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Build Your Own Teleprompter
bigt_littleodd writes "Ever been in the situation where a certain expensive piece of equipment would be ideal to do the job at hand, but you would probably never ever need it to use it again, thus making the purchase/rental of equipment prohibitive? Here's a guy that had such a need and built a teleprompter with easy-to-find materials, a camcorder and a laptop."
"Ever been in the situation where a certain expensive piece of equipment would be ideal to do the job at hand, but you would probably never ever need it to use it again, thus making the purchase/rental of equipment prohibitive?"
If it's expensive (i.e. specialized), and you only have to use it once, then wouldn't rental be ideal? I would rather rent an expensive piece of equipment once, than roll my own and hope that it works (half as well as the real thing).
I guess it comes down to what your time is worth, but personally, I would want to rent in a situation like this.
Not that I'd ever have need for one, but I think it's a very cool idea.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Was I the only one who read that as "build your own teleporter?"
Too much Si Fi....
TelePrompTer is a registered trademark, nu? Like Rollerblades, Kleenex and Xerox.
I know it's quite uncool to read the article and all. . .
But even with sophisticated presentation software, there's still a basic problem: when you're reading a screen, you're not looking directly at the camera. And that's bad. Which is why this guy's teleprompter is directly in front of the camera, and he can maintain proper eye contact throughout.
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
I know the guy who developed the ProPrompter, and GoPrompter. Much more mobile than the setup in TFA. http://www.proprompter.com/
.mechnoch
when you RTFA you see that he tried to put a laptop just under the camera but it still looked stupid once it was on tape as he was looking down. With a teleprompter there is a sheet of glass placed infront of the camera at an angle, the camera sees through this just fine. There is then a source of light placed underneath and because of total internal reflection the light (or screen of text) gets reflected into your eyes. you can then read the word and look into the camera at the same time.
How many computers are too many?
Coral Cache, Site going down quick.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I keep squinting and saying "Huh, is that a photo? Or a rendered graphic? No ... it's a photo! But hmmm ... it looks like a cool rendering."
I'd be curious about how the photos were taken.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
teleprompter was the solution, but there are no teleprompters in our area, and renting one from Los Angeles or San Francisco - both hundreds of miles away - was impractical and beyond my budget.
Renting is no good when you have to drive 200 miles round trip to rent+haul it.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Bit by Bit: Forget Cue Cards, Make a Teleprompter!
Creative problem solving is a trait many creative professionals share, but perhaps no one possesses that skill more than Brian P. Lawler. See how he made a teleprompter with a laptop, Adobe InDesign, and some scrap wood. Ingenious.
(creativepro.com)
By Brian P. Lawler, creativepro.com contributing editor
Thursday, December 16, 2004
It was Thursday evening and I needed a teleprompter.
I was making a video about panoramic photography, and for the scenes where I speak directly into the camera I looked like a cross-eyed newscaster. While trying to read cue cards on a stand in front of the camera, my eyes were cast downward, and that looked odd.
To overcome this problem, I decided to read from the screen of my PowerBook instead. I figured that I could put the PowerBook display closer to the lens, and thus not appear to be looking down when looking at the camera.
But even with the text on the PowerBook screen, I still looked slightly downward when I wanted to look directly into the lens of the camera. A teleprompter was the solution, but there are no teleprompters in our area, and renting one from Los Angeles or San Francisco - both hundreds of miles away - was impractical and beyond my budget. I decided to build one.
Discipline Makes Successful Video
I am careful when making video productions to enforce a moviemaker's discipline upon myself and my hired crew and helpers. This is a skill learned from experience. When one is making a video, attention to detail, continuity, and story are critical. I find that I can't go back -- ever -- to shoot a fill-in scene; something will have changed, someone won't be available, the light will be different -- something will prevent success. Instead, I work to get it right the first time!
In the back of my sketchbook I keep a cardboard template with four windows cut to the proportion of a television screen. I use this to draw frames for my storyboards, and then I sketch ideas and stories into the frames. My sketchbook thus becomes the foundation of many of my projects. I had been working on the storyboard for this video for several months, and the story and scene ideas covered many pages of the book (see Figure 1).
From Sketchbook to Database
After deciding to use a teleprompter, I wanted to convert the sketches in my book to visual elements of a script database. I scanned the pages of the sketchbook, and then cropped the individual frame drawings into small photos that I stored in a folder. I then built a FileMaker template, and imported all the images into that database. FileMaker is very accommodating in this respect -- it imported my entire folder of numbered images into the database automatically.
