We’re producing an event next week at the Tribeca Rooftop called The Social Advertising Summit, which is all about how brands can engage consumers through social media.
It’s a day long event of panel discussions followed by drinks on a beautiful rooftop. About 300 people will attend.
Topics include current advertising models and the challenges facing social media sites in increasing advertising revenue, why and where media buyers are choosing to allocate their advertising budgets, how large brands are allocating marketing budgets to social networks, case studies (what has and hasn’t worked), what differentiates the many social networks from one another, social advertising metrics such as “engagement” and how to measure them, monetizing widgets, and breakthrough social media advertising models such as monetizing relationships.
While the venue is beautiful, it does have some challenges. For example, there are supporting pillars that create obstructed views for some audience members. Also, because the bar is a draw, we expect some people to hang out in the bar during sessions. We want to make sure they’re still engaged and paying attention.
We will film the entire event so people who can’t make it in person can watch online. But we’ll also broadcast the live feed to six fifty inch Plasma screens strategically placed around the venue.
We’re shooting in High Definition. The cameras (Sony EX1) will send the HD video feeds to the video mixing board (Datavideo SE-1000) via HD-SDI cables (Datavideo makes some nice HD-SDI cables – even custom sizes if you want). We got a bunch of 200 foot, 100 foot and 50 foot cables, along with some barrel connectors in case we need to extend any of the cables.
Brad & Jason test all the gear that has to plug into and out of the Datavideo MS-1000.
From the board, we’ll send a feed via HD-SDI to an HD-SDI Distribution Amplifier (Datavideo VP-445), which is essentially an HD-SDI splitter so we can send one video feed to multiple monitor locations. The VP-445 is a 1 in 4 out amplifier. Since we have 6 monitors to feed, we got two VP-445’s and can just use one of the 4 outputs from the first VP-445 as the source for the second 1-to-4 amplifier. We can daisy chain them. That way, we have 7 total HD-SDI outs to send to all the monitors.
We’ll then send an HD-SDI cable to each monitor (Sony and Samsung LCDs). However, monitors don’t have HD-SDI inputs. They have HDMI inputs. So we need to convert the HD-SDI to HDMI at each monitor. Aja, Black Magic, and Gefen all sent us HD-SDI to HDMI converters to test out. We’ll review them after the event.
Gefen also sent us an HDMI splitter – 1 in, 4 out. This gives us added flexibility in terms of how we tackle the problem of converting from HD-SDI to HDMI and sending to 6 monitors. For example, we can either send HD-SDI cable to within “the last mile” of each TV and then use an HD-SDI to HDMI converter at each monitor (which requires 6 HD-SDI to HDMI converters for the 6 LCD screens), or we can use the converters for some monitors, but for others (for example, a few monitors all close to each other), we can send an HD-SDI cable to an HD-SDI to HDMI converter, from the converter to the HDMI splitter, and then send HDMI cables from the splitter to multiple HDMI enabled monitors.
Gefen 1:4 HDMI Splitter to send video to four Sony HD Monitors.
For venue sound, we’ll bring a bunch of JBL speakers to fill out the space. Audio won’t go to the Plasma screens. It will go straight to the speakers. While HDMI can handle both video and audio, for our purposes, it will be handling just the 1080p video.
Some of the monitors will be 120Hz, others will be 60Hz. 120Hz is a multiple of 24, which is how many frames per second we’ll be shooting. If you start with a 24 fps source, you can display it on a 120Hz set without any need for pull-down, to sync the 24 fps rate to a 60 fps scan rate. I’m interested in seeing if there’s any noticeable difference to the audience between the two. LCD manufacturers have been hyping 120Hz monitors this year.
There will be up to 6 people on the stage at any point in time. We’ll have a lounge chair on stage set-up, rather than the typical long table that everyone sits behind. If every one were behind a table, we’d just put a bunch of tabletop mics on the table and run a snake to the stage and xlr up each mic.
But since people will be sitting in an informal, loungy environment, we’ll use lavaliers for each panelist. We’ll use 3 Sennheiser EM3732 receivers and a bunch of SK500G2 wireless transmitters.
Behringer sent us a XENYX 2442FX 24 channel mixing board to play with, so we’ll put it to use. It will take 6 lavalier microphones for the panelists and 2 audience microphones and an ipod for smooth tunes between sessions.
Behringer Xenyx 2442 FX waiting to go on the road…
