A few weeks ago we had a meeting about video during the University of Northern Colorado’s commencement. In the past we have set up cameras, recorded the ceremony, edited the footage and a few days later we publish the video on to the streaming server. Now the University is interested in streaming the video live to a second location that is inside

Why?

Apparently, during the ceremony, which is outside on the football field, the paramedics get swamped with elderly people becoming dehydrated. So they would like a place where people could go and sit inside and watch the same ceremony.

The Ceremony Setup

The ceremony is on the football field. The stage is on one side with the sound mixer behind. The graduates sit in two sections and we shoot video down the middle. We would like to get closer to the stage but graduates walk in the middle so the safety guy wasn’t too happy about running cables down there.

In the past, we used two video cameras for the video and used a laptop to record the sound using Adobe’s SoundBooth. Then in the editing room we would sync the video and the audio, then compress the final version to FLV format and place it on the streaming server.

The Viewing area

The second viewing area is located in a Gym across the parking lot. This is too far to run cables so we will be using the existing network infrastructure. Obviously there are no network cables on the field so we will run cables from the press box or the ticket office.

Technical Setup:

Like most big projects the University setup a meeting with an outside contractor. We had a phone conversation with them and then scheduled an onsite visit. Here is the solution they came up with:

The stage is 40 feet across and there are 4 podiums; having two students walking at the same time makes graduation quicker. Two cameras are going to be used, one on the entire stage for the speeches and a second camera used when the graduates are shaking the hands of their professors. The camera can output HDMI, FireWire (HD/HDV), Component and AV. We will take Component out of the video and convert it to coax and take it to a Sony Anycast. The sound will come straight out of the soundboard and the Sony Anycast will sync up both the video and audio.

The Anycast will connect via CAT6 to the network and will be sent to a laptop in the Gym. Connect the laptop to the projector and you have live streaming.

Sony Anycast

I hadn’t heard of this device before this meeting so I did a little research. It is basically a compact video switcher that takes 6 video and 6 audio feeds. The device is only meant for small scale distribution as it can only output a small number of feeds. However, I would think you could output one of those feeds to another laptop where it could connect to a streaming server for wide distribution:

Tags: commencement, solutions, streaming server