STREAM

04-05-13

STREAM

Final Session

Between the test session and the final session we made quite some changes. Most of them in the order of the choreography. It helped a lot when I made a storyboard, which gave us a clear vocabulary. For instance the Stage Right camera, which is Toneel Links in dutch, which Toronto thought to be standing Stage Left pointed Up Stage instead of Down Stage was now just called Camera A.

For the performances we would have audience, so for the final session our stack was on the side of the stage. The multi cables weren't long enough to reach the bridge. And all in one line, Hendrik was operating the lighting desk and sending the water image to the onstage monitor.

Also we tweaked the camera tripods a bit, adding preview screens displaying the Toronto stream and a Heads Up Display for the dancers, for when they had to approach the camera in a close up shot.

Getting connected [WARNING: TECHNICAL]

The MAKO was still working like a charm, but we couldn't get a proper connection. So there was Rob again to help us out. We both did a lot of tracing to analyse the data stream. After a while we found out that in Toronto the entire network was replaced. They actually invested a lot of money right now so it would improve the stream. Ironically it made it worse.

We've tried several solutions and different routings. We could recieve Ryerson Campus TV broadcasted from a MAKO at Ryerson University, so our end looked fine. The old NBS routing didn't work at all, but using another routing meant using a different ISP (Internet Service Provider). For some reason this ISP would eat some of the packages from Amsterdam, every now and then.

In Amsterdam we were quite lucky with IT. They supplied a direct Optic Fiber connection to the Backbone, with DHCP registration of the MAKO's MAC address and IP based filters on the Firewall. Each time we tried a different routing the Firewall had to be adjusted on our end, but Stefan from IT was still willing to help out with that being home at night after putting his kid to bed. WOW...

Then I came up with the later called 'Relay': NBS streams to AMS. AMS streams to a MAKO at RYU, with cables physically shorting the connections. RYU then sends to NBS. This worked like a charm but did result in a bigger delay, due to the extra hop. Rob did manage to get a direct link stable, but we kept the relay as backup for the times that ISP was acting up again.

Talking about delay, we tried to find a cleaner way to solve the syncing of the music. Ideal would be to send a SMPTE timecode track over the audio line. But testing indicated that the encoding algoritm of the MAKO scrambled the SMPTE so it still sounded like SMPTE but didn't work anymore. The final solution was:

Toronto played the music

Streamed it to Amsterdam, where they danced to it

Patched it through a delay for themeselves

This way we could get the music sync, but ensure the highest quality and failsafe. The delay was slightly more than 400ms (not even half a second), but a bit more for the relay. So in case Rob changed the stream from direct to relay, Kevin had to adapt the delay.

Rehearse and perform

Once we got the connection up there was not much time left to rehearse, but that was fine. We spent so much time in planning and designing this performance that everybody knew what to do. Even Bauke, our new, second cameraman, was ready for the job. During the rehearsal we made some minor changes but the second we went online and the dancers could see eachother they were ready to dance the piece and dance together.

We performed the 3th and 4th of may, both nights we got a standing ovation.

Because of the scrim in front of the audience (so they wouldn't show up in the stream) it was a bit hard for the audience to see the stream on the backdrop. But from Toronto we also recieved a seperate multicast stream via Livestream.com. During the performance the audience could use their own device to watch it closer. (Please read my thesis ('scriptie') if you don't get the reference)

To make this easy I made an embed on the schools webpage. And ofcourse we put it on the monitors in the schools entrance.

Most of our audience came on the third of May, including my parents and such. So for them we made it extra interesting, with a 'Pre-Show-Show'. Here I told a bit about the equipment and the proces, Michael told a bit about the choreographing with Shaun and Dasha explained how it was from a dancers perspective.

This was kindergarden for my crew. I just told them what shots I wanted in what order, it was up to them to make it look nice.

That's all folks

About an hour after the final performance the house was clean.

Proud we look back to a successful project and are curious what the future might bring. Because this was the first one there was not much room for experiment, it just had to work. But now we know it works, anything is possible. What if we use bolder cameraframing? What if we have more then two locations? What if each location has a full performance for an audience (our audience was looking at the back of the dancers, it felt as if they were in a television studio)? And dancers have their own devices, smartphones with cameras, what if we are able to use these?

Memorial Day

On the forth of may we had to perform a bit earlier, in order to be done before 20.00. In the Netherlands it's memorial day and we attend two minutes of silence. We finished right in time for people to get out and go where they wanted. For the people who were still in, we displayed the live stream of the local television broadcaster.