Once the sketches were imported, I added descriptions, scene and shot numbers (used to sort the story into chapters), and the narration text. This method allowed me to develop the text that I would read into the camera using the teleprompter. Using FileMaker's sorting functions, I then generated a story that was in logical order with a narration that flows smoothly and which I could read easily. After sorting the script, I exported the script records into text, and then placed the resulting file in Adobe InDesign for my teleprompter needs.
Construction of the teleprompter
Having seen a number of commercial teleprompters over the years in television studios and at trade shows, I understood the concept. A teleprompter is a made of a sheet of glass suspended in front of the camera lens at a 45-degree angle. The glass reflects the image of a TV screen without affecting the light entering the lens. In the most sophisticated units, there is a controller -- and an operator -- to set the pace of the text scrolling on the screen. Mine is more primitive.
My prompter is nothing more than a sheet of window glass supported in a plywood frame in front of the camera at the correct angle (see Figure 3). I probably spent three hours cutting and building. Once
You're fucking stupid. RTFA and then get a clue.
Good idea. If you read the article, he uses powerpoint...
Ruper Pupkin probably has one of these in his basement.
Yet Another Web Site
Comment removed based on user account deletion
*spank*
/. whore!
The part that actually requires construction is the part where he projects the text on a slab of glass that is placed between him and the video recorder.
The whole point of the teleprompter, rather than a fancy-schmancy projected PowerPoint display, is that the person reading the teleprompter stares directly into the video camera: from his point of view the text is directly in front of the camera. The slab of glass at 45 degree angle means that the text on the prompter will not be reflected into the camera.
Of course, the reflection means that the texts all apper mirrored, compared to the laptop screen. Personally, I don't understand why he needed to export the document in postscript and mirror flip it. Wouldn't it be alright if he just add another mirror?
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
Just open a text file in quicktime... It shows each line sequentially.
why is parent modded down? grad-parent *was* being fucking stupid... id 56 and all
Maybe the little rectangular object that protruded from President Bush's backside during the debates was really a wireless teleprompter that transmitted wirelessly to an implant in the visual cortex of his brain. Better to rent than buy, though, unless it is upgradable.
The image on my home-built teleprompter was -- of course -- backward. I tried to find a way to reverse the entire screen, but that was fruitless.
Note that with a modern version of the X server supporting Keith Packard's "Resize and Rotate" extension and utility, this could be easy. Just say "xrandr -x" to mirror the display left-to-right. (Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to work for all servers supporting the extension yet.)
There's a company called Prompter People http://www.prompterpeople.com/that offers a solid professional teleprompting solution. They offer systems that can easily be moved from camera to camera, and it's a much better value than anything else out there (800 bucks for a professional quality setup). They have a website with a really informative video in both quicktime and windows media that basically says the same thing as the article without any of the reading. It's worth a watch if you want to learn more about how these work.
He did try that.
I won't spoil the ending, though. You'll have to RTFA to see why he didn't use cue cards.
--RJ
Gee, technology has progressed really far. ...hmmm wait a minute...
Because cue cards don't solve the problem.
The problem is that he wanted to look into the camera while reading his lines. Precisely the setting the teleprompter was designed for. Ergo, he made a teleprompter, as cue cards wouldn't do what he needed them to.
Jeez, with this many cynics and naysayers around, its amazing anything gets made these days, "why think outside the box, just do a crappy substitute and make do".
I read this as "build your own teleporter".. been looking at the screen for too long !!
It sounds like this was a one time thing, so why not just memorize it or at least the main points? I taught public speaking for a year and saw dozens of students give 5-10 minute speeches with minimal notes. Seems like an easier solution to me.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
there another cheap DIY method, its called: MEMORISING your fucking speech
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Wow, what an insightful comment! Everyone starts out somewhere bucko. What if your show is only ok? By your logic cheap high quality digital camcorders should have no reason to exist. After all, if your show is excellent you can afford a proper film camera.
Sheesh, some people just can't appreciate creativity.
-matt
If I'm not mistaken, if he could have used a fresnel lens and a backlight, he might have been able to get the magnification and the "reverse" image that he was seeking.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
I could use one the does those things.
Michael
The point, and he did have one, was that using powerpoint, or perhaps it's analog equivalent, cue cards, were not good enough for him. He was always looking off to the side or down and not right at the camera.
