# graduation video/audio live feed to outdoor marquee with under $500 budget in africa



## mdmatic (Dec 9, 2011)

Hi guys,

I live in Africa at the moment, working as a volunteer for one of the large rural hospitals in southern Malawi. The College of Health Sciences next door is holding a graduation ceremony at one of the community halls and would like to also set up a marquee/tent on the football field for overflow people. The event is happening on the 18th of Dec, next Sunday. I need to see what is the cheapest and most cost efficient way of running a live video and audio feed to a location about 50-80 meters away.

There is a guy who will be working on the sound for the main hall and will be using 4 mic's and a mixer. I would also be helping, but my primary aim is to work on getting audio and video from the main hall to the marquee outside.

Going by what others have been posting here in various posts, what I am thinking is as follows:

a) Set up a camcorder on a tripod which will have RGB or component or S-Video out, then set up a projector in the marquee and have the video cable connecting into the projector, so video display is OK.

b) what about the sound? how can I bring the sound from the mixer/microphones to the marquee? what do I need on the receiving end?

c) the marquee has the capacity to hold up to 400 people - what screen size would be recommended and what speakers should i be looking at?

d) what cables woudl i need?

e) i have a computer (both macbook pro and a dell), would it be better to throw in a laptop in the loop?

i am basically looking for real low-end set up here. Being Africa and everything is pretty much donated and only half works OK, I dont have much of a budget, if any. We are about 1.5 hours drive from Blantyre, the commercial capital of Malawi so I may be able to source some equipment from there but it will most likely be 2nd hand/old. Everything is so much more expensive here than in the West.

Looking forward to your replies!!!

All the best


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## cpf (Dec 9, 2011)

mdmatic said:


> Hi guys,
> 
> I live in Africa at the moment, working as a volunteer for one of the large rural hospitals in southern Malawi. The College of Health Sciences next door is holding a graduation ceremony at one of the community halls and would like to also set up a marquee/tent on the football field for overflow people. The event is happening on the 18th of Dec, next Sunday. I need to see what is the cheapest and most cost efficient way of running a live video and audio feed to a location about 50-80 meters away.
> 
> ...


 
How far is this tent from the main building?

b) Just run XLR from some alternate outputs of the main board (aux, tape out, daisy chained off the speakers, whatever) and hook them into the speakers you have in the tent. There might be some lag between the sound and the image, though, see E

e) If you could stream the video between the two points it could save you lots of cabling. The trade off being delay, which doesn't matter of the two areas are isolated (plus you no longer need to worry about audio/video synchronization) and a higher level of technical knowledge in the setup (nothing extreme, PM me for ideas)


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## museav (Dec 9, 2011)

*Re: graduation video/audio live feed to outdoor marquee with under $500 budget in afr*

mdmatic, it sounds like many of your decisions may be decided by what equipment is available to you. My comments are:

a) This looks like one area where what is available to you may be a major factor. It may be some tradeoffs involved, for example a component video image would likely look better than a S-Video or composite video image but will also require more cabling and a camera and projector that support it.

b) As cpf noted, you hopefully can get a signal from the audio mixer and then run that into an amplifier or powered speakers at the tent.

c) The number of people does not matter as how far they would be from the screen. The other factor this brings up is the light levels you will have to overcome, the greater the ambient light on the screen the brighter the projected image needs to be.

d) The cable will depend on what you do. It could be as simple as high quality RG6 or possibly RG-59 coax cable for the video and some good shielded, twisted pair audio cable for the audio. Or it might be CAT5/5e cable between two audio/video baluns or interfaces, in fact that may well be the best option if such devices are available to you.

e) With the 50-80m or 164'-262' distance direct streaming between two computers is an option, however you would have to encode the stream at the source end, decode it at the receive end and have some network connection between those devices. That may not be that complex if the equipment and software is available, for example if you have a way to get the video out of the camera into one computer and software or hardware to then stream that content. However, I'm not sure why a simple direct cabled connection or an audio and video over UTP/CAT solution would not work and avoid having other equipment, and thus additional setup and more places to have something go wrong, involved.


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## mdmatic (Dec 13, 2011)

*Re: graduation video/audio live feed to outdoor marquee with under $500 budget in afr*

hi guys,

thank you so much for the insight! i think i have this under control now.

so it looks like we will be hiring the Sony HVRZ1U; apparently this is the only 'professional' camera the only A/V hire shop in Malawi has on offer. Still waiting to get a quote from them.

As for sound, I am getting a pair of samew speakers that will be going into the main hall and will try and run them directly out of the mixer.

I will post again once the gear arrives.

Thank you again for you help!

Zikomo (thank you in Chichewa)!


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