AJA BRIDGE LIVE gives lecturers a tool to help them give students a solid background and confidence in both traditional baseband SDI and IP systems as they start their working lives.
As audiovisual processes and expectations rapidly evolve, the AV industry is calling on educational institutions to prepare the next generation of AV professionals for the future. Singapore Polytechnic, a recognised Institute of Higher Learning in Southeast Asia, is adopting the most recent AV systems to keep its curricula up to date and make sure its students are ready for professional operations after they graduate.
Collaborating with broadcast and AV systems integrator IDEAL Systems, the school built a modern, new NDI-based video production studio and remote production pipeline to support events and hands-on student training. An IP video bridge, AJA’s BRIDGE LIVE, supports direct integration of existing baseband and newer IP equipment, so students receive exposure to both.
Architecting a Live and Hybrid Training Studio
The vision for the new studio was inspired by the polytechnic’s Diploma in Integrated Events and Project Management (DEPM) program syllabus. Offered as part of a module that focuses on live and hybrid events, the program aims to train students via real-world projects, handing them opportunities to create, plan and execute live events. IDEAL Systems was enlisted to architect the studio with this in mind.
Its design aimed to give students access to a range of equipment that live event production professionals use in the field today. At the same time, it needed to support the school’s own production demands for symposiums, launches and other public events.
Having already supported a number of successful NDI deployments for remote production environments, IDEAL Systems decided early on that a hybrid NDI/baseband SDI pipeline was the right path forward in this case.
Discoverability and Simpler Cloud Workflows
"NDI is more straightforward and significantly more cost-effective to deploy and maintain than other IP alternatives, while preserving the usual IP advantages like low latency, system flexibility and simple cabling requirements," said Jack Jiang, AV Sales Manager at IDEAL Systems Singapore. "It also ensures discoverability and simplifies cloud workflows. Plus, a large choice of NDI compatible equipment is available now and is rapidly growing."
To support this way of working, IDEAL Systems has built a studio and pipeline with portable rack units equipped with professional HD/UltraHD camcorders and NDI PTZ cameras for NDI low latency streaming and remote control. Networking is also central to the workflow.
The units include mixers with Dante audio networking, wireless microphone systems to capture audio in dynamic environments without interference, and NDI-enabled network switches supporting fast, reliable data transfer to multiple video sources. SRT 4G/5G wireless routers for secure data transmission are also integrated. Encode, decode and transcoding can be configured locally via keyboard and mouse.
Control Room Connectivity
In this case, each rack is configured to transmit live SRT audio and video signals from remote locations via the public internet to a control room on the Singapore Polytechnic campus. Jack said, "We designed all six racks for optimal flexibility, with portability and extendibility also top considerations. This way, our team could operate remotely with minimal infrastructure requirements, with SRT connectivity for secure, low latency video and audio transport over the internet."
From the remote site, SRT protocols are configured in ‘caller’ mode – usually from a source such as a camera or encoder – to initiate connections through the internet, sending live signals to the control room, where an AJA BRIDGE LIVE is connected to an internet router serves as the receiver in ‘listener’ mode.
BRIDGE LIVE then converts the SRT streams into NDI signals for input to the Polytechnic's video production system, which processes the feeds for live production and streaming. In this way, the video production system can support production functions from switching to broadcast graphics, virtual sets, special effects, audio mixing, recording, social media publishing and web streaming.
NDI – A Useful Skillset
"We see the use of NDI growing locally and globally, both in broadcast and ProAV, thus making it a very useful skillset for Singapore Polytechnic students to have in the future," said Jack. "The fact that our client can use BRIDGE LIVE to convert SRT to NDI signals from multiple mobile racks simultaneously and transmit them to the control room, something they haven’t been able to do before.
“It makes a huge difference because it gives them the flexibility to connect multiple mobile racks to a master control room for smoother, more efficient workflows, with steadfast reliability. BRIDGE LIVE's web interface makes the device easy to manage, and it can handle multiple streams simultaneously, which ensures a high-quality output with minimal latency."
AJA BRIDGE LIVE’s ability to simplify pure IP transcodes for the new studio, combined with its bi-directional capabilities that allow simultaneous encoding/decoding, mean the school has been able to reduce both the complexity and costs associated with its remote production infrastructure.
Most important, Jack noted that BRIDGE LIVE gives the polytechnic’s lecturers an instructional tool to help them ensure students receive a well-rounded background in traditional baseband SDI and IP systems. Their graduates are confident in both types of environment as they start their working lives. www.aja.com
