Not presenting at tonight's event. Toronto AES Section — March 31, 2020
This virtual event was a very timely last minute substitution. Toronto AES Chair Anthony Kuzub provided a quick introduction including the impact of the pandemic on the industry; and how it postponed our originally planned event: the tour of Viryl Technologies vinyl pressing plant. The intro segued nicely into the main feature of the event. A number of industry pros were present to discuss how they are dealing with the situation working and connecting remotely from home studios.
This event was well attended and reached its online viewing capacity limit. The proceedings were recorded and will be available for viewing from a link on the Toronto AES Chapter's website: torontoaes.org; what follows is a brief overview.
The initial two presentations were pre-recorded interviews hosted by Anthony, the first being with Gary Gornik. The discussion covered what was available in the remote broadcasting world 30 years ago (phone lines, microwave uplinks, and satellites), to the current problems faced, among those being delays and audio/video synchronization. Gary outlined how the whole process works and discussed redundancy, and various quality issues.
The second interview was with Daniel Pereira and how he deals with social distancing and working remotely. His biggest concerns are needing to deal in real time, and maintaining infrastructure links. To communicate with his team the Unity intercom app is being used.
Michael Nunan talked with Howard Baggley. The discussion included the Unity app as well; and processing times and delays. Regarding delays, Michael elaborated by recalling the experiment he presented at last month's event where musician's were performing in realtime without delay problems over IP. Currently now, many people have queried him on how they can do the same thing. His answer: sadly not yet. "There'll be some interesting conversations when we get out of this."
Next, Mike talked with Ryan Watt about de-centralizing production control, and "everything that can be remotely controlled and controlled remotely".
Finally, Mike spoke with Roy Janke discussing HP Remote Graphics Software; the various remote protocols available and their advantages, disadvantages; what works, and what doesn't.
Wrapping up there was a free form Q&A with Michael, Anthony, the presenters and online viewers, and a follow up discussion. Overall the common theme was the presence of delays and dealing with audio/video synchronization.
Closing the evening, Anthony provided a role call of the executive committee. He invited guests to join the Toronto AES; and asked for more volunteers for the Executive Committee. All the sponsors were thanked as well as everyone attending online.
