Léoville - Latest Comments in The Skypesaurus Story

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Mann Moore — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:34:00 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Henry B. Tindall, Jr. — Fri, 01 May 2009 08:50:50 -0000

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!!!

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Craig Bowers — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:38:51 -0000

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")

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Phil — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:46:22 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

kshep — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:20:35 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Eric Adler — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:14:40 -0000

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).

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Stephen Michael Kellat — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:07:22 -0000

Hmm. Interesting...

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Keith Barrett — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:53:39 -0000

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!

Thanks, Keith
http://twitter.com/keithbar...

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

dougwalk — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:32:56 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Civuck — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:32:39 -0000

Use Svideo->Composite adapters on the video output of each PC and feed them into this:
http://www.ambery.com/pivip...
Then feed the output of that into the Tricaster using composite->svideo adapters.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Civuck — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:19:39 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Todd Cochrane — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:16:38 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

peterh_oz — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:44:13 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

ceejaydp — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:25:35 -0000

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!

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Elliot Block — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:36:48 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

triptrish — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:33:10 -0000

Colleen, your amazing. GREAT Job. Leo and gang are very lucky to have you.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

jceeetle — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:47:13 -0000

Geez Leo, do I need to increase my monthly TWIT contribution now? Who's going to pay for all those toys?

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Enduratweet — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:01:17 -0000

I am amazed with what can be done with relatively low cost off the shelf tech. Inspired actually! Awesome!

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

clcdan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:31:54 -0000

What you have done is good.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

James Bednarz — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:57:41 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

scanmikey — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:46:09 -0000

OK thanks Leo. I have seen Skypesaurus in action and I am impressed.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

Daniel Brusilovsky — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:44:16 -0000

Hope it works!! That's a serious setup.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

leolaporte — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:36:41 -0000

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.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

leolaporte — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:29:50 -0000

That's what we bought - so it must work! We did buy some cheaper RAM and had a problem. Hence the Corsair.

Re: The Skypesaurus Story

leolaporte — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 22:27:18 -0000

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!