Engineering - Update

There have been several developments over the past week. The first concerns the transmission equipment, this was all removed from Pres today and placed up in TV Systems for the time being. The idea is to store it here whilst the rest of the chain is being constructed, this allows easy access to the individual items of equipment. Although this seems like a good idea on the surface, it may prove to be a bad move because now there is no reference to build the new system from, whereas before if a certain item was proving to be difficult to implement it could be checked out in Pres, now it will all have to be completely assembled from scratch.

The interactive build is proceeding well and after speaking to Max last week there are several things that he needs to implement before the next stage:
The sign-up section on the Media Bugs website (where production crews will register for their "Rave Live ID Numbers") needs to have an opt out check box or drop down in it so that people have the option to sign up-to Rave Live but will not remain on the Media Bugs system after the event.
There are a lot of engineers waiting to do some coding so we need to know what needs to be done in php and MySQL so that we can get on with it.
To proceed with Brandings' "augmented reality" logo we need the Rave Live logo as a .dae (Digital Asset Exchange) file.

The OB builds are fairly stagnant at the moment because the programme producers are yet to see the space that they have to work with at the venue (the next site visit is scheduled for the 8th March). Once they have visited then we can begin to gather their equipment requirements and contact the various companies with regards to borrowing some kit off them. There was also bad news in that SiS could not provide us with an OB unit this year due to scheduling constraints. After explaining this to management the decision was taken to approach Telegenic, who kindly provided us with a second OB unit last year, to see if they would be interested again this year. We have also began to build up a contingency plan should we not be able to obtain a truck, this would be in the form of a flyaway although positioning and equipment specifications have yet to be decided.

The last major news is that Jacques and Richard have finally managed to discuss where the lines are going to be run, they are now drawing up cable schedules for the day which can be forwarded onto Matter for them to approve. Once this is done we can begin costing and budgeting for the coax runs around the venue. We have also sent an email to be forwarded onto AEG inquiring about whether or not positioning an antenna on the O2 would be possible and if opening up the various ports needed for Adobe RTSP and MySQL access would be possible, and if there would be a cost involved in doing either of these.

Engineering - Update

Things have been progressing at a steady pace over the past few weeks. The Transmission equipment has been pulled out and reassembled on the back bench, the OB's have begun putting together system diagrams for the flyaway and the interactive team have built their server rack.

Dave (Head of Engineering), Adam (Logistics Liaison), Richard (Lines) and I went on another site visit on Jan 28th, the main reason was to investigate where the cable runs would go along with speaking again to the Matter technical staff. The main questions that had come out of the past few meetings were:

• What is the bandwidth capabilities within Matter itself, and if we needed to open up some ports who do we need to contact.
• In terms of DTT, what facilities are available and who else do we need to speak to.
• What communications facilities are currently installed, can we make use of them.
  

It turns out that the bandwidth capabilities into and out of Matter range from 2Gb - 60Gb which is perfectly suitable for pushing the live channels onto Narrowstep. However when it comes to opening up a MySQL port, so that the local database and the website database can communicate, we need to get in contact with a higher authority within the O2.

For DTT we had previously been told that there may be some existing facilities within the O2, however the Matter staff didn't know anything about this so again they suggested getting in contact with the O2.

There is already a pre-installed communications architecture within Matter, as it stands we have been given access to one of their radio channels for use on Rave Live along with another channel which can be used to contact the Matter staff directly. This is good news as it now reduces the amount of cable runs that need to be made as hard-wired comms are probably no longer required (a redundant system will still need to be looked into).

The next stage in planning for this event now relies on commissioning, the programs should be commissioned by the end of this week, meaning that next week we can meet up with the producers with Operations and begin to get some technical requirements, once we have these the flyaway and truck engineers can then implement the requirements into their plans.