This weekend someone fed the gremlins after midnight and they pretty much ravaged our technology all weekend long.
It started with the camera cables and moved to the projectors and then finally settled in the singer confidence monitors. Throughout this migration we lost signal to or from each of those pieces in turn. Some of it had to be fixed after service, but one of the fixes I was proud of was one we managed in service, during the worship.
So here is the set up, at the start of the 3rd song of a 4 song set I look up to see that camera 4 has a rolling signal, experience tells me that it’s because it lost genlock. This was confirmed by my camera op after I said “cam4 check your genlock” he responded with “what genlock the cable is gone!” The genlock cable had broken off his camera. Broken. OFF. The. Camera. So he moved to the wings and said “I guess I am out” after a second I said “not necessarily, we have a prayer coming up between songs I think I can get you back in.” while continuing to switch cameras for our director (who had only directed once before and still did an amazing job) I was diving into the reference menu on my carbonite, by the time we started the prayer I had slapped frame synchronizer on the camera to compensate for the lost genlock and my camera was back in business.
I know that reads really boring, but you have to imagine it more in the Star Trek; the ship is under attack-something is broken-things are exploding-re routing power-during the fight-for the win, to really appreciate how it all went down.
It was cool, but maybe you had to be there
All of that to say I LOVE MY CARBONITE!!!
That is why you are the man,Mark Hanna! If this happened at 1115, I saw nothing and you know I catch some of the stuff…
Very nice!