Interesting possibilities emerging for triggering and synchronising video via the in-house Alpine McBride Video Binloop 16 track video player which uses Compact Flash cards…

Steady progress… still some things outstanding according to my reQall list… but hoping to catch up this week.

1. Confirming Church participation and dates for visits and filming.

a) I’ve already visited St Peters Church aka Leeds Parish Church (LPC)

St Peter’s Church (Leeds Parish Church), Kirkgate, LS2 7DJ
12 bells
Practice: Thurs 7:30
Visit: Thursday, 9th July, 7.30-9pm
Filming: either Sunday, 9th or Sunday 16th August, 1-6pm

b) Through Steve Ollerton, Tower captain at St Peters (Leeds Parish Church) I’ve now made contact and arranged a visit and reconnoiter with a further three churches:

St Chads Church, Otley Road, Far Headingley, Leeds LS16 5JT
8 bells
Practice: Thurs
Visit: Thursday, 30th July, 7.30-9pm
Filming: Thursday 13th August

St Matthias Church, St Matthias’ St, Burley, Leeds LS4 2EL
8 bells
Practice: Mon 7:30
Visit: Monday, 20th July, 7.30pm
Filming: Sunday, 16th August (tbc)

St Matthews Church, Wood Lane, Chapel Allerton, Leeds LS7 3QF
6 bells
Practice: Fri
Visit: Friday, 24th July. 7.30-9pm
Filming: either Friday, 7th or 14th August

c) As yet I’ve had no response from:

St Annes Cathedral (Leeds Cathedral), Cathedral House, Great George Street, LEEDS LS2 8BE
8 bells
Practice: Thurs

which is actually the closest Church to Leeds City Museum – but I am going to keep trying and ask Sue Ball to make approaches on our behalf too.

d) Steve Ollerton has also passed on contact details for:

St Michael & All Angels Parish Church, St. Michael’s Road, Headingley, Leeds LS6 3AW
8 bells
Practice: Tues

which I’ll approach as a possible backup.

Looking like Thursday, 14th – Tuesday 18th August is the window for filming and recording.

2. Graphic Design

Malcolm Garrett, Creative Director of Applied Information Group and London based design guru has agreed to help with graphics for PEAL. In a recent email I’ve suggested: “I think a good starting point would be the logo/typography/colour scheme? I think we wan’t to try and somehow capture the contemporary and minimalist aesthetic of the proposed light columns counterpointed against the very traditional representations and physical construction of the bells…  if that helps get you thinking cap on?”

I’ve emailed Antony Rowe, squidsoup about the possibility of adapting and porting the Freq2 visualisation to visually represent ‘method ringing’ – but haven’t heard back yet (I know he’s with family in Norway for a few weeks)…

3. Technical

I started to look into the specs of the in-house Alpine McBride Video Binloop 16 track video player which uses Compact Flash cards which outputs: MPEG2 Video at 8Mbps (15 Mbps max) and 16-Bit PCM Stereo or Mono Audio (44.1KHz, 48KHz). All Compact Flash sizes supported. Manual as PDF (right click etc.) HERE.

8Mbits/s MPEG2 video gives 1 hour of video on a 4 GB Flash card, 15Mbits/s gives ~30 mins – which I think would be more than sufficient. The manufacturers recommend SanDisk Ultra II – and a quick ebay.co.uk search prices them at ~£17/each.

Interestingly the Video Binloop manual has an extensive section on ‘Controlling the Binloop’ – via the AMI/Pioneer Control Protocol – an ASCII based series of commands – sent to its Ethernet port…

“This protocol inherits its name from the fact that it closely resembles the popular Pioneer protocol used throughout the A/V industry.

The AMI/Pioneer protocol commands listed… are available for use on both the RS-232 Show Control port and the Ethernet port of the Binloop.

The protocol is ASCII-based. Upper or lower case characters can be used interchangeably. All commands and responses are terminated with the Carriage Return character. This character is represented by the hexadecimal value 0x0D.”

…which actually opens up all sort of possibilities for the synchronisation of video on each and all of the video via our laser triggers. We should schedule some testing shortly to see if theory can be translated into practice…