Masters 2024 is a wrap! Great sessions this year. The 3 hour blocks worked well to cover topics with just enough lecture and lab.
Continue reading “Crestron Masters 2024”Fixing Home Movies with FFmpeg
My dad converted a bunch of old taped home movies to MP4 and gave them to me for Christmas. I copied them all to my Plex server since I thought having them on-demand would be pretty cool. Unfortunately, a lot of them ended up rotated 90 degrees and–surprisingly–there’s no way to tell Plex to rotate on playback.
I kept thinking there’s got to be an easy way to fix the rotated movies so they play back correctly on my TV. And then I remembered the Swiss Army Knife of video playback tools: FFmpeg.
Continue reading “Fixing Home Movies with FFmpeg”VC-4-PC-3 Wi-Fi
We have a customer that will not allow the VC-4 to connect to their corporate network, but there is a guest wireless network that would easily allow the VC-4 to check in with XIO Cloud. I asked Crestron if there was a way to enable the wireless adapter so I could join it to the guest Wi-Fi but was told it was disabled in BIOS.
Continue reading “VC-4-PC-3 Wi-Fi”The Future of AV Programming: Part 7
2023 is coming to an end, and I’m so glad. This year has felt like I’ve stumbled out of one bad project right into the next. It’s been a constant battle of double-booking, short timelines, and delayed product. Everyone’s unhappy.
I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the challenges this year, but also to weave in my thoughts on where this is all headed in Part 7 of my Future of AV Programming saga.
Continue reading “The Future of AV Programming: Part 7”Crestron + ZRC
Last time, I hinted that I wanted to explore connecting Crestron to Zoom Room Controls. I mostly run into this setup when a customer is replacing their video conference systems with Zoom rooms.
The scenario I’ll explore is: the user has a DMPS they’d like to continue using. They also want to be able to route non-computer sources to the displays once in a while (such as a cable TV box). They want to have 3 favorite channels available in Zoom. The user should have some flexibility to change the Zoom Room Controls without needing to touch the Crestron program (say they want to add another source).
Continue reading “Crestron + ZRC”Tools of the Trade
Being in the field again for the past week has been a good reminder that every AV programmer should equip themselves with some essential tools. I foolishly cleaned out my backpack last week because I wanted to have an easier time passing through security at the airport. Normally I take everything out of my backpack, dump it into my checked bag, then when I get where I’m going, transfer everything back into my backpack. Oh well, lesson learned.
Continue reading “Tools of the Trade”Zoom Room Controls
Considering that I want to start small with some new posts, I thought a good topic is Zoom room controls. These are quick and easy to use once you know the configuration file structure, and sometimes you don’t even need a physical control processor! Isn’t that where all of this is headed anyway?
Continue reading “Zoom Room Controls”On the Road… Again
I’m traveling for work for two weeks, so I won’t have access to my normal equipment while I’m gone. It’s probably a good time to update on my previous post about setting up a VC-4 instance using a virtual private server (VPS).
Continue reading “On the Road… Again”Start Small
It’s been a while! My workload hasn’t slowed down any, and this blog has had to take a backseat until I get caught up. So this post will be very brief and about a single idea, one that works for many types of problems: start small.
Continue reading “Start Small”Solid GOLD
I passed the Gold Exam! Once I get the official badge from Crestron, I’ll post it all over my online presence.
In accordance with testing protocols, I can’t share anything particular about this exam, but I thought this would be a good chance to reflect on my experience taking the test.
Continue reading “Solid GOLD”