How to Troubleshoot a Broadcast System
Learning how to efficiently troubleshoot is an especially useful skill to have when you are working in a live production environment. It is important to use your time efficiently when on site before a show, especially since there is a hard deadline for you to have your equipment set up and ready to go. If the show starts at 7:00pm, it isn’t going to wait for the broadcast.
The first and most important thing to keep in mind is to prioritize. On good days, everything is easy and works immediately, but there are times when equipment fails. On those days you need to remember what is most important, and get those things set up first. For example, if you are setting up audio for a football game, the number one most important thing to get set up and working is the broadcast booth. Effect mics are great, but without the booth, we don’t have a show. Shotguns can always be added as the show is going on, but without the announcers at the beginning of the show, everyone will notice that there is something wrong. Same thing goes for cameras. If you are doing a football game with 5 cameras (Game, Tight, 2 Endzones, and a Handheld), it is important to get the game and tight follow camera first. You can do a game with just those 2 cameras, but you can’t do one with only the handheld and an endzone camera. Also remember that things can always be added as the show is happening if necessary as long as you have the bare minimum to do the show ready before you start.
Let’s talk about how to figure out what the issue is with an example setup. Say you are setting up a stick mic and ifb for a sideline interview. Let’s imagine that the stick mic isn’t working. First, it is important that if there is more than one person working on the problem that they communicate. There is nothing more frustrating than 2 people making changes at the same time randomly without communicating what has changed. The second most important thing to do is to identify all the components in the system that could be the problem. This is known as identifying “points of failure”. For the microphone on the sideline, there could easily be a dozen points of failure. Below is a typical example of what could be involved to get just one mic hooked up. If you count every individual point in the chain where the issue could be, there are 11 different points of failure. With so many possible points of failure, it is important to pick an end and start making changes from there. Either start from the truck end and work your way out, or from the mic and work your way back. A valid step one could be to change out the microphone. An equally valid step one could be to change which mixer input the microphone plugs in to. However, it is a mistake to change both of those things at the same time, since you won’t know what change made a difference. You also don’t want to start in the middle, since you don’t know which side of you the issue is on. If the first change you made did not make a difference, I always recommend changing the system back to its original state before moving on to the next piece in the chain and making another swap.
It is also a good practice to use known good equipment or tools to test if there are issues. For example, if you have two mics set up and only one is working, you can swap the mics to find out if one or both are good pieces of equipment. Let’s look at the following example. Imagine that Microphone 1 does not seem to be working, but Microphone 2 is working perfectly. The first thing to do is swap the mics at the end of their XLRs. Once they have been swapped, what happened to the problem? It will have either followed Microphone 1, or it will have stayed on XLR 1. If the issue stayed with Microphone 1, clearly it has to be the issue. If Microphone 1 works on XLR 2 and Microphone 2 does not work on XLR 1, clearly both mics work properly and the issue lies elsewhere, either with XLR 1 or the Mixer input. You can also substitute a QBox for a microphone, as a QBox can generate 1k tone down an XLR.
Keep in mind that the best way to make life easier for everyone involved in a show is to avoid troubleshooting entirely. When equipment is not functioning properly, make sure it is reported to whomever is in charge of the equipment on that show (EIC). If there is a bad cable, make a point of setting it aside, label it as bad, and give it to the EIC. Do not put it away with all the other cable. All that does is make problems for the next people that try to use it. Use the tools available to you. Most trucks have cable testers available, so test your cables before running them to save everyone needless repeated work.
A few final tips to leave you with. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Finish what you start. Things don’t work if they are not plugged in. Learn from the troubleshooting process what the most common bad components are so that you can check those before using them. Communicate with your team. If one of us succeeds and the rest of us fail, we all fail. The most likely explanation for an issue is most often the correct one.