Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to today's show. Thanks for being here. I'm excited to have you here. We've got a great conversation coming up for you before we get started, though, I asked two things real quick. Number one, if you feel like you've gotten value, you've gotten better. You have increased in your knowledge. You've learned something, anything of that nature, let your friends, your colleagues, your professionals around, you know, you're at the next gig. Tell them, Hey guys, check out the gig, ready podcast. Those guys are doing some cool stuff over there. I learned this. I learned that. I'd love to have you tell someone else about us. Secondly, if you've got something that you would love to hear about or share or know about, or get better at, let me know gig
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Speaker 1 00:01:05 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:01:21 Jordan Goodfellow here with gig ready. And today we've got an awesome treat. We have Nick Rivera with Maptek he's founder and CEO of a company that creates, manages, and also does onsite execution with content, video creation, uh, D three servers, media servers, and the list goes on. Uh, we're going to have a little discussion today about media servers, workflow, how they use them, what they do and what they're best used for really looking forward to it. And, uh, let's bring Nick in Nick, how you doing today?
Speaker 2 00:01:57 Good. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 0 00:01:59 Yeah, thank you for coming in. Um, you know, as the world changes, of course, in this world that we live in right now, we're looking at, um, a totally different world than it was two months ago from the standpoint of the virus and everybody's stuck at home, however, uh, from the standpoint of content and content creation, it, um, has it really changed a lot or workflows roughly the same ideas, roughly the same things like that?
Speaker 2 00:02:31 Yeah, I think a bit of yes. And a bit of no is the thing that I think has really happened is the speed of content production in just six weeks has already sped up. I mean, I've kind of laughed with some people I've seen these means that say things like I've reached the end of Netflix. Now what, you know, we're because people are quarantine, we're burning through content at this exponential rate. So the demand for content creation across the spectrum, everything from motion content to live action, I think is really exponentially increasing right now. So I think in that regard, it's a bit of the same in terms of the production pipeline. But I think that the timelines are expediting because people are looking for what to watch what's out there. What's new. What's interesting next specially, because we can't go to live events, we're looking for a lot more diverse content. I would say people don't just want to see a sitcom. They want to experience some of the live concerts that they can't go to anymore.
Speaker 0 00:03:36 Yeah. Makes sense. So that brings us to the question of types of content before we dive into workflows and everything else. Let's, let's do a quick explanation of XR, a AR VR, all of these two letter acronyms that people use as the referring to content. Can you break those things down real quick?
Speaker 2 00:04:00 Yeah. So I think even backing up a step from that, the content world has gotten pretty fuzzy with all the acronyms and definitions and fundamentally in content you had originally 2d content, which is really, you know, you're just flat video, you're kind of after effects workflows, and then not moved into your 3d workflows, which were your Maya, your cinema 4d, uh, et cetera. And then now what's really happened is we moved into the world of real time. So rendering things live in video game engines in completely 3d spaces that look incredible. And then that bridge just into this more infinite world that you're saying is AR XR, et cetera. So the first step really on the spectrum we look at is virtual reality. So completely digitally immersed in the video game, we'll call it of visuals. You're completely encompassed by that typically VR headsets or immersive visual spaces where you're completely encompassed by that environment.
Speaker 2 00:05:07 The middle ground is your augmented reality in the simple explanation of that is, is the big craze, I guess, was the Pokemon go app that really blended the virtual world with the physical world and combine those together. I think on the other end of the spectrum, we have extended reality or immersive mixed reality as some call it, which I think is kind of a combination of virtual plus augmented to create an entirely encompassing world. So you're not as much just augmenting the world like Pokemon was, or you're adding virtual objects to the world that you're actually creating an entirely immersive space that people can exist in.
Speaker 0 00:05:52 Okay. And what about XR? Where does XR fall into that? Or is that an alternate of AR or just a variation?
