicMovieCars.com

  • Backing Up Large Video File Collections to AWS Glacier Deep Archive

    Part 1 – Why AWS Glacier Deep Archive?

    Backing up large collections of raw video footage and edit masters remains a real challenge for anyone working in the video production world. As the Executive Director of a local community media station, I’m responsible for maintaining a Synology NAS which currently holds 55TB of final edit master videos. The idea of incorporating “Cloud Storage” into our backup procedures has always interested me, but the expense has held me back.

    Until recently, our backup was rudimentary. We utilized Archive.org, which is a wonderful organization operating an online digital library of print, audio, and video works. They allow users to upload high-quality MPG2 files to be added to the collection and unlike YouTube, they offer the ability to download your original upload at any time.

    For us, this was a win-win. Archive.org provided a FREE way for us to share our content, preserve it for the future, and have an offsite backup if we ever needed it.

    We love the Archive and will continue to support them. The main goal of keeping our content open and available to the public for decades to come is just amazing.

    That said, the Archive is NOT a backup solution, but given our budget constraints, it was a quasi backup. We frequently said, “If the Synology NAS went up in flames, at least the videos would not be lost forever”…but the recovery process might take that long.

    When I learned about Amazon’s Glacier Deep Archive service earlier this year I was instantly intrigued and thought this might finally be a perfect solution for our needs. At “$1 per TERABYTE per month” they certainly had my attention.

    Glacier Deep Archive is a new product offering by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that falls under their S3 Storage product line. Deep Archive is the lowest cost storage class. When Amazon released the new storage class on March 27, 2019 their press release highlighted several use cases including media and entertainment companies:

    “there are organizations, such as media and entertainment companies, that want to keep a backup copy of core intellectual property. These datasets are often very large, consisting of multiple petabytes, and yet typically only a small percentage of this data is ever accessed—once or twice a year at most. To retain data long-term, many organizations turn to on-premises magnetic tape libraries or offsite tape archival services. However, maintaining this tape infrastructure is difficult and time-consuming; tapes degrade if not properly stored and require multiple copies, frequent validation, and periodic refreshes to maintain data durability.”

    Amazon Web Services Press Release, March 2019

    There is some “fine print” to be aware of, although none of it’s a real concern for me. There are additional charges for recovering your data and the data is not instantly available, retrieval time is up to 12hrs, but that’s the trade-off for the low cost. Again, not a big deal for my use case. You can check out the Amazon S3 Website for more specifics. The whole idea of Glacier Deep Archive is LONG TERM storage, files that you need to keep and don’t want to lose but may never actually need to access if your local files remain intact.

    For media professionals, I see Glacier Deep Archive as a great tool for:

    • Wedding and Event Videographers who want to backup raw footage, master files, and other assets.
    • Community Media Stations (PEG Access) looking to backup programs and raw footage.
    • Local Production Companies, again for all the same reasons.

    Before I share my workflow and experiences with AWS Glacier Deep Archive let’s jump back for a second and talk about backup best practices for just a minute.

    3-2-1 Backup

    Peter Krogh’s 3-2-1 Backup Strategy is a well-known best practice adopted by IT professionals and the government. The 3-2-1 concept is rather simple:

    3. Keep at least three copies of your data
    The original copy and two backups.

    2. Keep the backed-up data on two different storage types
    Multiple copies prevent you from losing the only copy of your data. Multiple locations ensure that there is no single point of failure and your data is safe from disasters such as fires and floods.

    1. Keep at least one copy of the data offsite
    Even if you have two copies on two separate storage types but both are stored onsite, a local disaster could wipe out both of them. Keep a third copy in an offsite location, like the cloud.

    With the 3-2-1 Backup goals in mind, I’d like to share my experiences with AWS Deep Archive in Part 2 of this blog post. I’ll share the workflow I’ve established after running into some issues initially.

    Keep in mind, I’m new to the AWS platform and I’m a media professional, not an IT genius. I am a tech geek and enjoy the challenge of learning new things. If you have any feedback, tips, or suggestions please feel free to post in the comments.

    Part 2 – Backup to AWS Glacier Deep Archive using CLI
    Coming Soon