# Video Monitoring



## peacefulone61 (Dec 1, 2017)

I am working with a Musical Director That feels the set (well any set) will be blocking his view of the performers. So I have to include a two way monitor system. One that allows him to see the actors all over the stage and one to let the actors see the conductor at all times. 

I have never had to do this before and Do not even know what to do to start a conversation on this. 

Any help that can be offered would be greatly appreciated.


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## dbaxter (Dec 1, 2017)

Least expensive way I've found is to re-purpose security systems. We've had a Harbor Freight one like this in use for 8 years. You'll need to spend a little more for the conductor to actor stream to get a bigger screen for the stage to see.


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## Silicon_Knight (Dec 1, 2017)

For the actors seeing the conductor, one of the critical aspects of this type of system is latency. We have tried many approaches, but many of them did not work for this reason (the conductor would appear "behind" to the singers on stage).


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## peacefulone61 (Dec 6, 2017)

Silicon_Knight said:


> For the actors seeing the conductor, one of the critical aspects of this type of system is latency. We have tried many approaches, but many of them did not work for this reason (the conductor would appear "behind" to the singers on stage).


That has been a large fear of mine.


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## NickVon (Dec 10, 2017)

Composite Analogue and an old 27" CRT TV will be your friend. 

Our Venue frequently have small to medium sized pits backstage behind our Cyc. I use "sensormatic" security cameras, re-purposed from our old college book store when they moved, 250' lengths of RG6 BNC cable. Our Balcony monitor is an old 27" CRT Sony, with a Composite input on the back. Our monitor just sits our booth floor but i'm fairly sure you can still find wall/ceiling mounts for them if needed. At the conductors position I have a 7" Lilliput LCD screen, which has a variety of inputs, but most important for me is the Composite in. The whole setup camera's MD's LCD and cable can't be more then 400$ and that is if you buy them all brand new. The Large Analogue CRT might be the most expensive item to source. There are some options in the DTV world that have analogue inputs still but they generally get expensive when you try to find the ones that have a latency that works for us.


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## Silicon_Knight (Dec 10, 2017)

NickVon said:


> Composite Analogue and an old 27" CRT TV will be your friend.
> 
> Our Venue frequently have small to medium sized pits backstage behind our Cyc. I use "sensormatic" security cameras, re-purposed from our old college book store when they moved, 250' lengths of RG6 BNC cable. Our Balcony monitor is an old 27" CRT Sony, with a Composite input on the back. Our monitor just sits our booth floor but i'm fairly sure you can still find wall/ceiling mounts for them if needed. At the conductors position I have a 7" Lilliput LCD screen, which has a variety of inputs, but most important for me is the Composite in. The whole setup camera's MD's LCD and cable can't be more then 400$ and that is if you buy them all brand new. The Large Analogue CRT might be the most expensive item to source. There are some options in the DTV world that have analogue inputs still but they generally get expensive when you try to find the ones that have a latency that works for us.



Yes. We found that you'll likely want to remove all "processing" delays (including HDMI or other digital interconnections, image stabilization, etc.). I was using an old 8mm Handi-cam with a composite video (a.k.a line-level video), routed to a rear projection TV with a composite input (what we already had installed for a confidence monitor). We still had some lag, but it was ~100ms which was mostly tolerable. The only issue we had was that the orchestra musicians could also see the screen and they could detect the difference between the live conductor and projected image on the confidence monitor. To solve this (and to muffle some audio), we just put up pipe and drape in front of the Orchestra. (They are in a raised loft behind the performance area instead of down in a pit). It's not ideal, but it's the best we could do with the facilities we had and the budget that was available (or lack thereof).


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## NeroCaesar (Oct 21, 2021)

I am in a similar situation, but looking for a 4-years-later update on tech.
It sounds like analog is better than digital like HDMI for latency/delay, is that still true?

What kind of cameras do you folks use? I don't know any camcorders with an HDMI out...

I have a small budget for this maybe $500

In my mind I would love something simple, like a web cam hook up to a Flat computer monitor, sort of level.
(Obvious that wouldn't work as you would need a computer connecting the two)

Any new tech that could make this simple?


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## Silicon_Knight (Oct 21, 2021)

NeroCaesar said:


> I am in a similar situation, but looking for a year year old update on tech.
> It sounds like analog is better than digital like HDMI for latency/delay, is that still true?
> 
> What kind of cameras do you folks use? I don't know any camcorders with an HDMI out...
> ...


I would be surprised if any type of webcam/computer would have a sufficiently low latency for the actors. You'll likely want a camera with an HDMI (or SDI) out, connected directly to a display with an HDMI (or SDI) input. We did find on our display that it had a "Gaming mode" that disabled some of the fancy processing features and reduced the latency, but YMMV.


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## almorton (Oct 21, 2021)

Yes, try to avoid doing type conversions along the way, keep it one standard end to end. Each conversion adds latency.


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## TimMc (Oct 21, 2021)

NeroCaesar said:


> I am in a similar situation, but looking for a 4-years-later update on tech.
> It sounds like analog is better than digital like HDMI for latency/delay, is that still true?
> 
> What kind of cameras do you folks use? I don't know any camcorders with an HDMI out...
> ...


The Canon Vixia R-8x series of cam-corders have a "clean" HDMI output (or the OSD can be turned off in the HDMI output).

If you can find one, they're under $400.


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## NickVon (Oct 22, 2021)

Gaming mode on what ever TV (if using one is important, as mentioned above).
If you run is longer then 75' You should really be looking at SDI (which is the digital equivalent of Old school analog component) which is to say it's full raw data just digital.
There should be some pretty basic SDI security cameras out there for not to much, and SDI cable (which is really just RG6 wire is inexpensive compared to HDMI. BUT finding a SDI native monitor of any size larger then like 6" gets very expensive. B&H sells some "Lilliput" monitors in a variety of sizes and interface type and I've used there 6" with SDI/HDMI,Component,Composite, and it work fine for these kind of purposes. True Videographers probably would not like it as a camera reference, but it works great as a conductor cam monitor.

This seems to be the newest revision of the one I have. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1590035-REG/lilliput_h7s_7_4k_ultra.html

We had a Canon XA35 that we used for wide shot recording that we fed the conductor cam, and backstage monitor with the help up some SDI active splitters, But tehre seem to be other Security Camera wth HD-SDI output options around 250$ each


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## JohnD (Oct 22, 2021)

I don't know if this will help but some recent TV's aimed at gaming have lower latencies.







Best Gaming TV: Low Input Lag and High Picture Quality

These TVs maximize image quality and minimize delay between your controller and the action.



www.cnet.com


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