Yesterday I had a very good trial for my vMix computer. I was asked to supply cameras (Sony EX-3) for a concert for the Crown Princess of Thailand. So it was a very high profile gig and the company asked for 6 cameras in total (I supplied 3) and wanted to record and edit afterwards with the properly mixed sound track of this Philharmonic Orchestra.

I saw this as a great opportunity to test my system and that's why I bought the HD-Pro option so I could record 4 cameras. According to my testing it would - just - be possible.....
The production company agreed to have me there and test the system without any financial consequences, so even it would not work, there would be no problem because all cameras were recording to their own SxS cards anyway.

As I came late in this production there was not much time to prepare. The stage and podium and camera placement was a bit awkward and also the distances were very long, 30-70 meter cable runs and that does not go too well with HD-SDI. But I could get 3 channels working connected by cable and 1 via the Teradek Cube (wireless).

But as the production company had not thought about a proper communication system it meant that I was depending on the cameramen making nice and smooth images without ugliness as refocus, position and zoom etc. That did not work always but I managed most of the time to avoid the reframing of the cameras.

I recorded the program output to mpg and the multicorder used 3 channels (no 4, the Teradek stream was not reliable enough) recording to cineform AVI as that is the option that gives the least amount of dropped frames.
a 53 minute recording showed 20, 28 and 62 dropped frames on the 3 channels, not too bad but this definitely must be improved.
The program output recording did not have any dropped frames.

All in all I was very happy how it all went, but see the need of a good communication system and tally system, so that will be purchased shortly.... ;-)

The producers were excited about the system and as they have several dance and ballet multi-cam registations lined up, I think this test was successful in showing the possibilities to them.

To be continued!

Rob