AV/IT TEAM: Mark Beekhuizen, director of Education Technology; Lance Finch, MEd, manager of Instructional Design and Technology
GOALS: Ultimately, the goals of this project were to cost-effectively continue to support established lecture capture (LC) processes, as well as expand the availability of the LC service to more classroom locations.
The original AV solution designed for this department leveraged a large central matrix switch to take inputs from every teaching and learning space and make them routable to every other teaching and learning space. This design supported a central bank of LC recorders for an on-demand recording solution for each learning space, regardless of size.
During the pandemic, Magewell products were leveraged to intercept HDMI signals, encode them to NDI, and pass through the original HDMI signal to support the legacy AV solutions. Dante capacity was added to the existing audio processors of each learning space. By adding NDI and Dante software clients to classroom PCs and faculty laptops, classroom cameras and mics were easily made available for hybrid teaching and learning efforts without disrupting the existing AV systems or requiring code changes.
With the central AV matrix switch beginning to fail and labeled as end-of-life by the vendor, the AV code became complex and expensive to maintain. The college needed to provide increased opportunities for lecture capture, but rewiring each classroom to be self-supported is cost-prohibitive for a one-year project cycle.
The college invested in an NDI-based LC solution from Vizrt called CaptureCast. This server can sit anywhere on the campus network and consume the growing number of NDI-based sources added to the learning spaces, using both software and hardware NDI solutions depending on client capabilities.
CHALLENGES: The main challenge is gaining traction and support for AVoIP (specifically NDI) solutions from central campus resources. As a smaller department, the college needs resources not available on staff, with AV system coding support being the most critical need. This support would enable coding the legacy matrix switch out of the equation and adding support for the NDI-based solutions into the existing touch panel UI.
Magewell Pro Convert HDMI Plus, NewTek NDI Tools screen capture and webcam tools, NewTek CaptureCast Server
FINAL INSTALL/USER BENEFITS: End users benefit from the continued availability and expansion of lecture capture solutions, allowing faculty to make complex lecture materials available for student review and improved understanding. Additional benefits include centralized LC process components for improved visibility, management, and process enhancements for the AV/IT team; as well as gradual retirement of legacy point-to-point components through the expanded use of flexible and cost-effective AVoIP solutions.
