Simply awe inspiring - great work. I've been looking for suggestions for multi-monitor mounts for a while, glad to hear the Ergotron is working well.
Vince Linuz
· 9 months ago
Wow that's so nice,good work.
greg
· 9 months ago
Great job Colleen and Leo!!
Mark
· 9 months ago
Wow,leo that new mixer looks cute,more controls to play with ha ha! :) congrats!
Billy Doyle
· 9 months ago
Man that's awesome! Now I need to do it for under $1000, but probably with less screens... :D I love TWiT and all the work you guys do for it!
klrabbit
· 9 months ago
been watching you over the past couple of weeks, there were times it looked liked you were ready to tear your hair out, but it looks really good.
Gustavo Shad
· 9 months ago
This is so great Leo.. Top gear mate... Keep it up. I am a big fan.
TheBusyBrain
· 9 months ago
That's purty pimp Leo! A super beast indeed! You've obviously noticed already, but it should be said again... Colleen is indispensable!
peterh_oz
· 9 months ago
Gday Leo
I'm wondering the following:
1. are you using 100% green power electricity (I hope so!)
2. why not use 4 x E-box PC - would be much smaller and use less power - they're only running skype?
3. why not use 4 x virtual machines on a single box, again less power = less running costs. 1 box = less setup costs. Again, only running skype?
4. why windows and not linux? I'm a windows guy so its not a "this is better than that" question, just interested that's all.
I just wish your time zone was more Aussie-Viewer-friendly :) Tho it'll be better in a couple of weeks when Daylight Savings finishes (and yours has started now). 5am starts are better than 3am starts - especially for the later shows!
Can't use VMs, as Leo needs to bring out an S-Video feed from each caller, which means a seperate graphics card (well, integrated graphics controller in this case) per machine. A VM-based system would use just one machine with only one graphics output for all VMs.
leolaporte
· 9 months ago
We're not green, alas. But we have endeavoured to stick with low power solutions when possible. The Mini-ITX case is very low power. Our entire lighting grid uses only 250-watts. Nevertheless, we do use a lot of power to do what we do. I'd love to go all solar, but since we rent the studio I don't think that's likely.
The Ebox is a good looking solution - Colleen may not have know about them. Our Atoms were cheap, and had s-video out, which was a key part of the solution. They also offer optical audio out which we'll be using soon. We are planning to add DC power bricks to them to eliminate fan noise.
Virtual machines won't work. You need four discrete audio and video channels - that means four hardware boxes.
I wanted to make sure we had the latest version of Skype to work with. The Linux versions seem to lag the Windows versions.
Thanks for watching!
peterh_oz
· 9 months ago
Cheers that explains why. Quick follow-up question:
Don't any electricity companies offer 100% green electricity there? You wouldn't have to install solar, you'd just source your electricity from a "100% green" supply source. It may even be the incumbent, but at a slightly higher price. Eg here it is around $4-$7 per week extra (domestic, tho business is also available) for govt accredited 100% "greenpower", and ALL providers offer it. The retailer simply buys that portion wholesale from a green source eg wind farm, and its govt controlled and audited so they can't pull a shonky.
Cheers and thanx for taking time to reply Leo.
TechImprovement
· 9 months ago
Who came up with the (incredibly awesome) name?
leolaporte
· 9 months ago
Colleen, of course.
Kyle
· 9 months ago
I know on the wiki it says you have a dsl connection with 6MB down and 768K up just for Skype, but running 4 video and audio, does it ever lag to the point where the video shuts down and the audio suffers? I wonder how much of your bandwidth your actually using.
Very cool setup. Keep the "how we do things in the studio" coming. I love it!!!!
leolaporte
· 9 months ago
We have a ton of bandwidth. Currently the Skypesaurus runs on our Comcast business class cable with 4Mbits up and 30 down. It's working fine, but we've ordered IEEE 802.3ah from Sonic.net which will give us a symmetric 10Mbps (or possibly 12mbits because we're two blocks from the CO). We'll use that for Skypesaurus starting tomorrow or the next day.
We also have a T1 for video streaming, a business class DSL line for another Skype box (which we use for the single host shows), and ISDN for the radio show. We spend $1200/month for bandwidth and need it.
