Keeping it portable

[Dave]

Has anyone solved the problem of keeping things portable yet flexible enough when it comes to live production ?

Even if you are lucky enough to own the likes of a Sony Anycast live production console which takes care of most of the switching and mixing, you still end up with external DSP for audio compression/EQ, line drivers for your remote feeds, video proc amps, and then on top of that, some sort of an encoder, and a laptop.

Throw in a couple of cameras, tripods, radio mics, hard drive recorders, lighting, cables, power distribution and you soon need your own road crew to support the event.

Dave

[Nico McLane]

Dave,
Excellent question. Of course devices are getting smaller and that helps, but to be really safe at any venue, we always OVER stock on back up! Let's see how people are keeping it portable - I am looking into the "SaaS" encoder model that also works as a virtual switcher, which encodes and gives you the ability to do a live edit, LiveStream is one of those companies, but then of course you need to use their "look and feel" and FLV. In theory, with a powerful enough laptop you should be able to "broadcast" a really rich experience. Have you tried their free demo yet? (P.S. I don't work for them :-) Just interested in their business model and their CMS)

Best,
Nico

[Dave]

Hi Nico

Overstocking is fine if you have the means to move it all around and have the space to store it at the venue. Often though people don't have that luxuary available to them.

Here it's pretty much a case of one or two people manually moving stuff around and often with only 30mins either side of the event to set-up and take-down before someone else needs the room.

Would people really trust a totally laptop-based solution for live production ?

If you are working with multiple balanced audio / video feeds then chances are you would still need some sort of an external box to get the feeds into the laptop.

Also without an external control surface, some control adjustments can be awkward and some of the metering feedback in these applications can be pretty grim. Even more of an issue if you've ditched the upstream compressor.

That's why the likes of the Sony Anycast is quite appealing, however not a cheap option, and is restricted to streaming Real Media formats withough an external encoder.

I had a bit of a look at the Livestream Livepack, as we have one situation here where portable link aggregated 3G type solutions could be useful.

Dave