Audience Screen - Your Methods?

[dag0620]

One of my latest projects of things to try to tackle is getting together a successful audience screen for our teams off-season event, without having to get a video production service to do it.

I've got most of this figured out, and understand the concept (FMS Audience Program spits out the screen with chroma key, and chroma-keying software is used for the layover, etc.). Now theres several ways to go about this to get the end product, and thats what I'm here for.

I want to ask teams/individuals who've done audience screen before what they feel works best in a video rig for an FRC competition. The info I want to know is what hardware and software you use to accomplish this task, any tips or tricks you may have, and the aprox. price point it costs you to accomplish this.

Any help would be great!

[R.C.]

I would be very interested in this.

I don't have any knowledge in this area, but was wondering has a newer version of FMS lite out or FMS?

Thanks,

-RC

[Ben Martin]

In the past, the IRI has used equipment loaned from Cyber Blue's high school. The core component is a ~20 year-old video switcher with four video inputs. This is the sort of equipment the school used years ago for filming the school news, but it still works great for robotics events. Beyond that, we used anywhere from 3-5 TV's, 3-4 cameras, a ton of RCA/BNC/Coaxial cable, and a powered video output box for sending the feed to different sources (webcast, projector screen, pits, NASA TV for a couple of years, etc). We also used headsets for communication between camera operators and the switcher operator.

[Scott L.]

I have used a tricaster ($9,000), 300+ ft. coax, 3 server grade computers for encoding, recording, music, web pages, etc. A XL-1s camera, 24-port network switch, 8-port kvm switch, scan converter, programmable channel modulator, 24-input audio mixer,various lengths of network, rca, 1/8", xlr, bnc, firewire, usb cables, xlr mics, 35 mile walkie talkies with throat mics(pickup direct vibration from throat and spine 90% noice reduction), DVD recorder, camera tripod, mic stands, wireless access points, vpn router, custom built 12U mobile server cabinet, etc. ~$25,000 of equipment.