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Takoma Park Community Center

Temporary Production Control Room 

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Background

 

The City of Takoma Park holds City Council Meetings in the Sam Abbott Citizen’s Center at 7500 Maple Avenue. The City Council meets in the Center’s theatrical auditorium. The 154-seat auditorium includes a stage, lighting, sound, video and presentation systems. Audio and video from the auditorium feed a separate production control room where council meetings are produced “live” and broadcast on the Takoma Park City TV cable channels (RCN 13 &1060, Comcast 13, Verizon 28) and over-the-top on YouTube and other streaming outlets. The meetings are recorded to a video server for scheduled broadcast on Cable TV and the meetings are available on-demand through the City’s website.

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The City Council dais is stored behind large wooden sliding doors, upstage center. Prior to a City Council meeting, the dais is assembled stage center. The theatrical lighting and sound are adjusted from a back of house position in the auditorium. Five PTZ ceiling mounted cameras are controlled from the production control room. Additional ENG cameras are positioned on the floor with camera operators. Camera operators take instructions from the Control Room over intercom.  

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Sam Abbot Citizen’s Center Auditorium is used for City Council Meetings

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Back of House control and ceiling mounted PTZ camera (1 of 5).

The Production Control Room is located on the same floor as the Auditorium and connects to the Auditorium’s production equipment over bundles of HD-SDI video, analog audio, CAT control, low voltage power, and HD-BaseT cables. Source selection and many AV operations are driven using a unified Crestron control GUI on a Crestron touch panel.

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Production Control Room console, equipment rack, and cable bundles.

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Crestron control GUI.

Project Summary

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The Sam Abbott Citizen’s Center is being renovated and renovation includes the existing Production Control room. Production control equipment and operations will be moved to a temporary room during the renovation. The City Council is scheduled to meet in the Auditorium in the first week of September and temporary production control must be up and operational before the September City Council meeting.

Technical Approach

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  • Relocate equipment from the Production Control Room rack to the Auditorium equipment closet. Cable bundles between the Auditorium and the Control Room originate or pass through an Auditorium equipment closet located in a corridor behind the Auditorium. We will pull the cable bundles back from the Control Room to the Auditorium equipment closet and terminate the cables to the relocated equipment.  Unused legacy equipment will be removed to make room for the relocated equipment. Relocated Control Room Equipment includes the Crestron DM router, Crestron controller, Crestron PoE switches, and Panasonic PTZ power supplies. By relocating the complete Crestron system and re-terminating it to the existing infrastructure we will avoid long pulls and will maintain the control GUI “as is”.

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Equipment will be relocated from control room to Auditorium equipment closet.

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  • Use the Ethernet network infrastructure, currently deployed at the Center to transmit video, audio, and control signals between the Auditorium and the temporary control room.  We have reviewed this approach with Zamurd Abbas, Dir. Information Technology for the City of Takoma Park, and have successfully tested the transmission equipment on the Center’s network.  Video will be encoded as NDI. Audio will be encoded as Dante. Serial control will be converted to TCP/IP. The existing intercom system will be replaced with a Dante enabled intercom system.
     

    

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  • Analog audio channels from the Auditorium terminate to 3 x 8 channel microphone splitters in the Auditorium equipment rack. The splitters provide audio feeds to the back of house mixer and the production control room. Audio feeding the control room will be encoded as Dante at the splitters and transmitted over the Community Center’s Ethernet network.

    

Encoding video sources as NDI bypasses the existing coax baseband infrastructure and enables us to use the native NDI capability of the NewTek production switcher.

Encoding audio as Dante bypasses the existing analog audio infrastructure and consolidates 32 audio channels to a signal CAT6 Ethernet cable. A Dante DN-32 interface card will be added to the Midas M32 audio mixer.

Encoding serial control as TCP/IP bypasses the existing serial cable and we avoid pulling new cables to each camera.

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NDI video bypasses coax infrastructure

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Dante bypasses analog audio infrastructure.

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TCP/IP bypasses existing serial cable to cameras.

System Integration

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  • The Production console and equipment rack in the Production Control Room will be moved and configured in the Temporary Production Control Room. Cable bundles to the Production Control Room will be pulled back to the Auditorium Equipment Closet

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  • Equipment will be installed and configured in the Auditorium rack and temporary Production Control Room.

  • Complete Production System operation will be tested and documented.

  • Takoma Park staff will be trained on the new video production workflow.

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Suite 7

Gaithersburg, MD 20877-2144

240-864-4000

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