Speaker 2 00:06:02 Yeah, I think the way we look at it is it's, it's kind of all the same toolkit, whether we want to go to, to augmented reality and do something let's say with an iPad or a phone versus doing something on a film set, the workflows from a content design perspective are roughly the same. We have to know 3d principles, 3d design. We have to know a lot about how to design scenes and spaces. And so the XR pieces is really kind of just that what we call it's the immersiveness of doing, uh, an building an entire environment and making that environment completely immersive and interactive in some way, shape or form. That's kind of how we define it. Got it. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:06:49 Okay. Wow. Um, so then let's talk about, I guess, starting from the beginning, you get a phone call. Someone says, Hey, Nick, we want to create whatever this huge, this world, this experience, or, you know, we want to create an event where somebody is on stage, huge backdrop behind them, big wide screen. What's the first thing that you're talking about when they make that first phone call from the beginning of this is what we want to do, you know, all the way up until, all right, now we're going to get ready to go on site. What does that process like from beginning to, to execution?
Speaker 2 00:07:27 Yeah. So when we start a project and when we look at our process, the overarching thing that we really looked at in this kind of this pyramid working down is cohesiveness in everything we really try to do as a studio from creative to technical is we want to do things that have a cohesive benefit to the show. And I think in a very simple manner, that is visual iconography. So having a piece of marketing material that matches a website that matches the stage visuals, having that coherence crossed it is we really try to look at the bigger picture, which is what does this event look and feel like? And what is the messaging behind this event? And we really try to work those into everything we do, even if that's just simple motion, visuals, projection, or things like augmented extended reality is we're really trying to look at the large picture of how does this actually tie in.
Speaker 2 00:08:30 And we want to look at how does this really benefit the brand, the customer, what they're saying, what they're doing, because we're trying to really amplify that. And the more cohesiveness there is, people have a better chance of remembering what was happening, visually identifying if the message is repeated, they're going to remember things. So we really try to look at it from that lens of if we bring technology into this picture, how is it going to amplify that top piece, which is that, that message cohesiveness, because I think that's really the first thing we're always looking at before we even get into sketches or concepts or anything really like that. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:09:12 So then, cool. So we establish how, or how is this going to fit the message? How are we best going to take the message, make it bigger, make it fit the idea and the concept of what they're looking to go for. Um, do you guys get heavily involved in what the physical items, the physical set pieces and all that stuff look like? Are you normally handed that? And then they say here's every, here's everything we want to put it on. Um, figure it out.
Speaker 2 00:09:40 Yeah. It's, it's a combination of both. We have a lot of great relationships with designers, uh, on summons of the spectrum. And then there's other events where we're actually the designers. So it really varies. But yeah, in the case of some, we really try to work as closely as we can in those partnerships to say, Hey, um, we have this interesting new piece of technology. How can we work with the designer to say, let's integrate that to create this, this ideal or this piece, because we really feel when the show is working very cohesively. When you have your show designer lighting, audio video on down, everybody working together, you're going to get a more cohesive experiences. So the more we can all figure out how to make those things tied together. Um, that's a really big piece of the spectrum. And if I can actually show you on that, of course, some slides here.
Speaker 2 00:10:42 This was actually one project that we did a couple of years ago. It's an event in Atlanta called the leader task. And this was the initial branding that we started with and working with the show designer, a good friend who lives here named Paul Green. He started sketching this set. And the idea was that the set was actually going to be a giant set piece that was projection mapped. And there were some different kinds of iterations through time of what that looked like. And what ended up becoming is it actually transitioned into a giant led screen. And the thing about a giant led screen is when you turn it off, it's just black. When you are doing a physical set and you turn it off, there's still a set. So what we did is we worked really closely with him, with the show to basically say, okay, if the set is led and we have this brand, this marketing brand that has these kind of shards of glass, what we actually did was kind of combined the two concepts together, took them marketing, took this led set.
Speaker 2 00:11:50 And what we did is we were actually able to do this, which is incorporate, uh, the content to actually become the set. So you can see here really simply is we iterated the shards of graph glass into the led screen that became the set. And we, we built these in a really interesting way that they actually served as like the animations you'll see here. So the speaker bumpers would actually play across this led screen and then they would actually animate to become the entire set. So we kind of worked with him on this idea, his first idea of a projection map said, and we said, well, if this goes to led, we could do that in a really interesting way in content to get a pretty similar effects like this. And I mean, even some interesting little details we thought as you see those two imag screens on left and right, those are not extruded.
