As the audiovisual (AV) industry rapidly evolves, educational institutions are preparing the next generation of AV professionals for the future. Singapore Polytechnic (SP), a leading Institute of Higher Learning (IHL) in Southeast Asia, embraces the latest AV technologies to enhance its curricula and ready students for the professional world post-graduation. Collaborating with broadcast and AV systems integrator IDEAL Systems, the school built a new state-of-the-art, NDI-based video production studio and remote production pipeline to support events and hands-on student training. An AJA BRIDGE LIVE IP video bridge supports seamless integration of existing baseband and new Internet Protocol (IP) technologies, so students receive exposure to both.
Establishing a studio design that bridges theory and practice
The vision for the new studio was inspired by SP’s Diploma in Integrated Events and Project Management (DEPM) program syllabus. Offered as part of a module that focuses on live and hybrid events, the program aims to train students via real-world projects, providing them with opportunities to create, plan, and execute live events. SP enlisted IDEAL Systems to architect the studio with this in mind. The design aimed to ensure student access to a broad range of equipment that live event production professionals use in the field today. At the same time, it needed to support school-related production demands for symposiums, launches, and other public events.
Having supported many successful past NDI deployments for remote production environments, IDEAL Systems quickly determined that a hybrid NDI/baseband SDI pipeline was the right path forward. “NDI is user-friendly and significantly more cost-effective to deploy and maintain than other IP alternatives, with all the traditional IP advantages like low latency, system flexibility, and simple cabling requirements,” explained Jack Jiang, AV Sales Manager at IDEAL Systems Singapore. “It also ensures discoverability and simplifies cloud workflows, plus the rapidly growing ecosystem of NDI equipment makes it a clear winner.”
Ensuring a flexible remote production workflow
Carrying this vision, IDEAL Systems built a studio and pipeline with portable rack units equipped with professional HD/UltraHD camcorders and NDI PTZ cameras for NDI low-latency streaming and remote control. The units include mixers with Dante audio networking, wireless microphone systems to capture audio in dynamic environments without interference, and NDI-enabled network switches for fast, reliable data transfer to multiple video sources. SRT (secure reliable transport) 4G/5G wireless routers for secure data transmission are also integrated.
Each rack is configured to transmit live SRT audio and video signals from remote locations via the public internet to a control room on the SP campus. “We designed all six racks for optimal flexibility, with portability and extendibility also top considerations,” explained Jiang. “This way, the SP team could operate remotely with minimal infrastructure requirements, with SRT providing secure, low-latency video and audio transport over the internet.”
From the remote site, SRT protocols are configured in “caller” mode to initiate connections through the internet, sending live signals to the control room, where an AJA BRIDGE LIVE connected to an internet router serves as the receiver in “listener” mode. BRIDGE LIVE then converts the SRT streams into NDI signals for input to Singapore Polytechnic’s video production system, which processes the feeds for live production and streaming. The video production system supports everything from switching to broadcast graphics, virtual sets, special effects, audio mixing, recording, social media publishing, and web streaming.
“We see NDI as a growing technology locally and globally, both in Broadcast and ProAV, thus making it a very useful skillset for Singapore Polytechnic students to have in the future. The fact that our client can use BRIDGE LIVE to convert SRT to NDI signals from multiple mobile racks simultaneously and transmit them to the control room is game-changing, and it gives them the flexibility to connect multiple mobile racks to a master control room for smoother, more efficient workflows, with steadfast reliability,” explained Jiang. “BRIDGE LIVE’s intuitive web interface makes the device easy to manage, and it can handle multiple streams simultaneously, which ensures a high-quality output with minimal latency high-quality output.”
Preparing students for the future
With AJA BRIDGE LIVE streamlining pure IP transcodes for the new studio and its bi-directional capabilities enabling simultaneous encoding/decoding, SP has simplified its remote production infrastructure while reducing costs. More importantly, Jiang concluded, “BRIDGE LIVE is giving Singapore Polytechnic lecturers a powerful instructional tool to ensure students receive a well-rounded background in traditional baseband SDI and IP technologies so that they can easily handle both when they enter the field.”