I will 'splain: Unless you can afford a studio with long camera angles, there is a thing called parallax that will make you look like every dumb asshole who tries, and fails to do a home documentary... staring off into space, uncomfortably over the viewer's right shoulder or worse, their crotch.
We have all seen these on public access channels that have small studios or too few lenses to get sufficiently far enough away that a person holding a cue card can make the person on camera look natural without completely obstructing the view of the camera.
I could understand it if someone said "What about a piece of poster board with a hole cut in the middle and the text written around the lens" because that would at least show some understanding of the problem, if not actually hitting on an acceptable solution. (Hint: Unless you have only a single cue card, bad idea.)
Think about it, WHY ARE TELEPROMPTERS SO EXPENSIVE AND USEFUL IN THE FIRST PLACE? It is because, Occam's razor hasn't eliminated them in the places where they are most useful. Yes, Letterman and Conan can get away with cue cards, but that is because they have larger studios, more cameras to cut up the view so that people don't get uncomfortable with a walleyed announcer, and they can move around during spots that depend heavily on cue cards like the short monologue of 5-8, 30 second jokes. Not 60 second news storys where they have to pronounce words like Slobodan Milosevich or Hafith al-Barghuth
Give the guy a little credit, he said he tried other, less complicated analog and digital methods and in true /. fashion, copied the IP of the Teleprompter and released it open source. Compare his solution, some 2x4's and a piece of glass with a commercial equivalent
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
just have someone to flip those cue cards in place of the powerbook. Still one would be able to look at the lens. Much cheaper. Altho, if you already have that powerbook...
nice idea.
-Is the meaning of life vanity, or is vanity the meaning of life?
Just another example of the creativity of MAC users.
I thought you said Teleporter!
Lame.
For the love of God, are people so poor at memorizing a few lines that they would rather spend hours developing a temporary teleprompter!?
The author is so worried about how his eyes look while reading on camera, well, guess what, I bet he still looks like he is reading with his teleprompter.
My advice: memorize a few lines and recite them directly into the camera. This guy claims to be a movie director/producer/etc. and if his movies are worth a damn, he won't have a scene of himself talking directly into the camera continuously for more than 15-30 seconds. Can he not memorize that amount of material at a time?
There are no mirrors. Adding a mirror to the construction would be a lot of physical work, not to mention: where would you put the mirror? InDesign is AppleScriptible (which, when combined with watched folders, allows the process to be completely automated), but in any case checking one box when you're saving the file, which takes all of about half a second, seems like a lot less work than adding mirrors to a wooden frame to me.
Most of the small studios I have worked in used the venerable Commodore 64 as a teleprompter (to this day, many are still in use).
Using teleprompter software that was developed for the system, the C=64 had the advantage to being able to output to any NTSC screen, making it a cheap and reliable method of putting text on the screen.
You simply typed in your script, and ran the software, which would display the text one line at a time and you could go fowards, backwards, etc. The monitor was then bounced into the glass in front of the camera, so the person speaking could look directly into the camera and see the text reflected.
Pretty simple and very very reliable.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I had the same problem once, but I came up with another solution.
It's called "memorize the cue cards".
I bet I did that in a lot less time than he took to build a teleprompter.
You could just use a web browser and some MARQUEE tags.
What? No paperclip?
All DIY projects require at least one paperclip. It is some kind of understood rule.
This guy is one of my professors. This teleprompter is for a presentation on panoramic photos, of which he is an amazing photographer. He's actually creating a coffee-table book from these panoramics, and some are for sale through PayPal.
Worth at least a look, especially the ones of the Brooklyn Bridge. He'll also sell you huge prints if you email him.
do what THIS guy did
Amen!
This guys my professor. Knowing him, this didn't take long at all.
I was excited when I thought that said "Build your own teleporter"!
Can you really remember 60 to 100 pages of tech Dialog? And can all the people you hire do this...I bet not.
:)
Go out and shoot some video and see how well you do. I will bet you real money, you will want to build on of these or at least kill a few actors
Though it doesn't involve powertools, we're using Videocue to make videos at our school.
I was wondering about the converting to PS then flipping as well. A 2nd monitor seems a bit extravegant (if you're on a limited budget that is). At work, my workstation's driver supports image flipping (it's an nvidia version i believe).