Speaker 2 00:12:47 Those are actually just part of a flat led screen. And we actually just gave that depth to actually make it look and feel that way. So when you actually see the pre-visualization here, you can see it's just a big led screen, just big flat led screen. So that kind of goes back to that point of that, that cohesiveness of working together is by working with Paul, working with the show, we're basically able to put these pieces together and to build something in a very different way. And also a really interesting note about this workflow that was, was really fun is, um, color is a very particular thing to this client because it's a broadcast event. So in the design process, we iterate a lot of different colors, but the thing is when we get on site and we actually want to fine tune those colors.
Speaker 2 00:13:39 So what we actually did in this event is utilizing the skies, servers, media servers, and notch real-time content creation. This content is actually rendering entirely live in show. And what that means is that we could actually tweak all the colors on site. So we worked with the lighting designer with Paul, and we actually could look at the set through the lens of a camera, look at a truck engineering scopes, and we can actually fine tune the shade of green, the shade of red to work just right on camera, because everything was rendering live. So that's kind of a fun side thing about that cohesiveness is when you're all working together, when you're working with a lighting designer, with the show designer, with camera engineering, all the way down the chain, you can really build something that is visually engaging, visually interesting, pushing the envelope, kind of et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 0 00:14:40 Yeah, it looks outstanding. I, would've never known looking at the photo from the front here that, uh, that those led screens were not somehow, um, slightly depth. Uh, not like I wouldn't have known that. That was all flat. That's outstanding. That's super cool. Um, does that change, does that change much of the workflow from when you guys start creating content? So you have a design, you have a set, you know what it's going to look like and now day one, okay. We're starting to create content. Um, you know, you build in the whole plan. What does that look like when you, how do you set up a content creation workflow, I guess? Um, cause that's honestly something I really don't know about is like that, what that looks like.
Speaker 2 00:15:28 Yeah. So setting up a content creation workflow, um, for us, I should say every project is very unique. So first of all, we don't do really any projects that fit inside of in a 1920 by 10 80 frame. A lot of our specialty is large format, large scale visual. So doing things that are well above 4k. And when I say, well, if we had a project right before this, that was, uh, it was in the ballpark of 12 K by eight K. So very large content resolutions that we're dealing with. And what that pipeline looks like is, uh, to give you an example is a little bit like this is, this is a project we did, um, year bef year ago here in Atlanta. It's a large party outside of the super bowl, uh, put on by direct TV and, uh, produced by some good friends of ours in Vancouver named de facto.
Speaker 2 00:16:29 And this is an interesting one is when we projection, not these two giant cubes, we kind of have to think about a lot of things at the exact same time. So we have to first start thinking about the technical, which is how do you actually project onto these cubes and why that matters is because what we actually have to determine at the first initial stage is technically how do we do it? But we also have to determine, uh, our pixel map, which the pixel map is our, our golden rule to how we physically create the content. So in the case of these two giant 80 foot cubes, we had to very quickly figure out the technical of how you project on it, because that dictated the pixel map to how we created the content. So as you see here, uh, you can see the left and the right cube are these unfolded kind of origami pieces, which was the workflow we came up with is to take these unfolds and then basically fold them back onto the cube.
Speaker 2 00:17:34 So we have to think about that. But simultaneously with that technical side, we have a parallel track running, which is the creative side to determine what should these things look like? What should the content be? What is possible? So on our creative half of the company is everybody's thinking about what is the client trying to communicate? Are there any preconceived notions of things that the client is looking for? So we evaluate, do you have a current marketing or branding scheme that you're working with? Because if they're trying to convey a new product, a new offering, a new service, there's usually a lot of very specific branding, especially with clients such as 18 and T DirecTV, Pepsi. They have very specific things that they need to communicate, which is a certain logo, certain fonts, certain colors. We have to understand those very quickly and then we have to understand the style.
