Join the conversation; call 1-877-763-3246, leave a comment below the video, or hit me up on Twitter (@PaulAlanClif)
On today’s Tech, No Babel: Troubleshooting techniques: What it can do and what it’s designed to
It’s valuable to know everything a piece can do, even if it’s not designed to do it. When you’re troubleshooting, you should check if the system depends on making a piece of equipment do something it’s not supposed to do because sometimes that will cause a failure later.
[tweet “Sometimes you can stretch what something can do; other times, that’s the problem. Watch this to see what I mean:”]
Other times, by stretching the capabilities of a piece, you can do more than your budget allows. The trade out is that sometimes it won’t be as stable as the right piece or sometimes you’ll spend more time and effort making the wrong piece work than buying the right piece. So, do the research to see which is the case.
Tech, No Babel is a weekly podcast premiering every Thursday at 11a eastern (-4 UTC), 8a pacific on http://churchtechcast.com. Watch it and join the chat then.
But, if you miss the live show, I’ll put up the edited show later (usually on the same day) right here.
If you do video or graphic design to advance your church’s mission, this show is for you.
For more questions, comments, or snide remarks, comment below or contact me at: Facebook or Twitter
More video can be found on YouTube.com
Also check out my Google+ page
Transcript:On today’s technobabble troubleshooting techniques what it’s designed to do versus what it can map you as you the and graphics you entry now you your all I welcome it into another episode of technobabble this is the show wherever the guy help you with video and graphic design from the church my name is Paul Alan Clifford I’m your host level. Ask your questions leave your comments etc. so just do that below the video now if you listening to the audio you might notice there’s no video because you’re listening to the audio so I want you to do in that case is just head over to Trinity digital media.com/T in B for tech no babble and leave your comment there on this show or just wherever it seems appropriate so we’re just a couple of shows from done with the troubleshooting series and it occurred to me that sometimes we run into a problem where he either the thing that were using wasn’t designed to use to do what we wanted to for it was designed it has some capabilities that perhaps her on the periphery so I thought that we would talk just a little bit about dad and how that affects your troubleshooting so for example when it comes to HDMI HDMI is a video standard that took with high-definition television nearly every device has nowadays used to be that the only way to get HD into a television with was with component which is an analog standard but then they added HDMI now for connecting a Blu-ray player to your television HDMI’s wonderful for connecting an Apple TV to a television HDMI’s wonderful the problem comes when you want to do something outside of the norm so let’s talk about that just a little bit HDMI was designed this is what it was designed to do to go up to 10 m now if you’re American like I am 10 m doesn’t mean a lot but a meter is just a little bit longer than the yard so that works out to be about 33 feet so 33 feet now want to look in your church where you would put a computer and where the projector is and see if the entire distance between those two is less than or greater than 33 feet do you see that so don’t forget to include the cable run links between your computer under the floor or the wall or wherever it is along the ceiling and then back down to your projector all of a sudden the 33 feet even if it’s straight line let’s say 30 feet you are actually probably running more like 60 feet in a 15 feet up the ceiling 15 feet down often like that so before long you run into a problem it’s just not designed to do this though this is just one example of the situation where something isn’t designed to do what you wanted to do we see this all the time with consumer electronics of versus professional electronics so your Blu-ray player at home hooks into your computer sorry hooks into your television no problem but what say you want to take that to church and show Blu-ray on the system there but the system there is a professional system so even though they’re both HD one has HDMI one has SDI so immediately got an incompatibility you have to turn HDMI into SDI chances are though that’s not the only incompatibility chances are you also need a general locked system are you need the signal to be delayed in such a way that it starts drawing the frame at exactly the same point that your switcher start scrolling the frame Jim lock so in this case you can get by these problems with by adding an extra pieces of gear but by having an extra pieces of gear you’re also adding an extra layers of complexity when you get to church at in all the extra gear it doesn’t work well isn’t that your DVD player your Blu-ray player didn’t work probably not it works fine at home if you take it back home it’ll probably work fine again the problem is that you have the consumer piece of equipment going into a converter for a professional piece of equipment that it then adds a another piece to add in a capability that he was never designed to have so when it comes to professional equipment versus consumer equipment sometimes the difference between consumer peace in a professional piece is a lot of money you start to think well that’s a camera this is a camera why do they cost so much different well sometimes it’s the rare thing that you only need in a professional environment sometimes it’s saving you all the trouble of converting something that wasn’t designed to do what it what you’re asking it to do into something else so as your troubleshooting as you’re working on your system I want to consider okay on the negative side what am I doing to this to make it do what it wasn’t designed to do now on the other side of the spectrum sometimes pieces of gear are designed to do one thing but they can do something else though perfect example when I worked at both whole house audio video company occasionally my boss would come out we have a weekly training meeting any come out during the training meeting and he would say okay guys forward in a do we have a challenge we need to take these pieces of gear and figure out a way to make them do this thing so the reason that that was valuable is because occasionally we would have installers that would come in and maybe really didn’t have the budget for what they had told the client it would do so they had to try and make things work again less than ideal it’s much better to get the right thing for the right situation but they would try and figure out okay this doesn’t work the way that I think that it should so how do I get around that problem though one example was we had a MP3 player now it was a rackmounted or output big MP3 player this was back a few years ago so no nowadays we does not worry about it but back then that’s what we had so the challenge was to make that into a doorbell now what it was supposed to do but could it do it oh yeah you get a doorbell MP3 put it on this thank and then it had a command in it where you could say hey played this preset so you also had to take that MP3 and associated with the preset and then take a controller which we would assume that they had in this challenge and have the button on the controller respond to a pushbutton input so you had to figure out how to make that work so you press the doorbell button that’s a pushbutton input it sends a command to this MP3 player which he then plays this and then you had to make sure all the amplifiers were on everything was set to the correct source all that so it it came about that whence you work through all these things it was absolutely possible to do it this way should someone have a problem where they absolutely needed to make this work or they didn’t get paid we could help them but it turns out we had another piece where if you just bought the other piece that did it natively so that’s what I want you to consider is that there are situations where you can stretch a piece of gear to make it work and you have to there are other situations where you can stretchy PC gear and make it work and bile that by the time you buy all the adapters and spin all the work it actually put more money and effort into making something work been buying the correct piece here as your troubleshooting figure out which situation wherein as someone made something work even though it’s not designed to or do you need to make something work so that the system can work at least temporarily until you I get things working better I hope that help you I hope that now you can start thinking through okay with what can it do versus what is it designed to do and do do I have a situation where I’m wasting time and effort or situation where for a little more I can make it do more than it this may be designed to do if you like this content need like my email newsletter so head on over to TrinityDigitalMedia.com/gifts G.I. FPS and pick up your church tech gift there along with a free subscription to my email newsletter until next time this is Paul Alan Clifford with TrinityDigitalMedia.com go out and change eternity