I've never actually used it for anything serious. Most of the time it's just to play office jokes by flipping the screen upside down then acting like i'm working. I suppose in this context it would actually benifit.
he's the guy who bought his acct on ebay
Actually the new Nvidia Windows drivers allow you to rotate and flip the output image (I think, not running Windows right now so I can't check).. dunno if they have it for their Linux drivers as well, in any case, he was using a Mac.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Pshhh, that would involve Bush reading and talking at the same time. Reading is hard. :-)
This is more fun if you do it with an actual black-and-white television monitor -- just reverse the connections on the horizontal deflection coil.
No, Bush didn't rent that, he bought it, and it was a good investment seeing as how often he probably uses it.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
There are no mirrors. Adding a mirror to the construction would be a lot of physical work, not to mention: where would you put the mirror?
..mirror \ _| laptop
How would this be any more difficult than mounting a sheet of plate glass at a 45 degree angle? You would have a mirror mounted below and parallel to the plate glass. The laptop would then be oriented upright and pushed back on the platform closer to the camera. It's really quite simple. See ascii below for obfuscation.
Observer \ glass Camera
Here come da fudge!
I suspect that the reason for the "driver image flipping" is for use with projectors. Some projectors don't support flipping for rear-projection, or for "upside down roof mounted" situations. Or in some cases, its easier to change your own laptop, than to mess around with someone elses projector (assuming you even have access to the controls on it). Cheers, Boris.
As people recite memorized information, they glance about. It seems to be attached to recall quite deeply... people glance upward when remembering numbers.
When talking to an audience this is a good thing. Glancing to the side for one person is glancing directly at another, as you well know, since you teach the subject.
It doesn't work on camera, though. There everyone who looks at the tv has the feeling that straight at the camera is straight at them. If you're glancing about, you look shifty, either with dishonesty or discomfort.
The whole point of the teleprompter is to not memorize the information so that you can retain that all important eye contact. That's why news reporters use it. They could memorize the news and use cue card style brief notes, but they'd be less able to control their gaze.
What if you're not doing a show, and just want to use a teleprompter for practice/school?
I, for one, am scared to pieces by cameras. You might see me going to lowes to get some parts to use with an old laptop, but you ain't going to find me buying a several thousand dollar pos that is totally unjustified for my purposes.
Apparently he's not the first to do something like this with a Mac, as variety of software is designed to make it easy
One tip: put some sort of shroud around the glass and the camera to keep the background dark, making the text easier to read. The teleprompters I've seen all have this, and it also makes a nice matte box for the camera.
Get some paper and a sharpie. Write down all the stuff you want to say, and have the camera man flip the pages. They're called cue cards, and they used them way back in the day....
Except for the problem of looking weird on camera rather than being able to look at the camera (and therefore your audience), that would be a solution. Now all you have to do is carry your idea forward a bit and you'll get the original solution to this problem.
Earlier telepromters use a roll of paper. You wrote your text on the roll of paper and and scrolled the paper in front of a camera. The camera sent the image to a TV monitor sitting where the laptop sits in this version. Of course, the glass/mirror reflected everything backwards so you had to be a bit dyslexic to use it. Later versions use another mirror at the camera end to flip the text before it was sent to the monitor.
;no, no, no it's called bash .
;treehead
"If any part Linux was stolen, then Windows was the biggest heist in history."
Before anyone makes fun of this guy for not just using PowerPoint or something else, just think about what a teleprompter is being used for. Someone is reading a script that they've either not had in their possession long enough to read it or contains content that's new enough to NOT allow for memorization (i.e. breaking news).
A friend of mine shot a documentary last December whose narrator was none other than Ben Jones, former US congressman and, more famously, Cooter, the mechanic from The Dukes of Hazzard. Mr. Jones had only had the script for a few days, and he wanted to make minor changes as he went along to facilitate his own personal style.
I was asked to be a production assistant. I ended up, for the most part, being responsible for a low-end teleprompter we were using for the documentary script. In order to keep up or slow down depending on Mr. Jones' reading speed, a thumbwheel type control was used off camera to move the script up and down at variable speeds. Mr. Jones finally asked me to do it since, after trying it once, he found that I kept up with his rate of speech much better than the other production assistant.
Sure enough, documentary narration that was requiring retakes and retakes suddenly wrapped up a helluva lot more quickly. We would end up taking so much time in earlier takes because the precision required for the thumbwheel control was just not there. And we couldn't give the control to Mr. Jones, since he had to walk in and out of shots for the various narration scenes. The cord to the teleprompter was NOT long enough for him to be on the other side of a room and walk in.