Speaker 2 00:18:34 So what's the look and feel that they want to go to. And sometimes the client is very open-ended about that. Look and feel other times they're, um, very specific because they have very, uh, uh, there have a lot of brand specifics about what they need to communicate. Like I was saying. So in the case of what you're seeing here at these cubes, uh, we've had a great relationship working with 18 T's New York creative team, because they really understand that a little bit of the technical, which is projecting on an 80 foot talk to you. And then they also understand a bit of the creative side. So we kind of work hand in hand to say, Hey, um, this works well, this is not gonna work well. And we can kind of have some given play in that to come up with something that's going to look interesting on this. I mean, kind of speeding up to this year in Miami, this is some of the visuals we did for them just back this January. So they, in this case had a very they're guidelines where they wanted this, this neon looking piece, they wanted these kind of neon bright colored lines, and they really wanted to talk about their 5g offerings. So we basically had a bit of freedom within that to play with what the actual designs looked like and came to be and realizing those, um, as we move forward.
Speaker 0 00:20:01 Yeah. That's awesome. Fantastic. So what are you guys doing? Um, sometimes flexibility, sometimes very rigid stay in your lane. These are the rules you have to abide by type stuff. What are you doing to stay organized within that? How do you guys stay and keep everything on track, um, you know, on schedule, what are you guys doing in the, in those regards,
Speaker 2 00:20:27 Uh, to stay on track? What are we doing? We have an incredible producer, uh, you know, having I laugh, but for real having Maria on our team is huge because she's really that side of things convene between the clients and the team in that back and forth of timelines. Um, I mean, internally we have a bit of process of the usual project management, et cetera, but what we really try to do at the beginning of a project and what Maria does is conveying to the clients, okay, let's understand what you want to do. And then we turn that around and understand what are the next steps in that process that we need to work on. And then we set a fairly rigid timelines. So with, with this project, with Miami, working with these clients, with the zone 80 and T and Pepsi, um, we would set very rigid timelines of, we need this, these assets from you, logos fonts, colors by X date.
Speaker 2 00:21:31 Then we'll turn this around on this date. We'll give you a revision on this date. And we kind of go down that process. So we try to really set out, uh, a pretty strict schedule of timelines, of things, of client communication, et cetera. And then on the internal side, we're using just a lot of different tools, obviously from your basics of Slack to our project management platform is called click up. So it's basically a giant task management program and Maria has actually done a lot of automation. So that's a big kind of internal techie point is automating the workflows. And so from a high level, we use application platform called air table, and that manages all of our projects. Then we distill that into click up and then we have connections to Google drive, et cetera, et cetera, in all of these actions are automated. So that really helps the conciseness of some of our internal workflows is being able to automate things and make it a little more efficient.
Speaker 0 00:22:38 So like it, you enter it into air table. And then if it's something that needs to be disseminated down into to click up, that will then automatically, you know, translate over to whoever's responsibility. That is which then pops up for them and says, Hey, Nick, today, you're supposed to render out four pieces of content to make sure that we stay on track for dates and whatever. Got it. Okay. Very cool. So we get through the whole process. All the contents created to, you know, clients looked at it, they've seen it. We're ready to move on site. We're ready to take pack the gear up. Let's go to Miami, let's go wherever. Um, what are the things that you guys are packing up in the office to get ready for your team to go to the show site, to then execute
Speaker 2 00:23:29 A lot of things? So every project is very different and unique for us, but the core things we are usually always bringing on shows are tons of computers. So we have a whole arsenal of different computers for doing code work to pre-visualization, to interactive visuals. And we have, like I said, an arsenal of different machines for different purposes. So we're usually packing pelicans full of computers. Um, a lot of, kind of the backend. We have a lot of kind of gizmos and things like that, that we bring on projects. We, as a team, don't have the production side, so we don't own led projectors, but we have a lot of the backend from our skies servers to computers, to different things like that. So usually it's, it's pelicans and racks of computers, equipment, different things like that, um, to more miscellaneous stuff.
Speaker 0 00:24:33 Do you bring, do you bring any of your like render servers and things like that with you or because of notch and things like that? You don't need that anymore. You can just do three notch and content is boom created in real time.
Speaker 2 00:24:48 Yeah. We still have, uh, we have machines that meet certain specs for us. And so we bring those machines is kind of our benchmarks. I would say, when you get into the world of real time content creation, you really have to know that the machine you're creating on is equal to the machine you're playing back on. So what we try to do in the disguise world of media servers is we try to create something that is on an equivalent machine to a GX two or GX two C. So all of our internal spec machines basically have to match that spec. And we do some more internal testing to know when we load this real-time code onto this server, it's going to have roughly the same performance. So that's kind of our, our golden rule. And we've built machines that meet those specs for us. And we are continually operating those machines to stay on, on top of whatever the current needs processing are.
