During the summer of 2018 Northwest High School (part of Northwest Independent School District located in north Fort Worth) did an aggressive upgrade of the equipment and facilities for its Creative Media Production Academy funded by a 2017 voter approved school bond. The student-run television station, known as NHSTV, has been awarded as the top live daily show in the Southwest region of the United States for three straight years by the Student Television Network. The old studio was nine years old and the skills and production goals of the students had outgrown the old system. The goal of the project was to put systems and equipment in place that would give the students tangible real-world experience that would give them a competitive advantage for an internship, college program acceptance, and employment at any facility that would utilize audio and video production. These facilities could be a television station, house of worship, corporation or production house.
The areas upgraded were the Studio, Control Room, Audio Control Room and Rack Room. The footprint was laid out as a collaboration between the client and DRI and built out by the school district to those specifications. The studio floor was re-leveled, the control room was expanded, an audio booth was created, and the electrical was installed per specification.
The additional specifications that were used to guide us was that the format would be 1080P 59.94, would have a large multipurpose set and separate video and audio control areas. Also, there was a position in the control room that would allow the instructor to monitor all systems and remote control them if needed.
SWITCHING, COMPUTER GRAPHICS, SERVER PLAYOUT, ROUTING SWITCHER, TERMINAL GEAR:
ROSS Video was chosen to fill this bill as they are a mainstay at many facilities across the country. The Carbonite switcher coupled with Xpression graphics engine and its intuitive user interface made it an excellent choice. A 4-channel Tria playout server integrated very well into the system for live clip playout during production. The new Utrix 64x64 routing switcher became part of the package with its ability to add frame synchronizers to inputs with just a license upgrade. For DA’s embedders and de-embedders, sync generation, the Ross open gear platform was chosen for its easy ability to monitor all the cards in the chassis and its standard that allows any manufacture to create cards that can be plugged into the same open gear chassis. The ROSS Dashboard made monitoring all the systems a breeze to check status, troubleshoot and gain remote access.
STUDIO CAMERAS:
3ea Panasonic AK-UC3000 studio cameras were installed with smpte fiber interfaces back to the CCU’s. From there the AK-HRP1000 Remote control panels were installed in the control room to provide a shading station utilizing a quad split monitor. The AK-UC3000 cameras where outfitted with CueScript Teleprompters, number tally indicators, clocks and vanity monitors. The teleprompter computer output was converted to HDSDI and fed into the router, so the control room and audio control Multiview monitors could display the prompting as well. A 4th Panasonic camera AG-DVX200 was installed on a motorized Libec jib arm to provide cool establishing shots. Since this is an educational setting with students ranging from 9th-12th grades, two Panasonic PTZ cameras were installed in the Control Room and Studio. These cameras served two purposes in the project. The first was to use behind the scenes shots for production while the second was to allow the student producers and directors to receive feedback from the instructor without him/her being in the room.
KVM SYSTEM:
iHSE was chosen to provide KVM systems for their ability to run on category cable or fiber and bulletproof fast switching that is required in a broadcast facility. Seven different production computers were instantly available at six different user locations within the facility. This also gave the instructor the ability to gain control of any computers operated by the students.
EXTERNAL FRAME SYNCHRONIZER:
An AJA FS1-X was installed to provide a swiss army knife for any sources that would need to be converted from different media types archived by the school. All of the inputs and outputs were brought to the front of the equipment rack for easy patching.
RECORDERS:
2ea AJA KiPro Ultra Plus units were installed for switched and ISO recording. Each unit can record 4 inputs simultaneously on a small footprint device.
ENCODING and STREAMING:
The Newtek MediaDS was selected to provide encoding and streaming. The device allows for up to 4 channels and can stream on the local area network as well as out to Facebook Live, Microsoft Azure, Ustream, Wowza Streaming Cloud, and YouTube Live.
CUSTOM FURNITURE:
All the technical furniture in the control rooms was custom built by TBC Consoles. DRI drew the floorplans and furniture layouts that were then approved by the client and built and installed by TBC consoles
AUDIO:
The heart of the audio system is an ALLEN & HEATH AH-SQ-6. This is a quality mixer that has direct inputs and DANTE inputs so the microphones and returns to the studio could be completed with just a Category cable. 12 SHURE wireless microphones were installed ULX-DQ4 with a multiplexed antenna array for maximum studio coverage and frequency management. All speakers in the facility are Genelec 8330APM’s. Several embedders and de-embedders were installed in the Open Gear frames to allow mixing and re-embedding of the audio in the program stream.
INTERCOM:
The latest intercom matrix by RTS called the ODIN was installed to provide the most flexibility to the system. The drives control 6 panel locations, talent IFB and multiple belt pack locations. 2 dried out intercom lines were also wired to the audio board, so the productions communication could be recorded and later analyzed and critiqued by the instructor.
SET MONITOR CONTENT:
The studio set houses 14 monitor as different locations on the set. The Pro Video Player (PVP) from Renewed Vision was used to send different content to all 14 monitors. The studio is used for school district shows such as the Superintendent Report, as well as by other schools in the district. Therefore, the system needed to be flexible so that the set could change to accommodate different entities that would appear in studio. The set monitors allow for the set to be branded for whatever organization tapes there. The systems price point and flexibility made it the best choice for this application.
