Epic Sound Cart Build with Tom Williams, Sound Mixer | URSA Exclusive

so we're here with tom williams back with tommy hey hey simon welcome hey thank you very much for letting us come into your new studio that's all right welcome yeah yeah it's been uh it's been a sanctuary during lockdown so it's good to be uh not going crazy and being able to go crazy here stuff so yeah do you wanna just tell us what we're doing here so you this is the trolley we all know and love from the previous video now you've been working on a brand new top for this uh yeah it's a whole a whole new cart basically version 3.0 okay let's let's talk it through what was wrong with this trolley well uh so i've done a couple of films on this now and a tv series and i got very um uh sore essentially you know i'm sat down kind of arched over yeah like give you an example so you know i'm obviously this is a bit too high but essentially i'm like oh huckled over like this kind of it felt right to have the screens right next to my faders and my script was here in this little sort of triangle where i'm in the zone yeah um but i was in a lot of pain after after a few long-form jobs and just sort of needed to start kind of start afresh and work with some some new ergonomics um yeah so i kind of came up with this which is not as you see isn't finished this is just work in progress um hence everything's kind of balanced here but the yeah um what would you like to know well i so so what have you managed to do with the screens then so i see the screens in the different position is that the main is that the main sort of twist for for this new build yeah so i suppose what's going on here is uh it kind of came about that with the canter x3 and the count rs because you've got this big screen here i can have my metering here i can have my radio mic telemetry here so as soon as you've got your radiomic telemetry on a screen it means that you don't actually need to be looking at your radio mic receivers so i kind of yeah i thought why not hide them away so they all kind of sit in behind there obviously not fully loaded at the minute but i've got 16 channels of of radio mics there um we'll be using as before um audio a10s we've got some wysicom and electrosonics and then this screen which is a absolute beauty is a i believe it's a dual 10 inch but because it oversales the rack ears it's my data video um it means that it's you get that extra width which means your screen size can be a bit bigger and yeah it's also great because it's got on friction hinges so you can you can angle it where you want it um so you no longer really need to be looking at the the the displays on your on your receivers that's the plan anyway yeah and it will all just be coming on this big display here yeah it will be basically the telemetry will be on here um there's yeah there's there's a few little things that need to be ironed out but generally that's that's the idea and this i'm building this is a top unit so this is um will be on a separate base that i haven't designed yet um but the idea being is that on my old cart the wheels were i don't know if you can see the wheels stick out quite a long way and you've got you've got basically a a rack a 19 inch rack width plus the extra aluminium plus the wheels so getting through doors that kind of stuff has always been a bit a little bit tricky um so the idea is with this is the wheels will sit within the framework which is great um and will you be able to stand and work at this yeah yeah so i'm i haven't really designed it yet but i'm um kind of looking at what uh tim white and simon bishop have done with their very clever stuart ebb's linear actuator system and sort of trying to do my own twist on it um do you need to use that for the for the van to get in and out of the van would it have to kind of shrink to get into some places uh yes exactly i mean the idea being that however it's done i'm not sure yet but it will collapse down and then i'll be able to open it back up again and have it at a standing height or a sitting height yeah um so can you talk about a bit about how you actually built this because this you you made and cut all of these aluminium ends yeah so i mean this this system isn't new you know there's an awful lot of people using it and it's it's really flexible and um it's like super strong so it's 20 by 20. it's rexroth bosch profile but there's lots of companies making it i think rs sell it over here in the uk and a lot of places in germany um so yeah you basically measure it all up i'll show you here so i started dabbling around with um with cad so this is uh rhino 3d and essentially i managed to build it all in the computer to scale and then i can extrapolate when i'm happy with the ergonomics i can then extrapolate that information and uh create a cutting list so you know i've got a cutting list here just from print out and kind of gone through and uh chopped it all on a on a chop saw yeah and then yeah with all these kind of assembly components just bolt it all together and this is all off the shelf stuff from from um from rs so yeah and then these these are quite cool these are um this is all a little bit balanced but i'm just going to take this apart slightly and show you what's going on here