Speaker 0 00:25:53 Now, you just said something that maybe I was unaware of, um, uh, helped me understand a little bit better real-time content creation. Um, how does that actually work? You mentioned two computers and that's something I had no idea about. Are there, you know, in that workflow, are you creating content in real time? Like someone's sitting at a computer doing whatever they're doing on that screen, creating it, and then it pipes over and, and goes through notch. Help me, help me understand that I'm actually genuinely interested to better understand how that works.
Speaker 2 00:26:27 Yeah. So with the real-time content workflow, it's, it's still a bit like a traditional workflow is you have somebody who has to create the content and then you have something that has to play the content. So that that paradigm still exists. Is we still designing content. And then we are still handing that content off to a playback engine. And on the content side, our tool of choice for years has really been working in notch and notch. The way it works is you can export kind of one of three different ways from notch. You can export a rendered video or movie file just as we all know. And we can hand that movie file to any platform that can play a video file. The second thing we can do is export what we call standalone executable. So an application, and we use that a lot of times for interactive installations or temporary installations, we can run a high powered PC, and then we basically run an application that is running notch.
Speaker 2 00:27:33 The third thing is exporting a block in a block is basically a code container that gets loaded onto a media server platform that supports it. And that that list of media servers is long. The big ones are a disguise green hippo has support, um, 7 cents, uh, Viv down the list of all of these media servers, where you can basically take that block of code. And the media server understands it just like a video file. You just copy it over and it loads into a timeline and it loads right next to your timeline, um, like, uh, a video file. So from that standpoint, we're still doing the same thing as we have a content creator who's creating in the, um, the editor basically, but instead of exporting a video file, they're exporting code now. And then that code gets loaded in a media server and the media server treats it basically like a video file. So that pipeline is still from a content creator to a media server technician. The pipeline is still very much the same I create, and I still give you a file.
Speaker 0 00:28:46 Got it. And I assume then you're networking all this stuff together. When you say it gets loaded onto another computer, you're not, you know, doing the sneaker net with the USB drive, you know, handed it to load stuff up.
Speaker 2 00:28:59 No, definitely. And that's where this event in Miami, this the super bowl event that we've done for years, it's really the epitome of real-time workflows is we have this giant building that some 80,000 square feet. Um, and we have this show had seven disguise servers running on it, and wow, we have surfaces everywhere in kind of showing some of that in the digitalization is there's a giant screen on stage, uh, screens on the ceiling TVs everywhere. Uh, you saw this exterior 200 foot wide x-ray projection mapping. Um, even there's light bars that are running all the way, wrapping around the building. Those were actually all controlled via media server. And really the pinnacle of it is right. As you walked into the atrium, we had this very, very complex three-dimensional structure that we called, uh, the bird and the bird was basically this giant canopy structure that was projection map.
Speaker 2 00:30:08 And it basically served as this, this canopy that people could stand under. And actually at the bottom of the frame, you can actually see there's a DJ that's under it. Um, and throughout the night, there were all sorts of different visuals that played on this thing. This thing is actually three stories tall. It's kinda hard to tell in all of these pictures, just how, how big the structure really is. But with this whole workflow, what's phenomenal in this new era of content creation is a lot of things is site. We actually have a content team out back in a trailer and they're actually networked alive into the show servers. So what that means from a content standpoint is we can create a file and then push that file directly to the servers, a hundred yards away in the building when we're not in the building.
Speaker 2 00:31:00 Yeah. The second thing about real-time content creation, that's pretty incredible is the file sizes are infant tests and only small compared to traditional content. So we're not actually pushing hundreds of gigabytes of rendered files. We're actually pushing just megabytes. And I think it's kind of funny to say that the entire content package for Pepsi on this one night, I think was about 750 megabytes. So the entire building content package is just a tiny little file compared to traditionally, if we had to render all these assets, I mean, we could easily be talking well over a terabyte. You know, some of these resolutions are just huge that the exterior of the building is, uh, I think it was like six K wide, that bird structure's about eight K wide. So some very large resolutions, but not only is that incredible. The real pinnacle thing I would say is what we can actually do is, uh, plug in over network into the servers.
