Michael Webber

Category: Community Television

  • Ahern Career Day 2015

  • Using Draw.io for Video Production

    Draw.io LogoOver the past few years I’ve really embraced the “cloud” in my professional workflows. Google Drive is my primary cloud service and I use third party applications that extend the basic office tools in Drive.

    Draw.io is one of those apps that I’ve discovered, a wonderful (and free) tool that offers a web based drawing for floor plans, network diagrams, and mind maps. The documents can be saved to various cloud storage services, including Google Drive.

    Today I was able to sketch up a quick floorplan for a nine camera video production using Draw.io and I’m happy with the results. The drawing took me about an hour and half, I could spend some more time cleaning it up and color coding things better, but I’m happy with the results.

    We will be covering two musical performances over the course of one weekend inside a high school gymnasium. The gym lighting will be shut off and our crew will light and shoot both concerts for air on local community TV and for student/family keepsakes.

    The production is ultra low-budget using existing equipment resources and a volunteer crew.

    Here’s a screenshot of my draft 1.0 Draw.io camera plan:

    Draw.io TV Production Camera Plan Layoout
    Draw.io TV Production Camera Plan Layoout

  • Hilton Hhonors Wifi vs. Verizon Hotspot

    Our family is on a short two-day ski trip in New Hampshire, staying at Hampton Inn & Suites North Conway. The hotel is great, extremely family friendly, and the staff are nice. There’s an amazing mini-water park  inside the hotel, bingo night, movie night complete with popcorn. Just a wonderful place.

    Unfortunately, I needed to sneak in a quick Skype TV interview for work Monday morning and was hoping the hotel wifi would be strong enough. In running some speed tests the night before and I was frightened by the results. I’m not a big business traveler, but I’ve heard the hotel wifi can vary significantly and often performs rather poorly.

    I’m barely getting 1MB download and upload speeds and about half that:

    Hilton Hhonors Wifi Speed Test Results
    Hilton Hhonors Wifi Speed Test Results

    To be fair, I was testing the wifi at the worst possible time, 9pm on school vacation week. I believe the hotel is nearly full, it will be curious to see if there’s any improvement in the morning.

    (more…)

  • Ask Bill Keegan Set

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    Today I spent a few hours getting ready for a new production that will be starting up here at Foxboro Cable Access.  Town Manager Bill Keegan will record his first “Ask Bill Keegan” show on Tuesday.  Here is set version 1.0, which is comprised of existing set decor items, chairs, etc.  So this is a no-budget setup.

    The window in  the background looks into a conference room, I hope to somehow incorporate this into the set better…maybe with some lighting in the conference room, not sure what yet…

  • FreeNAS, Twit.tv Exposes Me to Anouther Great Tool

    Not sure why I’ve not heard about FreeNAS before, but this looks great! I’m definitely going to spend some time learning more.

    Wonder if this could be a good, low-cost solution for storing archived video files, raw footage, and other large production files.

  • Foxboro, MA – Snow Storm Video Clip 2/13/14

  • Final Cut 10.0.9 Update Released July 30th

    Final Cut X 10.0.9 Update Released
    Updating Final Cut Pro X workstations today.