At the beginning of the week, we have been asked to change and update the content for the signage over the buildings using the TriplePlay platform. Most of the contents that are playing in the building are powerpoint slideshows, which we would need to convert them into an mp4 file first then upload onto the platform. However, even the file is on there, it has to be encoded by TriplePlay itself to allow the video to play in their certain format. To let the content switch between the slideshows and TV, a time schedule needs to be set for each content to be displayed at a certain time. I have always been watching the engineers doing it but this time I actually got a chance to play around with it myself! The process is quite straight forward and not too complicated so it wasn’t a difficult task for me to take on. Although there wasn’t any complex settings need to be done but it still took us the entire day just to wait and check if the video has been queued and encoded. 

After finishing managed the digital signage, I finally got a chance to look at all the different AV layouts in the rooms. The most common setup was installing a transmitter and receiver that connected via a LAN cable to talk to each other and linking back to a table touch panel for control. This kind of design generally is more suitable for a large room since a single HDMI couldn’t work in a long distance. The other way of large room setup is putting a mini PC at the back of the display instead of the receiver and transmitter, which everything can be linked and controlled on the network and doing conferencing by using the panel. As for the cameras, either a rally or a PTZ camera they are all connected by USB cable into the USB extender that is also mounted behind the screen and feed back to the panel. As for all the audio within the room, from microphones to speakers they are all routed through an audio digital processor which can be controlled and managed through its platform through network. By doing this, you can see all the equipment status and assigned audio channels routing through Q-SYS software. While looking at the existing system that is live on site, I also went through my final exam for Q-SYS software training once again, and got the level 1 certificate at the same time! I have tried twice trying to pass the practical exam for level 1, but I was still a little bit confused before I actually looked at the live core processor working along with the software, which I would say it does help a lot to go on site and see how the system is actually being operated.

As in the event team, there was an event which is taking place in the presentation area which requires the fundamental mic up and content presenting, meanwhile they would like to stream the event through Skype that people can watch and interact remotely. The control system that is used in that presentation area was AMX which is not really reliable due to the delays and some constant drop offs. Apart from that, the laptop that the client has provided was an old model that just keep causing issues during our setup, which we managed to ask for another laptop to get a more stable connection. The event went pretty smooth until the last few slides that frozen for a few seconds and dropped offline on the last 3 minutes. Which is a shame but the client doesn’t seem to complain too much. The reason that the stream was dropped out is mostly because the shortage of bandwidth on Skype, which we couldn’t really control it. What the team has always wanted to improve with that space is to replace that AMX matrix to the Logitech Tap system that is being installed currently in the other meeting rooms since it was easy to operate and much more reliable than the AMX. However, they do have some handover and purchasing problems that is to deal with the client’s IT site which we will just have to wait until they approve the updates.

I have also looked at the other streaming platform more detailed and try to give it a go for a short and easy scheduled stream. There are two main ones that are commonly being used in the client’s side which are Wirecast and Kollective. Wirecast is a piece of software that acts like a video encoder which deal with all the video inputs and encode them into any desired format before streaming. As for the Kollective, it is simply a streaming platform that also allow the streamed content to be recorded and downloaded locally. 

I would say this week has been pretty busy and useful, I have definitely learnt a lot. Next week is gonna be my last week on site! Believe there should be more new things for me to go through, same old words stay tune for my next post!