Speaker 2 00:32:10 And when you can actually make, um, we'll call it live changes, we can make live edits ahead of time. So two days before the event, we actually stood outside of the building with Pepsi, looking at these visuals and our designers can actually log into the server to the content that's running and actually make changes and edits while the client is approving it. We don't, we don't do that in show. Once we're in show, we locked everything down. But for purpose of editing things, it's a very seamless workflow. So all that to say, we can network everything together, everything can talk and we're moving such small files around updates. Take no time at all to push an update and then have it right there, ready to go.
Speaker 0 00:32:56 Got it. So you create, so you can create a block for instance. And then instead of having to run, what a lot of people do, which is I need a 10 gigabit, 10 gigabyte network, you can run a standard, you know, gigabit network and everything is still lightning fast in fact, faster than if you're transferring content. And so, I mean, we're talking tens and hundreds of hours of render time saved by utilizing a rear real-time render engine like notch that just takes the block, plays it, and then, you know, very cool. Wow. All right. I better understand that. That's fantastic. Um, wow. And I mean, it's just, it, it creates great pictures. It creates great graphics. That's fantastic. So what are the things, what are the top three things that you travel with, uh, that you take to show site when you're going to show site?
Speaker 2 00:33:53 Yeah. So my punch list here is kind of three things. Uh, one a test monitor, you know, it doesn't have to be anything fancy, but as a, as a video guy, any quick way to plug in to an SDI, HD my signal and check it. My test monitor, which is many years old is a small HD AC seven. I don't even think they make the AC sevens anymore, but it's just basically a small test monitor. It runs on cannon SLR batteries. Uh, that's an indispensable thing to have to be able to just say, Hey, this is or isn't working. The second thing is the whirlwind Q box. That thing has saved my butt so many times to basically check audio signals for those who aren't familiar. It's a little tester that lets you plug in quarter inch XLR. You can hear a signal you can send tone a really big use in our world is understanding time code.
Speaker 2 00:34:56 So when we need to time code things together, I can just plug in. I can hear that the correct. I can hear that noise is coming down the line that are, uh, I can plug in our media servers here. That audio is coming out of it. That's been indispensable for many years. And then the third thing I think that all of us carry these days is decimators now more specifically, we only own decimated crosses over the MDH exes. And the big reason why I do that is the decimeter cross has a test for a generator in it. And that test generator comes in handy so many times. And to give you an example on this Miami Superbowl event, we had going into the router, a decimeter cross, just generating grids. And so it just generated a test test bars. And that way we can really easily just go into our black magic router and say route that grid to a projector. And now we instantly know that that line is working. So that's been really great for us to have, uh, like I said, that that test grid functionality comes in a lot of handy.
Speaker 0 00:36:07 Awesome. So let's get a little more personal, real quick. What are two things that you yourself can't do without on show site? Any show doesn't matter when or where, like what are the two things that Nick has to have is there and it doesn't have anything technical. It doesn't have to be done.
Speaker 2 00:36:25 Yeah. Well, I can tell you two things. One is, I definitely think the, having the decimeter, I I've always just taken one in my backpack, you know, with me, um, you know, over and over just throwing one in there. It's really easy. Um, the other side I would say is the software side is really fascinating to me. Um, I get really fascinated in making technology talk to each other. So being able to have cross integration and seamlessness of, you know, we've done many times where, uh, our <inaudible> system is being controlled by a disguised media server, or we've had the sties controlling, uh, Ross expression systems in arenas before. So that kind of stuff is very fascinating to me to have those systems talking back and forth and whatnot. And I think, uh, you know, there's a bunch of ways you can do that. But, uh, I think that the main two things I use is I think everybody, these days uses bit focused companion and the stream deck platform. That's just huge. Uh, the bit focused software is incredible and can be used without even a stream deck. And so that's really big for me. Um, it's, it's a great piece of software that just allows you to, to make pieces of your talk. You know, you can control black magic router, the sky server, uh, an eat to a spider all at the same time. And I think that's really awesome.
