Sunday, February 7, 2021

FlyPacks! It’s a TeeVee Station-in-a-Box

by Pete Fasciano, Executive Director 02/07/2021

"What’s a flypack? It’s a highly portable, multi-camera video production system.

The design goal: As small, light, power stingy, yet capable and flexible as possible. There are ready-to-air video production systems available, but they are very limited in form and function. We wanted a true control room housed in a single go–case. That meant the custom connection of several components into a custom casing. The video switcher, video recorder, audio mixer, computers, and supporting devices are all permanently connected to each other via a wiring harness.

The flypack can be deployed on a compact 2x4 foot table – or in the back of an SUV. It requires only 160 watts (a cigarette lighter) and weighs only 40 pounds.  Packed up, it’s a box – 18x16x12 inches as a custom case, cut and assembled from Coroplast. It easily flops open in under a minute, and can accept 4 cameras, the 2 computers for graphics and Zoom sources, and up to 6 microphones. The only connections are the cameras, microphones and ethernet. There are also optional video Program and Zoom-screen feeds to external displays for hosts and guests on camera. Program audio is also available for a P.A. system. As a remote production system, our flypack is totally ‘out there’.  The typical setup time in a meeting room is 30 to 45 minutes. Laying out the longer cable runs required at a playing field takes a bit more time.

When a thing works well, do it again. So we did. We assembled two more flypacks.

Battle tested through a season of successful sports events, we’ve made some minor improvements. We are now assembling two more systems to address the rising need to cover more simultaneous events on the road – as we work to build back better."
 
And – as always –
Thank you for listening to wfpr●fm.
And, thank you for watching.

 

FlyPacks! It’s a TeeVee Station-in-a-Box
FlyPacks! It’s a TeeVee Station-in-a-Box

We assembled two more flypacks
We assembled two more flypacks


Get this week's program guide for Franklin TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) online
http://franklin.tv/programguide.pdf  

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