The What: VuWall has introduced VuTrex, a hybrid technology designed to bridge AV, IT, and IP systems to manage and control any visual content across any type of display or video wall. VuTrex is now embedded in each component of the VuWall ecosystem of products, and its standards-based approach enables interoperability between all devices.

The What Else: VuTrex is the architecture and methodology that is at the core of every software component in the VuWall ecosystem, bringing efficiency to the entire video wall management workflow. VuTrex is responsible for the ecosystem's interoperability, expandability, and simple configuration, without the need for programming.

Related: The Technology Manager's Guide to Command and Control

This week's release of TRx 3.0, VuWall's Centralized Management Platform, will be the first-to-market offering of a single software platform that can distribute AV-over-IP content and provide advanced video wall management and control. Its redesigned architecture, powered by VuTrex technology, can manage multiple sources in any source format and easily route them to single displays or multiple video walls, without any programming.

"Video walls are becoming present in all work spaces, and they are now an integral part of most AV installations. Our customers face many challenges when it comes to handling AV and IT content, and big data," said Paul Vander Plaetse, CEO of VuWall. "After several years of intense development, we are proud to bring a unique and disruptive technology to the market that will overcome those challenges and help integrators reduce integration time, reduce project risk, and future-proof their end users' investment."

The Bottom Line: VuTrex is also embedded in VuWall's hardware components, including its flagship VuScape video wall controller and the VuStream series of encoders and decoders, giving customers a turnkey interoperable ecosystem for all their visualization needs.

A division of the €4.7 billion Metsä Group, Metsä Fibre is set to be the world’s largest producer and seller of softwood pulp through the recent inauguration of its new €1.2 billion bioproduct mill in Äänekoski, Finland. With an annual production capacity of 1.3 million tons of pulp, along with other bioproducts such as tall oil and turpentine, this next-generation bioproduct mill signals a new era—and new technological platforms—for the forestry industry.

Cutting-edge video wall technology

The bioproduct mill makes use of leading-edge automation and digitized monitoring systems for its high-speed production lines for woodcutting, washing, and more. To complement this, Metsä Fibre wanted a state-of-the-art video wall solution for monitoring its production operations. Taking the recommendation of one of its main suppliers, ANDRITZ Oy, Metsä Fibre reached out to local systems integrator, Elkome Systems, to manage the video wall installation.

Having prior knowledge of Matrox products, and convinced by their performance, Elkome Systems collaborated with Matrox Graphics to implement the new video wall solution in the Äänekoski plant. Metsä Fibre strongly believed investing in a large video wall would be an optimal decision. Not only would it allow the individual control room operators to function effectively, but it would also enhance the collaborative efforts of the team by displaying vast amounts of crucial process control information for everyone to visualize at the same time.

In each shift, two operators in the control room continuously monitor three high-speed line operations where wood is cut into smaller pieces. Part of the process control surveillance system has 36 Bosch IP video cameras permanently focused on the log cutting operations. These feed into a Bosch video server onsite. The operators have the ability to switch to any of the inputs from the 36 cameras, which need to be displayed on a video wall. Having a video wall is key to the mill’s operations as it enables process control through continuous monitoring, without which, the production line cannot function.

Data from automated quality inspection systems that check the pulp for the presence of metal, stones, and other foreign materials (for example, bullets stuck to the wood from hunting) are also additional sources of information that Metsä Fibre wanted to include on the video wall.

All lined up

With all of Metsa Fibre’s capture and display requirements, Elkome Systems decided on a massive 6.5-meter long, 12x1 video wall driven with multi-channel capture capabilities.

Housed in a single 4U Advantech video wall controller are three Matrox Mura IPX cards which can each capture up to four 4K inputs and encode/decode multiple 4K streams. The Mura IPX cards capture the outputs of the Bosch video server as well as the automation systems via four and six inputs respectively—all in Full HD (1920 x 1080p60) resolution—so operators can pull up monitoring data points on the wall. In the same high-density, low-footprint system are two Matrox C680 graphics cards that power the 12 pivoted displays at 1080p60 where multiple video sources are viewed simultaneously.