Speaker 0 00:37:59 Very cool. All right. Awesome. So, um, shows executed, I mean, they look your content and your, your stuff speaks for itself. That's for sure. Um, let's talk about real quick. I know that you had some different software things that you guys use, um, that you utilize on most, if not every show, uh, what are those specifically that you guys have that you find work best for your workflows?
Speaker 2 00:38:28 Yeah, so my, my list, which includes, um, companion is another app. I'll show you a little bit node red and another fun little app called, uh, Vizier Vizier. Um, the first is node red is a fun platform. It's open source. And the reason I really like it is because it's super lightweight and it actually runs super well on $35 raspberry PI computers. Uh, to give you an example, I have one running in my closet right now on a raspberry PI two, and node red is a node based platform. It runs entirely in a web browser and it allows you to connect all sorts of fun stuff together. Um, if you actually go to the node red website, I've actually opened sourced an entire, uh, platform, a whole set of nodes that allow you to control the sky's media servers. So you can literally just go in there, grab the code and control the skies. Um, I already mentioned companion. The stream deck is something that goes with us to every show these days, um, multiple stream decks, really great way obviously to control stuff, trigger stuff, et cetera. A fun little app is this, this little guy is I never pronounce it. Right.
Speaker 3 00:39:57 But does EA like the,
Speaker 2 00:40:00 You know, Bezier curves and things. Um, so this app, first of all, it's Mac only, but, um, we've run it, you know, on a Mac book in conjunction with media servers and things. But what it does is it basically gives you timelines and layers, but all of those timelines are data driven. So the timelines can be DMX. Artnet different protocols such as OSC MITIE, excuse me. And you gave him put audio files in, so you can put an audio track and play that out. And then you can actually put in key frames in different triggers to happen in time and everything's controllable. And the software is, is, uh, super affordable. It's under a hundred bucks. You get two licenses. And to give you an example, I mean, we've used this years ago, we did an, this art installation using kinetic lights. This was all controlled from that app.
Speaker 2 00:41:00 So basically we could go into the app and actually you can see the key framing things as we can, key frame all these different motors, the lights on all the different things really simply. Um, we've also used it on different, various different events where we can play time code, audit, time code, wave files, DMX commands, OSC commands, um, super cool, super fun little app. And it goes back to the whole thing I was telling you is I like to make technology talks. So that's an app we bring with us companion. We always have on our pretty much all of our machines and then no red. We actually have the little raspberry pies that we filled in a metal case that have fans and they actually run on Poe, which is really great. So we can just put them in a rack and we can run, uh, the no regrets software on them.
Speaker 0 00:41:51 Wow. Okay. So you just man, ether, net boom, right in Poe powers up fires up and pink and everything just connects once it's set up properly. Very cool. Um, if somebody wants to get into the world of content, uh, media server creation operation, um, where's a good place to start.
Speaker 2 00:42:17 Good question. I mean, my kind of journey is my background was actually in sports television and I stumbled into the live events world. I thought I was going to be a video editor and about two days out of college, I started touring and went on the road for about 10 years. Um, and in terms of learning things, I pretty much just take, I tried to take everything in from every perspective. One of my, I mean, let's say the two of my best friends were right out of college or a step carpenter and a lighting designer. So I basically would jump in anywhere I could and help at the time I'd help repair movers, and then we'd go build set pieces and then I'd go engineer, video wraps. So we really kind of all learned from each other. And that's kind of the one fundamental thing I would say is always trying to learn from others in different industries, because you always learn something completely different than it can be applied.
Speaker 2 00:43:16 Um, I think right now in particular with the virus, what's really interesting is there's just a wealth of online tutorials and information available that product manufacturers are putting out there from the media server world to lighting consoles, to all sorts of software, video switching systems. So many people are just putting out, uh, everything in a lot for free. And I think just searching around, um, that's a huge thing is if you find, you know, for instance like a media server world, the skies green hippo are putting out tons of tutorials, even in the content creation world, there's all sorts of tutorials going out for unreal unity knots right now. I just recommend to everyone doing some searching because there's just a wealth of information. And then the third is, I would say it's the social aspect is, is all these products, all these manufacturers have Facebook groups around them. A lot of the Facebook groups are really active these days. So jump in and do not be afraid to ask the stupid questions, you know, just ask people, uh, you know, how do you do this? What's this et cetera, et cetera, and just, uh, never stop learning.