I think the worst part about the whole experience was trying to do takes in the middle of a small town courthouse square in the middle of 15F temperatures, freezing rain, and wind. The teleprompter was pretty damned useless then because the glass kept fogging up due to the temperature changes.
My 2 cents.
IronChefMorimoto
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
One of the most awkward things about video ichats is that you never really make true eye contact with the other party. either you are looking at the camera (and not seeing their image) or looking at the other's image - to them you are looking down (or away from eye contact). I don't think video chat will ever really "catch fire" until this gets corrected -- humans crave eye contact in visual communication!
Even the video phones I've seen get this wrong with the camera located some distance above the incoming image display.
What's This! Mirrors reflecting mirrors!? Sorcery I say!
Wouldnt there be a problem with the loss of light by reflecting the image twice ? Even when it has been mirrored once it still doesnt look very bright,
Lima India November Uniform X-ray
'new' nvidia drivers? *scoffs* try 2 year old nvidia drivers have had image rotate... As far as 'flip' goes, now thats a whole different ball of wax... I'm not sure that they even have that...
My only system with an nvidia gpu is my former laptop, so I can only check my ati drivers, which have rotate but not flip... But I'm assuming that if nvidia's drivers had flip, that ATI would feel the need to 'add' flip capablility, so as not to be left behind.
Someone suggested adding a mirror, which is quite feasible, simply mount it above the laptop's keyboard, and have the laptop laying normally on it's bottom instead of on it's screen!
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Nope. Clearly a lot of us hopeful geeks read it that way.
Man, I'm sooooo ready for my own personal teleporter. I want to wake up at 7:00AM (instead of the usual 5:30AM), get ready and eat breakfast, then start my morning commute at around 8:00AM (instead of the usual 6:30AM), arriving at my desk at something like 8:00AM (as opposed to the usual 8:15AM).
I want to come home for lunch too but still get my whole hour.
I want to buy a car that's price doesn't reflect the cost of shipping it to the dealership, or the parts that made it to the factory where it was built. I want to....well, you get the idea.
A Replicator would be nice too so if you're feeling generous Santa come on down!
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
for the first time ever!!! not bad for being 27
You know, I cannot count the number of times in a year a need to find a teleprompter fast. And now, lo and behold- I can make one myself!
Holy cats! My webcam sermonettes will never be the same.
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
what is with the apple articles? who the heck has an apple powerbook for this project?
how do I relate?
teleprompter = hardware
PowerPoint/Impress = software
hardware != software
Q.E.D. PowerPoint/Impress != teleprompter
RTFA.
at least not as stupid as your comments!
again, RTFA!
Actually, to get everything accurate and to compensate for the dissipation of the signal, you should use something like this:
/\/\/ O> 0O> \\
/ \\\/\/
That should just about handle it...
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
Which is all well and good if you want and expect people to stay in their places; for me I'll take creativity and social mobility.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
It seems like this idea could also be used for Webcams or Video-phone calls. Use a tilted piece of glass setup so that someone could look directly into the camera instead of away from the lens. I really think that's one of the big reasons why video conferencing hasn't caught on... the fact that everyone is always looking away from the camera.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
He's a newbie. He bought his UID off of ebay. He's been posting all of a month.
Actually, to get everything accurate and to compensate for the dissipation of the signal, you should use something like this:
/\/\/ O> 0O> \\
/ \\\/\/
That should just about handle it...
I understand most of this, except why you're attaching electrodes to your testicles.
"rote" does not mean "repetition" or "memorization". "rote" refers to the mechanical aspect of repetition for memorization, mechanical to the extent that one does not necessarily get the point of the lesson. so, "rote" would not be the appropriate word to use here.
Your explanation is close enough, but I'll make a minor optics nit-pick: TIR (Total Internal Reflection) is not involved. Bare glass reflects about 4% of the incident light. As the author indicates, that's enough to read high-contrast text. The other 96% of the light is transmitted up through the glass to the room ceiling. There would be light which is reflected from the top glass surface, then reflected again from the lower surface which makes it to the camera. So less than 0.2% (96%*4%*4%*96%) of the light reaches the camera, which is likely not detected.
ShoutingMan.com
Humm.. the old Amiga computer had software teleprompting years ago... smooth scrolling large text and mirrored any which way.