RCopelan
· 9 months ago
Thanks for the very detailed explanation. You did leave out (or I missed it) one very important feature of the Skypeasarus. If you wan to reconfigure it, run it on another OS or add functionality then you can do it since everything there is of your own config. No tie in to any one vendor. Was impressed with the operation on TWiT last night.
kaeokepani
· 9 months ago
Its very comforting to see industry professionals using tech that i'm savvy with. That either means I'm right where I should be, or am ahead of the curve. I'm thinking its the former.
Also, watch out for that 8x8 Knox. That thing is a beast one you get the whole thing wired up. There's a 1 to 2 second blackout and/or vertical sync loss when you're routing the video so don't expect it to be using it to do cuts from one source to the next.
But other than that, nice solution for a problem I've run into many many times. Awesome job, Colleen and the TWiT crew!
scanmikey
· 9 months ago
Small detail I know but... are you sure about the RAM?
According to the motherboard specs, it only has one DIMM slot, not two. I found a 2GB stick that is a couple of dollars cheaper than the 2 1gb sticks you listed... I just wanted to point out the discrepancy.
Awesome build though... good work.
leolaporte
· 9 months ago
That's what we bought - so it must work! We did buy some cheaper RAM and had a problem. Hence the Corsair.
scanmikey
· 9 months ago
OK thanks Leo. I have seen Skypesaurus in action and I am impressed.
TackyTed
· 9 months ago
Great Skypesaurus, and a well done job, Colleen. Leo your lucky to have that Girl Friday around. Thanks for the shows, no TV for me, Thanks to all the TWiTs that work with you at the cottage.
Daniel Brusilovsky
· 9 months ago
Hope it works!! That's a serious setup.
James Bednarz
· 9 months ago
Loving Skypesaurus Leo. The interaction during TWiT on Sunday and Gilmore Gang (sans "the incident") on Saturday was great. I'm confident once the wrinkles are ironed out, it will add a very nice new dimension to the network. BTW, Colleen is a jewel with tons of potential. Happy to see her Full Time on the staff.
clcdan
· 9 months ago
What you have done is good.
seniormint
· 9 months ago
I am amazed with what can be done with relatively low cost off the shelf tech. Inspired actually! Awesome!
jceeetle
· 9 months ago
Geez Leo, do I need to increase my monthly TWIT contribution now? Who's going to pay for all those toys?
triptrish
· 9 months ago
Colleen, your amazing. GREAT Job. Leo and gang are very lucky to have you.
Elliot Block
· 9 months ago
When I first saw it, I was thinking, "Wow, I want to build one. Is that one PC?"
It is cool how you used the TWiT logo and made it appear stretched across the 4 screens. Good buy.
ceejaydp
· 9 months ago
i'm thinking "amazing" is a major understatement when you're talking about colleen. her creativity and innovations combined with her superlative skills just overwhelms many of the best in the community we have here. way to go colleen -- you rock!
Todd Cochrane
· 9 months ago
Leo
I have been banging my head up against the wall to do this very thing for a while now and this is the perfect solution for bringing in callers. My challenge has been the same thing you have had is the re-wiring. I am curious if you are getting any bleed through on the MixMatch because when I have a land line caller patched in via the Telos once in a while I get some cross over or has the isolation been good enough in the mixer.
Also what resolution are you running the monitors that you are sending out on the S-Video
Todd Cochrane Geek News Central
BTW I have a Podcast Award trophy for you if you could send me an address to ship it to I will get it out to ya.
Civuck
· 9 months ago
Google "Quad-Split Monitor". You should be able to find a reasonably priced box that will do that for you. Feed each of the full-screen Skype calls from each PC into the quad split box and then feed the output of that into the Tricaster as a single video source. You may need to do some Svideo-Composite flipping.
Civuck
· 9 months ago
Use Svideo->Composite adapters on the video output of each PC and feed them into this: http://www.ambery.com/pivipr.html Then feed the output of that into the Tricaster using composite->svideo adapters.
Phil
· 8 months ago
That's not a great idea - why you combine the Luminance (Y-signal) and Chrominance (C-signal - AKA the 'colour difference') you limit the bandwidth of the colour detail and spoil the finer details in the black & white part of the image. If it's at all possible leave the S-Video alone and get a switcher (Kramer have a few) that switches that standard.
dougwalk
· 9 months ago
Just listened to latest MBW talking about your new setup & boy is that impressive. Great job Coleen. Leo, good on you for giving credit where credit is due & having an environment all geared up for creative solutions.
