Audio Engineering
Beginning in college, through internships, work-studies, freelance, and 13 years managing the the University of North Texas College of Music Recording Services.
My recording experience includes working with over 70 microphone types, dozens of preamps, and mixing live with all the major plugin and outboard gear.
I have recorded hundreds of sessions, and overseen thousands of live recordings and broadcasts.
Piano album released on Tocca Classics.
Coles, Scheops, Millennia.
String quartet recording session.
Schoeps, Millennia.
Voice, string quartet.
Schoeps, DPA, Millennia.
The UNT One O'Clock Lab Band is a grammy nominated, top college jazz band in the world. Once a semester they play to a packed live house that my department broadcasted to the web. My role was providing the live broadcast audio mix, and the later post-production mix.
At my time at UNT, I mixed over 30 One O'Clock concerts.
Session with the top UNT choral group performing in large church My role was audio engineer.
Still going through recordings to find the right one!...
Film, Promotion
Collecting and producing over a dozen projects of commercials, spots, and background videos.
UNT YouTube Playlist of Features and Interviews.
Showcasing a diverse set of faculty, students and facilities to invite potential students in to learn more, and alumni nostalgia. My role was filming the footage, and working with marketing to edit the clips.
Video speed has been increased for this demo.
Like a Harry Potter newspaper, this was a proof of concept was to convert print advertisement into a rich web-based experience. My role was concept creation, writing the code, filming and editing the video clips.
A semester-long project creating a promotional video into one of the hidden gems of the world-renowned jazz program at UNT. My role was producer, videographer, and editor.
The UNT One O'Clock Lab Band is a grammy nominated, top college jazz band in the world. Each year they record a studio album, and this year we took an array of cinema cameras into the studio to shoot the session. My role was producer, videographer, and editor.
Interviews of famous guest artists playing with the One O'Clock Lab (jazz) Band to promotional conversation.
Editing Guest artist interview were shot after afternoon rehearsal, edited, and showed during intermission of the concert.
Coming Soon.
OTT Platform
Over 10 years, I built a customized OTT platform to handle live streaming and on-demand of concerts the College of Music produced each year.
The marquee Live Stream landing page was developed over years of experience. The page was completely responsive, and auto-updating.
The layout was designed to get first time users to the concert as quickly as possible.
The system was able to scale automatically. Here are 5 simultaneous events.
High quality streaming, both audio and video. Included each piece, along with timmings. A number of enhancements included code that sped up video loading when seeking to quality control settings.
The primary audio player showed waveforms so listensers could more easily find places in their concert they needed to review.
The player was based on the Wavesurfer.js and bbc audio waveform projects. When the entry was published, uncompressed wave files would be converted into aac with the entries metadata, along with JSON peak data.
Peak resolution was adaptive based on the length of the track, since some tracks could be 1-2 hours long.
Other enhancements included Airplay, Chromecast, and native sharing (pictured).
Every performer in each concert is tagged, allowing each student to quickly find all the concerts they were involved in. It also provided professors a way to evaluate students.
This was a game-changer at the end of the year when students would remember to get all their concerts before leaving the university. Instead of the department getting hammered with requests, students could simply find their tag and download their recordings.
The system was able to display a highly personalized landing page for each user.
Using analytics, I knew the most common search members made was of themselves to find their concert. Simply providing this feed at the beginning increased the speed users could access their concerts.
Faculty could also easily find their ensemble or concerts in their instrumental category.
An Apple TV application with access to the archive and concert live streams. The CMS generated all the RSS, and XML feeds needed to provide views for the TV app.
ExpressionEngine provided an easy management and authoring experience for student workers and staff to add metadata for each concert.
Schedules were automatically imported from an older event system, and turned into structured entries. Hall, degree type, performers, instrument or ensemble were imported, email notifications were sent, and any payments or additional steps were created.
This process saved huge amounts of staff time, while providing high accuracy. No more typos of event start times.
Encoding was automated. Live encoders were controlled by the CMS. On-demand encoders updated the CMS with status, and percent complete.
In addition, emails and notificaitons were sent automatically, reducing the load on staff having to manually send reminders.
Comprehensive analytics and quality of service monitor the site, and test new features. Automated notifications helps small teams with support, and troubleshooting.
Professional-grade live and on-demand encoders were the powerhouse of this system. Live streams were created into an ABR ladder from the source SDI, pushing to a packager and CDN. Backup encoders that used cloud video services.
System Design
My trademark skill is combining audio and video systems with code and cloud.
I designed one of the largest automated live broadcasting systems at a university, known already for high quality live streaming. A culmination of several years of adding infrastructure, and writing code.
By the end there were 23 cameras in 6 concert halls, with 5 remote control rooms connected by over 300 strands of single-mode fiber.
I co-designed one of the largest Dante audio networks at the time, spanning multiple buildings, concert halls, and control rooms.
I led the technical integration of 4 concert hall rennovations with architects and construction firms, including hanging microphone systems, and integration of the audio reinforcement systems into the broadcast network.
Code
I love to develop add-ons for the content management system ExpressionEngine, and a number of stand-alone apps. Skills learned from years building an OTT site, and client sites.
I stick to fundimentals. 15 years in web development shows starting with the right html tags, clean css, and vanilla javascript are key when building with frameworks.
A comprehensive live and on-demand video streaming management add-on that integrates with Mux.
This add-on came from working deeply with Mux while building into a larger streaming platform, and while employed for a short time.
Technologies
- Vue.js
- Native components
- PHP
On-demand secure streaming using the Cloudflare Stream service.
Send events from ExpressionEngine to other services for powerful workflows.
A native web component that makes showing running subtitles easy. IT displays the subtitles/caption text in an HTML tag and highlights the line as the video plays.
A native web component to help control the start, live and ending states using simple HTML tags. Useful for anyone running live streams.