so bear with us we'll like remove this chap over here so yeah what we've got here is um locking locking sliders so these drawer runners lock out and and lock in which is fantastic so because the thing about my old cart was you're transporting it and the draw the draw kind of just slides out and falls around all over the place so i thought that could be improved um so yeah there's going to be a shelf with a counter on it which will be totally open frame so i can actually pull it right out and get to all sides of it which again an improvement from this system which is is all bag based which has its advantages um but now i'm fortunate enough to have two x3s so one will be living in a bag and will be a total duplicate of the main machine that's on the cart so i'll be in in a situation to have a run and run and gun kind of bag if i need to uh or have a backup machine if there's a problem so so yeah this as you if you spin it around you can kind of see kind of see what's going on here so it's essentially it's 20 by 40 profile all these little kind of brackets and stuff just all bolts together with with an allen key and uh it's super super rigid um these are this is going to be a sliding shelf that has a laptop on it um and that will kind of let's have a look at the back and all of the stay away there so yeah i'm currently in the middle of doing this over the last couple of days but i've got because if i actually hang on let me just turn around to there so essentially uh everything's running through dante now so these 16 channels of radios will be just on on an ethernet cable um that which will be going into the counter through this switch this is very new to have two things yeah yeah what's amazing as soon as you as soon as you get rid of all those cables inside and you've literally just got one ethernet cable so you know the kantar as it stands will have an ethernet cable going into it it will have power and then have have a loom for for line outputs um but then i've also got the option to have all my analog outputs ready to go separately so normally i won't you know my normal mode of working is two wireless booms and all the wireless radios so um i'll be able to have everything uh sorry not have anything plugged in so it'll be very kind of like ready to go without any of this used yeah but essentially i'll have got all my all my analog inputs here mics and lines um couple of power ins because it's quite going to be quite a thirsty car yeah with power because there's quite a lot of stuff and on this side you've got your rfs for is that your receiver rack and then also console yeah so these will chain together for rf which will provide power for antennas this little whizzycon box here which you probably can't see very well is a is a is a combiner so essentially that will take um two sets of antennas into this rack so what that means is using these drums there's a hundred meters of very low loss um 50m cable blimey you can use 50 meters 100 meters that's 100 meters of bnc not bnc well i suppose it is bnc aerial extension cable yeah yeah so i've got i can run run 100 with the whizzycon um uh and paddle antennas i've got uh i think 27db again so i can actually um have those running to unity gain into the rack and they can be 100 meters away um plus essentially but also running through this um i can have one set of antennas 100 meters away and i can have a second set of antennas um 20 meters away so if you're doing a shot where you're on a really long street for example you can have a set of antennas at one end there's seven turns at the other and you can cover a much larger playing field and that all works through the same input ultimately is that all going through the wysicom yes i've got two i've got um rfa left and right rfb left and right so two sets and that all goes through this box we'll go through that box in into the right and goes into the rack and these are these are chained together so three so that what's the name of this whizzycon thing again uh i can't remember it's a passive a passive box the csa221 i hope we're not giving you any secrets but this is something that stuart wilson used on 1917. they used a lot a much more complicated and uh well thought out system um the problem with this uh although it's dinky and it's um you know it's a powerful bit of kit it's it's passive so you've got four db of loss running through that so you know you have to kind of put that into the calculations that cable if it was going straight in i could run 130 meters right but because i'm running through this i have to compensate for that right so yeah that's that's that and that's just the way that i think a lot of us are working is having um yeah it's having our antennas separate these days covered you're gonna need to be far away from the action even very true what about receivers for you your crew crew and transmitters for your team and stuff has that changed at all from the original no it's just it's just a lot neater so what i have before was yeah i was running the uh the sennheiser um dual transmitter i am transmitters so i've got the same thing here um turning around so you see the front of that so so that there's the sennheiser it's a g4 version and there's a left and a right feed than it left