EVS is globally recognized as the technology leader for video production, with wide-ranging HD-to-UHD/4K solutions for live sports, entertainment, and news content. You’ll find EVS’ premium media technologies in operations throughout the world, helping broadcasters, rights owners, and producers optimize live assets, engage audiences, and increase revenue streams by monetizing content across multiple platforms.
Customer research and education are critical to what EVS does. With training facilities in 12 locations around the world, it’s a way for them not only to introduce new products and offer in-depth, hands-on training, but to understand what customers need and how they use EVS’ products.
The crux of the new training center is the main instruction room with 10 seats—nine for the trainees and one for the trainer. There are two monitors per trainee plus two for the trainer, for a total of 20, in addition to two 70-inch monitors on the wall for all to see.
Besides using KVM (keyboard, video and mouse) for all seats in the training room, KVM also controls stations in the VIP room, a more comfortable, lounge-like room used for dedicated behind-the-curtains demos and proofs of concept with VIP clients. Two of the training room seats also feed the main conference room, making it possible for meeting participants to call up information from the training room during a meeting, if necessary. There are two more seats in the reception area to greet customers with EVS’ newest product, X-One, a touch-screen-enabled product that allows customers to walk up, touch it, play with it, and see features before getting into their in-depth training.
All screens are touch-screen-enabled, and every seat—monitors, keyboard, mouse, and touch screens—is accessible by KVM.
A Different Perspective
EVS’ KVM use case is different than in a traditional broadcast environment, where operators call up a product and use it to send something from point A to point B. Because they are training, they must be able to present and push the trainers’ screens to the operators and vice versa. They also need to preconfigure and save training sessions so they can be called up at will. And given the multi-room setup, they needed a quick, robust KVM switching capability to pass seat control from room to room at a significant distance within the building.
One major advantage IHSE KVM offers EVS over their old training facility is that trainers can now push their screens to the trainees, so trainees can see the lessons up close. Then, with a keyboard stroke, trainees can quickly switch back to their local machines to practice the functions in the lesson. By the same token, trainees can push their own screens to the large monitors in the front of the room, which come in handy when a trainee does something noteworthy that would benefit the rest of the class. Also, as long as the screens are next to each other, IHSE KVM enables one keyboard and mouse to span multiple screens and control multiple PCs.
The second advantage is that now multiple classes can be pre built using IHSE’s Draco tera tool software, which offers the flexibility to go from one training session to another with the push of a button. EVS uses the tera tool to build screen layouts and lessons for their many products, and then they simply take a few minutes to load the appropriate lesson before the class starts. This is a major improvement over the old way, which required a support engineer and a day’s worth of time to reconfigure the training lab for each new class.
The KVM specs for the training center include: an IHSE Draco tera Compact Matrix, 80-port, Cat-X; 53 CPU sources with a mix of EVS XT, Epsio, XF3, and IPDirector units, with CPU units based on DVI with RS-422 to support XT servers and serial control for LSM remote control panels; 11 CON workstations with a mix of touch-screen capabilities, based on HDMI with RS-422 to connect to LSM remote control panels; and some workstations use HDMI CON with local input to share between remote XT and local XT servers at the same workstation.
With IHSE KVM gear, the necessary flexibility and robust switching are in place to make the new training center shine. Thanks to a history of success with IHSE, and especially owing to the success with the US headquarters training center, EVS is looking to add IHSE KVM gear as they expand regional training centers.”