Amazing magic tricks
I'd like to see a project that uses all of the things that "must" go into a Do-it-yourself project, and nothing else. Perhaps as a contest of some sort.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Light travels in both directions. If there were total internal reflection allowing him to see the words, there would necessarily be total internal reflection allowing the words to see him, making the camera somewhat useless.
Then he outsourced the design to India and the Star Trek crew got bangalored...
On the flip side of the glass, Doesn't that 45 degree angled cause sunlight to then be beamed directly into the camera lens? A crispyfried CCD, great. So we have a perfect monologue, with a nice lens flare halo blocking the shot. Hmm, I guess he won't need AfterEffects.
I think I'd spend the 800 on those mini lcd versions with the black case rather than build my own. Look at the size of that thing. He's got a jumboprompt. After doing 2 or 3 productions with that thing, odds are he'll get tired of carrying it and chuck it into a ravine.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
but the guy who says you can do it in bash doesn't actually tell you how to do it in bash.
I had a professor once who did that sort of thing. We'd have trouble prototyping circuits and ask for some help, he'd come over and look at a couple of seconds and say, "I see your problem" and walk away.
*spank*
/. whore!
... why he needed to export the document in postscript and mirror flip it Had he used a CRT, a ridiculously simple method of flipping the images would be to simply reverse the monitor's internal connection to the horizontal deflection coil. (the wires go down to a connector on the mainboard; just remove, reverse, and reinstall the pins in the connector housing). Do the same for the vertical coil if you need the image flipped upside-down. Also makes for an excellent prank against co-workers, or a way to score a perfectly good monitor from that annoying, non-tech-saavy roommate.
nah... that's the back mounted ratbrain autopilot...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
On the off chance that the guy's actually going to read this I'd suggest using a bluetooth mouse for setting the pace. Maybe even with a scroll wheel if the PB can handle that.
X.
If you drape a black cloth over the area between the camera and the glass it makes the reflection much easier to read.
Actually I looked through the settings using the latest NVidia driver just now and couldn't find any flip options... oops, one more piece of disinformation..
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Cue cards. And being familiar with your copy.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Really... the article is still as fast as a motherfucker. The text is really unneeded.
/. whore
oh, and also...
*spank*
I'm having trouble understanding why this is on slashdot - I mean, it's a piece of angled glass and an upside down laptop. It's not terribly innovative, since anyone who's ever looked at a prompter would probably say to themselves that, yes, if they had a piece of glass and nothing better to do with their time, then they, too, could make one. His solution isn't even a very good one, since it lacks the one essential feature of any prompter: namely smooth, variable speed scrolling. Without that, the reader's eyes will be moving down the page as they go, and the result will look very amateurish. Watch any newscast and realize that the anchors are reading off a prompter all the time, yet it's usually hard to tell, since they know their job, as does the prompter operator. Also, the bit about reflections only being a problem outdoors is ridiculous, since there are presumably lights in the studio, and any reflections at all will look terrible - sure you can minimize them by careful light placement, or you could just put a freaking shroud around the thing and save setup time.
Anyway, since most people in the business of making videos would be in a position to either rent one or buy one cheap, the whole thing just seems like a waste of time and bandwidth. Not unlike posting long rants on slashdot that nobody cares about... um...
Grab some black construction paper, cut up from the bottom, then cut a hole the size of the videocamera's lense. Then place the black construction paper on the camera. It should be possible to get it to stay on it's own, if not some tape should hold it in place.
This will make the teleprompter much easier to read even against bright backgrounds; there would be a more or less single colour background over the entire viewable area of the teleprompter instead of the vastly different background colours in the current one; in the sample photo you can only really read the text that is in front of the black camera.
Just get your video footage of your actor moving his/her mouth and emoting, then dub over the voice later in editing. Everyone loves dubs!
I read that as "Build your own Teleporter"
Wow, slashdot is ahead of the times
It's so funny when geeks think they've
..
discovered something new, and the reality
is just that there's a whole world beyond
their cubicle that they're not aware of.
There's like a bazillion bits of teleprompter
software available for download. full version
demo copies, shareware etc. Why reinvent
the wheel and brag about it?
I just downloaded TeleScreen-32 Pro ( from drs-digitrax)
(one of many available)
it has reverse imaging, scrolling, all sorts
of features.
I'm an idiot, and I had scrolling reverse image
text on the one of my dual monitors on my PC,
within 30 seconds after reading this article.
The glass really isn't needed. With large scrolling text,
you can just place the lcd screen facing you,
next to the camera (above or side) and
read it just fine...