Speaker 0 00:44:38 Very cool. Um, so along with that, uh, as we wrap up here, what are two, what are two things, um, from your perspective that, you know, somebody just finished a gig last week, they did an event. Um, maybe it went really well. Maybe it didn't ultimately doesn't matter. What can they do going forward? What is a mindset or something like that, that, that you would say, you know, these are two things that you could focus on so that your next gig is even better than your last one. I want to be more gig ready. The next time I go and I set foot in a gig, maybe it's next week, maybe it's three months from now. We don't know what that looks like, but what, from your perspective are some things that that would fit that, um, that definition.
Speaker 2 00:45:26 Yeah. So one of the biggest things I tell my team is every day you're in the industry, you're in business. You always need to be learning something. And the thing about that is sometimes you learn some really good things, and sometimes you learn some pretty crappy things, and sometimes you learn a new way to do something. You learn a new shortcut. Uh, you learn something more about hardware, you learn a new feature. You never knew. Sometimes you learn the hard way of you messed up a cue and show you misfired something, you didn't program something. Right? But the thing I tell the team is, is balanced that out. And what you need to learn is, is what can I improve moving forward? What can I learn from those moments that make me more prepared and better for the next time? And I'm always evaluating that consciously.
Speaker 2 00:46:21 The second thing I say a lot is this kind of quote, which is especially, especially as a technician on a show, uh, I joked that 10% of your job is doing it correctly. And the other 90% of your job is what you do when it doesn't work correctly. And so I think always understanding and thinking through that 90% of, if this were to go off the rails, what do I do if this thing isn't going to work, what am I going to do? And really thinking through that sort of backup plan. And sometimes those backup plans is we know, in, in certain shows have to be more iron cloud than others, but it's really just about learning how, how to troubleshoot, how to problem solve, how to think through signal chains, how to understand, you know, if this isn't working where I need to look through every piece of the puzzle to understand why is it not working, it's really that process of, of knowing. And I really think I said it is, especially in a technical capacity. That's really, really valuable is that, that 90% that solving in that understanding.
Speaker 0 00:47:31 Awesome love that, man. Well, Hey, um, thanks for coming along and taking 45 minutes and talking about some of this stuff, I personally learned a ton of stuff that I didn't know at all, which is great. Awesome. If people have questions they want to reach you or talk to you or ask more questions to you, what's the best way to, to what's the best way to reach you and get ahold of you email or whatever. What's the best way to do that?
Speaker 2 00:47:57 Yeah. So definitely check out our website, <inaudible> dot com. Uh, you can see all of our work, keep up also our Instagram app ethic. Uh, you can check that out and, um, you know, just Instagram I'm on there. So you can, you can reach me personally, it's at my full name, Nicholas Rivero, uh, but you can find me through Netflix and whatnot. And definitely last little thing to add is definitely check out a lot of our latest ventures, uh, what we're doing in the virtual space and that's dot com slash virtual.
Speaker 0 00:48:31 Yeah. I love that. That's awesome. Um, lots of great stuff. My apologies. I completely forgot that we had this at the end, so that's on me. Um, but yeah, virtual experiences, these guys are just killing it when it comes to, uh, looking at real time, rendering and notch and everything that you can put into an experience that, uh, it might be in one room, but can take you anywhere in the known universe. And, um, you can do so many cool things with it. I definitely recommend checking it out because it looks outstanding. Uh, Nick, you guys are just making great content. I love to see all you guys do and, uh, excited for what the future holds, even though we might be on pause at the moment. So thanks again. Um, I really appreciate it. And thanks for taking the time with the new baby and you know, business and R and D and everything else, man. It's fantastic. I'm glad you guys are hanging in there and doing quite well.
Speaker 2 00:49:28 Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 00:49:31 Thanks for listening today. It's been a great episode and I hope you learned something. If you did go out and tell somebody, let them know that they can be a better professional too. The best thing that you can do for those around you is help them become better at what we do and how we do it. As professionals. There is nothing more that we want to see than an amazing event and events don't happen without you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part. Let us know how we can do better and we'll see you next time. <inaudible>.