in the right feed yeah um i suppose yeah the difference the one little special thing i've kind of refined a little bit here is how do i even begin to describe this um so okay so the scenario is turn up on set and you plug into um plug into into video playback and uh you know you've got a cable running from sending a mix from you into video playback that's then sending from a transmitter out to you know all the grown-ups so standard we're working um what i like to do is i have a back-to-back cable so i'm send a send and a return to video so it's sent my mix is going out to video village i saw that video village out to the video playback then it's coming back to me and then i'm sending it up an antenna mast from this im transmitter sending out to out to the director and etc so um that's great and everything until you get to that scenario where you end up um where video end up um not putting it into play but into live mode that's a very classic example and then everyone's screaming there's no sound there's no sound i can't hear anything uh and you're kind of going it's nothing to do with me you know that's that's someone else um by what i designed originally was this box which is pretty old and knackered now but what this is is a switch which it stays in playback mode most of the time my mix goes into it it then splits it it sends a feed to video to video playback sorry it also sends a feed when it's in live it sends the same feed out to the transmitter yeah but when it's in playback it's got a look it cuts the live feed and it takes the loop feed that's going out to the video playback rig so when it's in this mode it's looping through video playback which they then switch between live and playback so that's how it normally stays but what it's great is you suddenly get a panic where there's no sound in any of the cams you flick to live and then it's still sending to video but you bypass you bypass the return yeah which might just have no sound on it exactly and another really great thing is during setup where you're you're in a situation where you know your your feed sounds fantastic it's well calibrated the levels are good and uh when you listen to what's coming straight out of your car it sounds brilliant and then you once you go through some shonky video playback rig you end up with a kind of like sonic noises electronic noises ground loops you end up with you know kind of miscalibration of audio so that they've knocked the level right down or up on some kind of shonky sound card they've got going to a laptop and you know you're kind of being judged on that sound even though it's not your sound it's going through their their rig and it's getting degraded so most of the time it can be sorted out and it can sound fine but so often they're not interested in it or you know it's just you know they're thinking about something entirely different but it's just one of those things that you're getting judged as a sound mixer on the sound that the director is hearing as you'd imagine would be the case so by having this switch you can when you set up you can a b between live and playback and you can actually calibrate the headset and check that your signal through their rig is sounding the same as it should compared to your your live signal so that was like mark one that was on the trolley too this was on my car and i've been using this successfully for about three or four jobs now uh it's been dropped several times it's you know it's inside again it's it's essentially um it's a mic split and it's a uh yeah it's it's it's a switch and let's see the back so yeah so you're mixing yeah mixing out and then you've got a loop feed and return going to um going to video okay so that's that's mark one and that that has worked really well and everyone's like oh that's a great idea it's a really good idea um but it's uh kind of in a big box and a bit kind of shitty looking um although it's worked beautifully so far so i kind of sort of developed it a bit and what i've done here work in progress it's a line split from studio spares and i've taken it apart and rewired it and i've now got a video feed and return which is my loop to video and then i've got my in from the x3 and out to my transmitter and then on the end of this cable is the live and playback switch right so on the front so on the front of your trolley now you can do that switch just through a new box which is much more well yeah it's just exactly it's just much more well fitted um it's just a live playback on there look at that i haven't played so this is actually going to be behind an aluminium panel eventually i think and that's your backup recorder though it's a little backup recorder just to keep recording all day yeah just to and it's that's time coded as well and then i got the master locket in here which is kind of my acn network hub do you use the notes for acn as well do you use that i don't i haven't really got into that yeah um so do you have written notes or do you still do paper notes or do you no i did do notes on the x3 you did everything yeah exactly you've got lots of different options with how to export it but um yeah so that's kind of that uh this is going to have so the big master plan and again hopefully you're going to come back