The Down and Dirty Tech side of Ethernet Performing

Layers!

It took two full days of preparation to set up and execute this four-way ethernet driven performance. Lots of hard work by many hands; learning on the fly; trying to put into practice what had been learned in class. The experience on the whole was

successful;
fretful;
frustrating;
fulfilling;
took much more time than we thought;

..and thank God for Tom Beyer! His experience with all the necessary procedures, setup, equipment, etc. etc was invaluable. He push/pulled, cajoled, taught, explained (again and again) until the setup was successful.

DAY 1
LAYER 1 - Computers
Round up and bring all necessary equipment to the theatre; cables, adaptors, testers, video distribution amps, video mixers, splitters, computers, monitors, tape, pens, DVD players, projectors, amps, headsets, headphones. Lots of hands made light work.

All cables were tested and separated into types/sizes. This step saved lots of later agita, as a few were found to be no good. These were labeled and set aside.


COMPUTERS
Three computers were set up on the tech table. As they were new, all were given unique names and registered. Connections were established to the Internet2 network. All three obtained unique IP addresses. iChat software was set up. iChat accounts were established for each station which uniquely identified them to all participants. Computer 1 was set up to accept incoming connections from all participants, BCC, UCSC, Stonybrook and NYU. Tom Beyer manned this machine. Computer 2 was configured to handle incoming & outgoing connections from BCC and Computer 3 to handle connections to and from UCSC. This overall configuration facilitated the projections onto the three screens; center screen being the projections from the whole group; and screens 2 and 3 handling single connections from UCSC and BCC. As Stonybrook's participation consisted of only one initiated piece, that data was routed only through computer 1.

It took until mid-afternoon to accomplish the above; it was then discovered that the newer Macs had the capacity for outputting 800 speed Firewire only, which is incompatible with the Video equipment being used; after a fruitless search for 800 to 400 adapters, it was determined that the computers would be replaced with laptops...ah, all for naught. Having set up the first round of computers did serve as a high learning curve, and the next day's replacement with laptops went much faster as we had "been down that road" earlier.

CAMERAS
The second layer of setup involved the three cameras in the theatre. The camera (and all subsequent connections from them) were labeled consistently so to facilitate identification and troubleshooting. Camera 1 and all subsequent connections (Video Distribution Amps, splitters, SVideo cables, composite cables, were all labelled on the actual cables wherever they connected to something else; the chain looked something like this:

Camera 2 -(to)-VDA2 (composite cable) -(to)- Switch2 - to - Projector 2
VDA2 -outs- to Switch2
to Monitor2
Switch2 -outs- to Projector2
Switch2 -in- from VideoMixer2 (Edirol)