Let me tell you about my invention. I call it "fire".
My buddy is working on something he
calls "toilet paper".
It's all in the headline. With a little flash programm you could easyly render actuall text-data mirrored. You could even build a mirrord mini GUI for the prompter. ...
Coming to think of it, that's actually a cool little OSS project there.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I bet this guy wouln't have went through this much trouble if he knew that he could purchase a real teleprompter for $435 from http://www.teleprompters.org/ in the Bargains section.
Easier is to open a .txt file with line breaks inbetween paragraphs in QuickTime.
Intel Inside. Idiot Outside.
I thought it said, "Build your own teleporter".
Maybe someone else has said/thought this, but if he drapes a black sheet over the camera and stand (like school photographers do) then he will see the reflection better - unless he wants to see the camera.
Has he not heard of blu-tac? Getting somebody to hold up his damn cue cards? What an idiot.
If this is a one-off event - why not just memorize the damn script!
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
I get this catalogue for some reason and happened to remember reading this.
Using plain glass it'll be real hard to read. Beamsplitter glass is what's needed, even paying the $300 for the 60/40 glass is a lot cheaper than buying a teleprompter.
I learned a long time ago that it is often better to go and buy or rent a specific tool and I can get the job done immediately.
.
For example there is a serpentine belt on my car. If I don't have the special tool then it could take an hour to put on the belt. With the tool the belt goes on in less than thirty seconds.
Same thing with computers. I want to transfer my cassette tapes to CD. I have rangled with Linux sound (my Windows partitions don't boot anymore). but no matter what it couldn't be easier then to have a device that I can put the cassette on one side and a CD-RW on the other, and push a button. Minutes later I have a useful CD recorded from the tape! This device (from TASCAM) costs about $800 but would let me be very productive in this way.
But the price is high. So is it better for me to just use my Linux install and an old tape deck?
For music recording I could use a MAC or a Linux box say running the planet CCRMAA extensions.
And then I would have an audio workstation. OR I could get a hard-drive recorder.
I am leaning towards the hard-drive recorder because they have solved all of the problems of sync and noise. The devices are of a comparable price to buy a fullup computer. But with that I wouldn't need to rangle over sound cards and noise from the computer fans and hum from bad grounding, or the sound of the TCP/IP bleeding through to the sound input. Or I won't have to worry about every time the kernel is upgraded that the sound drivers don't work any more.
And then in a few years if Linux sound is better, then I can do that.
So, to be productive in music it would be good to get the hard-drive recorder. And then I could also get a LINUX box to load the CCRMA extensions. And while I am musical I can make music and when I am being a techie then I can work on getting the Linux music work-station stuff working. Or I could go buy an IMAC. .
In any case it is always best to get the tool that does the job.
Another thing: having the right tool means you are productive and getting things done.
Part of the equation with computers is that the venders can not be trusted. They will break the tool if they think it will make you upgrade. (OK, I am being a little bit paranoid and irrational)
That is why it is still important to be part of the Linux movement. It makes the venders behave in a more honest way.
As far as Linux sound goes, it has a lot of issues. My sound didn't work for recording. And as this was something that I hadn't done much of I was trying to get the drivers for the card I have. But they didn't work (kernel 2.4 is broken for some sound that used to work). The solution:
get an older sound card that only does 16 bit sound.
$30 verses hours of work. I paid the coin and got the sound card that worked.
And so my conclusion: There is no easy answer to these problem of buying verses building tools. You have to do a little of each. Your time is very valuble.
If you solve a problem you solve it for everyone, so if you do make your own tools you then become a source of help to others. I get off on helping others.
I think I have gone on long enough.
If he used a pc with a nvidia gpu, he could have just used any word processor, and in the video driver invert/flip/rotate the screen and would not have to worry about going through the extra process. Heck he could have someone type the script in real time!
ok how about making fun of him for reinventing that which indie film makers and small studios have been doing for 20 years???
we built our own teleprompter in 1986 for t he school production class. it was a VIC 20 modified by me to reverse the video and then use a ATARI pong paddle to control the speed and direction of the propter scrolling.
pretty much the same way except we used plexi that was very slightly mirrored on one side that we found in the junkpile at school. contrast was great and with some black felt from the back to drape over the camera we only had a 1/4 F stop light reduction.
What is next? we going to get a story about someone who discovered how to build your own desk? or maybe a chair?