and talk to me a bit later this is a bit further down video one of uh part one of two is this this is going to have a um like a a an aluminium tambo that folds over the front so the idea is that there's side cheeks on here which i think might be carbon fiber if i can afford it uh which will keep everything enclosed uh and then on the these are going to have a kind of curves around here like that and then this tambour is going to just roll over the top and touch down onto here keeping the monitors safe keeping it all protected um i've also got some fans i'm putting in so i'm going to put some some cooling fans in which will have a manual control to just basically blow air through the through the rack because that's going to get pretty tasty i think um yeah there's a big machine in this new studio of yours which is uh we haven't looked at yet yeah so this is this is um me and uh my colleague have built this um built this bad boy which is a made by ooze nest it's a cnc um cnc router so basically it's a it's a palm router that is on an x y and z axis and you send it g code from fusion 360 or whatever cad cam software you're using and then you can um yeah you can basically cut you can cut foam you can cut um you know mdf or ply or you show us something that you cut for me we haven't really literally it's just we finished building it kind of a week ago we've just literally just done a cut in some aluminium here right just as a test i mean you know it's it's nothing so you're going to be what are you going to what part of the new trolley is going to be cut from this um i think the plan is to cut the side panels which are i'm going to be out of carbon fiber uh which will have hopefully have fan vents in yeah you can see because due to the magic of editing hopefully we'll jump back to a new cart but um yeah i think just i think carbon fiber side panels yeah um this is gonna have an aluminium tray custom tray on the top so you know with a little lip on it so i can use that to put bits and bobs on i'm also gonna another thing to mention is um with dante you can run power over ethernet so essentially i can have a you know it's a whole load of different devices that can be powered via the ethernet cable you feed them with so i can have something by the director which allows them to monitor and that kind of thing will go to speakers that can all i can literally just throw that out on the end of an ethernet cable um so i'm going to be putting a power over ethernet injector in here as well i really don't know what that is why would you need a power on the end of an ethernet cable well if you have a breakout box for example which you know has say eight channels of audio or actually dante hopefully is going to start doing video as well i have that that's quite a new thing but i don't think any companies have started building devices with that in yet but essentially there might be a time in the future where you end up with video and audio running everything running down one just one cable which would be great but having the power feed down there is really really useful because it just allows you to not have to worry about finding a bat having a battery or having a you know having a finding a main socket to plug something in you can just run out 100 meters of ethernet cable plug it in and then you know it all lights up and works yeah so yeah the the extension receiver box or the whatever yeah whatever your power yeah yeah yeah yeah so that's that's where i'm at at the moment simon it's all um kind of early days but this is my workshop uh i've got a bandsaw got my extraction wired into the bench got my uh my milling machine this is really cool now are you going to be doing anything else in here that maybe other people can make use of if they you know i don't know yeah so it's the beginnings of an idea um i don't know i think that you know there's a there's a lot of very technically minded people out there that want to build cool gadgets don't have a space to do it can't really do it at home haven't got the machines in the space and me and my my colleague are thinking about setting up a kind of make a space type thing where we can perhaps have you know for example my battery charging case that you might see in the last video not something necessarily that complicated but the idea of creating a downsized version of that or creating a dit case uh with you know with integrated ups and and cooling for example you know lots of kind of pelican based box products that you can kind of you know neatly kind of fit out and with the cnc we should be able to laser you know we should be able to actually look at getting a laser cutter for that as well which is pretty cool and we're looking at getting a um a 3d printer so yeah watch this space we'll see well yeah excellent well thank you so much tom no worries no worries thanks for coming down cheers so hopefully we'll see you again in part two yeah i get to see the finished item right i hope so too hopefully i'm not surrounded by a part of aluminium crying which might happen so we'll see all right cheers [Music]

Channel: URSA Straps

Views: 10,405

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Id: 47Lbop2X_bs

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020