Keith Barrett
· 9 months ago
Leo - thanks for sharing the details behind your new creation. I do have one question; what OS are you using? You detail everything but that. Please say it's Linux!
Highly doubtful, Keith, or else they'd be using Jack (or some other open-source software) to do the audio mixing for free, instead of buying a $1500 hardware mixer... Windoze indirectly sucking money out of pockets, again!!!
Stephen Michael Kellat
· 9 months ago
Hmm. Interesting...
Eric Adler
· 8 months ago
Since that router has RS232 control, you may be able to find someone on the NewTek forums (or someone else) willing to write scripts for the Tricaster to have the router automatically switch what you press on an 'extra bus' (either physical interface or virtual interface or both) to a non-live input, wait, then 'take' this extra bus into the preset bus. Also remember, if you can't get the full thing built as a script or plugin for toaster, it runs windows, you can even make an app to handle this entirely in VB and have it background or run always-on-top with 8 buttons (it won't be able to tell what's on air, but you can have it simply swap what it changes next between Tricaster inputs 3 and 4 or somesuch).
Ken Sheppardson
· 8 months ago
When you mentioned on-air the other day that you were converting the boxes over to fanless units with an external power brick, it occured to me that they're now pretty similar to the Ultra-Small Form Factor (USFF) Dell Optiplex units. The USFF boxes have the external power brick and everything. These and lots of other Optiplex models are available in bulk... most likely off-lease from call centers, etc.. on eBay for <$200 each.
Yes, you're starting off with used hardware with the associated wear and tear, but if you take into account the value of your time to assemble these sorts of low-end, commodity systems to be used in a cluster, you can often pick up a hot spare or two and still end up saving time and money.
Craig Bowers
· 8 months ago
Hey Leo,
Enjoying the setup. If you're going to look at digital boards in the future (Axia), are you including looking at Mackie's TT24? It looks like Axia's products are perhaps more Broadcast tailored than the TT24, but the thing I love with the TT24 is that it's much more analog looking many of the digital boards. Those who have used our board who are used to analog find it very approachable. It might keep the learning curve down for those co-hosts who spend time in your chair. Yet you get all the power to take snapshots of each setup (each show in your case could have a snapshot with tailored fader level, channel name/labels, EQ, compression, effects, AUX). You can have totally different setups if need be for each show, just a button click away. And as you use that customization, it's comforting to be able to backup those settings to PC. Then throw in the PC control and display, and not only are some functions quicker to use via mouse, but 2 people can mix the same or different board functions at the same time. I've even been able to mix monitors up on stage via my iPhone. It's also a lot of channels available in a small form factor with the bank switching of faders and groups. Even without linking 2 boards are you're able to, you can get a full 24 mic plus 8 line input on the analog bank, and another 24 on the digital bank with the digital snake (ethernet tethered). And the new routing options let you mix and match inputs and outputs to where-ever you need them. Certainly more than the average podcaster needs, but then you're not the average podcaster ;-) We're really enjoying ours.
Craig Bowers, Vancouver ("red beetle airport shuttle service")
Mann Moore
· 6 months ago
Thanks for this information. Numbers are what I am interested in, costs, etc, and you have provided that and so much more. Thanks for this valuable information. Colleen is the bomb and Leo, you are really a God send.
I am trying to launch an urban talk show and this information is SO valuable.
All Comments
I've been looking for suggestions for multi-monitor mounts for a while, glad to hear the Ergotron is working well.
I love TWiT and all the work you guys do for it!
You've obviously noticed already, but it should be said again... Colleen is indispensable!
I'm wondering the following:
1. are you using 100% green power electricity (I hope so!)
2. why not use 4 x E-box PC - would be much smaller and use less power - they're only running skype?
3. why not use 4 x virtual machines on a single box, again less power = less running costs. 1 box = less setup costs. Again, only running skype?
4. why windows and not linux? I'm a windows guy so its not a "this is better than that" question, just interested that's all.
I just wish your time zone was more Aussie-Viewer-friendly :) Tho it'll be better in a couple of weeks when Daylight Savings finishes (and yours has started now). 5am starts are better than 3am starts - especially for the later shows!