3 seconds of googling would have produced 20 similar wesites, most over 5 years old.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
All your crossbar telephone switches are belong to us.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As it turns out, teleprompter aren't special super expensive machines only holywood has. I know I set some up pretty often and they basically are cheaper more practical versions than the one he made. Kudos for the imagination but here is the cheaper way to do it, which as it turns out is the real thing:
;) ), feed the output of your laptop to a tv screen (if your laptop has such facility) use a big size font and feed the text to the tv from afar, which let you control the prompting without having to be close to the person reading it or without having this person to switch it itself making the speech more natural and continuous, plus a tv screen is way brighter than a laptop screen so the letters (or images) will be more visible trough the glass.
1-Use a microphone stand, it is telescopic, cost less than the amount of wood seen in the article, is faster and easier to set up and can be transported more easily, no need for the big mic stand with boom and all, the simplest telescopic stand will do.
2- Place a glass instead of a mirror at the top of the mic stand, for that you will need to buy a clip that can be screwed on a mic stand or built it yourself using a microphone clip and a glass fixed to a wood pole about the size of a mic which will fit in the mic clip. Again very inexpensive, less than what you see there, glass (or plastic glass (plexiglass is even better)) is less expensive than a mirror and let the person who reads the telepromter look at the set, the crowd or whatever he needs to be looking at without looking away from the teleprompter.
3-Use the same laptop with filemaker database, or whatever other database, he is using to generate text and or images. Be aware that there are teleprompter software on the web to do exactly what I describe here, cheap sotware that let you type anything and autoscroll it to provide a live teleprompting feed.
4-Place laptop under glass and push brightness to a max, use dark backgound (usually black but the surrounding will actually dictate what is apropriate) and bright text (on black use bright rich yellow, it's more obvious than white), OR, for a feel of luxury (
TV studios and movie studios use electronic teleprompter because the let you totaly free the speaker surrounding of any prompting gear by placing the prompter beside the cam it also helps the speaker to look at the camera without much conscious effort, but for most other situation what I described here is what you will see.
(Yeah, that's the trademark name, btw.) Anyway, they have a black shroud surrounding the front of the camera an connecting to the reflector. It keeps glare from bouncing into the lens from the back side and it makes the text so that it's actually readable. You don't want any light coming from behind that reflector, and his design egregiously allows for it.
Oh, the fun you can have with a teleprompter.
Before anyone makes fun of this guy for not just using PowerPoint or something else
If I were going to make fun of this guy, it sure wouldn't be for not using PowerPoint. It'd be for being so damn full of himself. Basically, this guy builds a little platform to hold a sheet of glass and a PowerBook and calls it a teleprompter. Big deal. Give me a tripod, two square feet of MDF, a sheet of glass, and a couple hinges, and big piece of black felt and I'll build you a version of this guy's teleprompter that fits in your laptop bag, is easier to read, and doesn't reflect light from above into the camera.
You're right that controlling the scrolling rate of a teleprompter can be a delicate matter. Thirty seconds on Google would find half a dozen Mac-compatible apps which are for the most part pretty inexpensive and which do exactly the sorts of things you need from a teleprompter. They'll give you big white letters on a dark background, reverse the text, scroll manually or automatically, and so on. Instead, Mr. Lawler uses some PDF tricks to come up with a manual-only, page-by-page scrolling system. Creative maybe, but it sounds less than effective.
I'd say that TFA is more about Brian P. Lawler and his lackluster screen reflector than about building an effective teleprompter. And that's too bad, because it wouldn't have taken any more effort to design a more useful device incorporating off-the-shelf software.
(sorry about the subject, couldn't resist)
This guy (and most teleprompter designs I've seen) both require that the image displayed on the screen is mirrored so that the reflected image is not mirrored.
Simple fix: have the point outward toward the subject and put a REAL mirror to reflect the image upwards in front of the display. Then put your beamsplitter glass in front of the lense. Think like it's a periscope.
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But has it been tested? What if it is vulnerable to interception? He utters 'My Fellow Americans' and says 'My Fellow Investors'? If there was adequate quality-control, the urgency for upgrades would decrease.
but, from what I've found, renting for just a few days is often a high percentage of the cost of buying outright. Like a tile cutter. Or similar. Don't get it back within two days? Need it for an extra day for a few extra tiles you didn't calculate correctly? Didn't make it in time to return it by the closing time?
Sometimes even in rental situations, it turns out better to buy than to rent.
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