Cheers
Peter H
www.SeeknBuy.com.au
The Ebox is a good looking solution - Colleen may not have know about them. Our Atoms were cheap, and had s-video out, which was a key part of the solution. They also offer optical audio out which we'll be using soon. We are planning to add DC power bricks to them to eliminate fan noise.
Virtual machines won't work. You need four discrete audio and video channels - that means four hardware boxes.
I wanted to make sure we had the latest version of Skype to work with. The Linux versions seem to lag the Windows versions.
Thanks for watching!
Don't any electricity companies offer 100% green electricity there? You wouldn't have to install solar, you'd just source your electricity from a "100% green" supply source. It may even be the incumbent, but at a slightly higher price. Eg here it is around $4-$7 per week extra (domestic, tho business is also available) for govt accredited 100% "greenpower", and ALL providers offer it. The retailer simply buys that portion wholesale from a green source eg wind farm, and its govt controlled and audited so they can't pull a shonky.
Cheers and thanx for taking time to reply Leo.
Very cool setup. Keep the "how we do things in the studio" coming. I love it!!!!
We also have a T1 for video streaming, a business class DSL line for another Skype box (which we use for the single host shows), and ISDN for the radio show. We spend $1200/month for bandwidth and need it.
Also, watch out for that 8x8 Knox. That thing is a beast one you get the whole thing wired up. There's a 1 to 2 second blackout and/or vertical sync loss when you're routing the video so don't expect it to be using it to do cuts from one source to the next.
But other than that, nice solution for a problem I've run into many many times. Awesome job, Colleen and the TWiT crew!
According to the motherboard specs, it only has one DIMM slot, not two. I found a 2GB stick that is a couple of dollars cheaper than the 2 1gb sticks you listed... I just wanted to point out the discrepancy.
Awesome build though... good work.
It is cool how you used the TWiT logo and made it appear stretched across the 4 screens. Good buy.
I have been banging my head up against the wall to do this very thing for a while now and this is the perfect solution for bringing in callers. My challenge has been the same thing you have had is the re-wiring. I am curious if you are getting any bleed through on the MixMatch because when I have a land line caller patched in via the Telos once in a while I get some cross over or has the isolation been good enough in the mixer.
Also what resolution are you running the monitors that you are sending out on the S-Video
Todd Cochrane
Geek News Central
BTW I have a Podcast Award trophy for you if you could send me an address to ship it to I will get it out to ya.
http://www.ambery.com/pivipr.html
Then feed the output of that into the Tricaster using composite->svideo adapters.
Thanks, Keith
http://twitter.com/keithbarrett
Yes, you're starting off with used hardware with the associated wear and tear, but if you take into account the value of your time to assemble these sorts of low-end, commodity systems to be used in a cluster, you can often pick up a hot spare or two and still end up saving time and money.
Enjoying the setup. If you're going to look at digital boards in the future (Axia), are you including looking at Mackie's TT24? It looks like Axia's products are perhaps more Broadcast tailored than the TT24, but the thing I love with the TT24 is that it's much more analog looking many of the digital boards. Those who have used our board who are used to analog find it very approachable. It might keep the learning curve down for those co-hosts who spend time in your chair. Yet you get all the power to take snapshots of each setup (each show in your case could have a snapshot with tailored fader level, channel name/labels, EQ, compression, effects, AUX). You can have totally different setups if need be for each show, just a button click away. And as you use that customization, it's comforting to be able to backup those settings to PC. Then throw in the PC control and display, and not only are some functions quicker to use via mouse, but 2 people can mix the same or different board functions at the same time. I've even been able to mix monitors up on stage via my iPhone. It's also a lot of channels available in a small form factor with the bank switching of faders and groups. Even without linking 2 boards are you're able to, you can get a full 24 mic plus 8 line input on the analog bank, and another 24 on the digital bank with the digital snake (ethernet tethered). And the new routing options let you mix and match inputs and outputs to where-ever you need them. Certainly more than the average podcaster needs, but then you're not the average podcaster ;-)
We're really enjoying ours.
Craig Bowers, Vancouver ("red beetle airport shuttle service")
I am trying to launch an urban talk show and this information is SO valuable.