Initial setup and other administrative tasks are done entirely with the robust Matrox MuraControl software. For day-to-day operations, an easy-to-use software—customized by Elkome for Metsä Fibre—that contains readymade setups is used.

A portion of the video wall is also dedicated to displaying the alarm lists from the 24/7 surveillance of the production control systems. Alarms are typically triggered when the received control system values do not fall within the expected value thresholds (for example, the temperature is too low or high). Should the alarm go off, the operators are able to see a complete picture of the issue at hand and promptly take appropriate action, including stopping the process if needed. The surveillance operators are able to share the display in question with other decision makers as well.

Productive outcome

The large, modern-day video wall deployed plays an integral part in Metsä Fibre’s Äänekoski plant operations. It allows for 24/7 centralized monitoring of the cutting operations, which renders a safer and more productive environment by enabling operators to take timely, well-informed decisions. A second server is planned to be set up soon for redundancy sake. By using the Matrox-powered video wall, Metsä Fibre has ensured that it is future ready for network-based solutions.

“Our video wall implementation for Metsä Fibre using Matrox products has been very well received by the client,” said Timo Myllylä, product manager at Elkome Systems. “With the video wall being used around-the-clock, Metsä Fibre is more than pleased with its reliable and sound performance.” 

Size is not a determining factor when it comes to mission-critical control centers. Video walls can comprise just a few displays receiving feeds from only a dozen cameras, to hundreds of inputs streaming on 64 displays.

As facilities scale in physical size or the scope and their monitoring needs increase, it’s essential that the control room system can scale as well.

Darin Crosby, Global VP Sales at Datapath’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania headquarters suggests choosing a system that’s modular so that you can start small and build out based on budget and key requirements. “This allows facilities the ability to expand easily and gradually, and in a cost-effective way,” he says.

A modular system will help scale the primary security room, surrounding crisis rooms, or huddle spaces need to access and share all the same sources from a single control point without requiring extra routing switchers.

Sharing mission-critical content from a central control room to a crisis room or another secure location is a desired feature. Today content can be encoded and securely share any source to authorized users anywhere via IP. Until recently, this has required duplicate AV equipment for each room.

Faster Decision Making

The relationship between the centralized main video wall display and control room operators has been long established. Video wall content is monitored for events, and the operator analyzes the details on his/her station display to make an informed decision to escalate an event to the next level.

New collaboration software tools enable operators to isolate a particular source from the video wall, bring it to the desktop and resize windows to help them make a decision, then share the content over IP to any location on the secure network. This enables faster decision making, especially when key people are in the field. Ensuring the signal from any source can be securely encoded over IP and sent wherever is a game-changer.

This peer-to-peer networking model makes collaboration possible without the cloud. Control center communication stays behind the company firewall and allows teams to collaborate directly without any traffic through a central server.

User Rights Management

Like an enterprise network, not everyone should have full access to every area. A video wall control system should have the ability to set user rights. “For example, certain operators might be responsible for specific sources in certain zones in a casino,” says Mark Bohs, Director of Sales for the Americas at Datapath’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania headquarters.

There are many subsets of user rights management, and the ability to set multiple levels is critical. Making sure restricted areas aren’t displayed will help ensure an operator can’t mistakenly try to view one. “Being able to separate out your sources with a security level, and then grant access to only the right people is a critical part of security,” adds Crosby.

Sharing Software

Developed to work seamlessly with Datapath wall controllers is Quant, an intuitive software that allows users to share application windows.

Operation of critical control rooms benefit from using Quant to allow the seamless sharing of information.

Physical sources connected to the controller can be streamed to any Quant user on the network, giving them up-to-the second information wherever they are. Video wall content can be accessed by users in different locations, allowing for better-informed decisions and faster response times.

Quant also enables you to share numerous application windows to both video walls, and to other peers who are able edit the application in real time.

Users have full control to decide what to share, with whom to share and what permissions are given. The interaction with shared application windows can still be made even without the file software on your own computer.

Application windows can be simply shared using a dedicated Quant icon or the drag and drop curtain. Real-time interactivity with the same application window means changes are seen as they happen.

Quant uses a peer-to-peer networking model that makes collaboration possible without the cloud. This means all communication stays behind the company firewall and allows the clients to collaborate directly, i.e. without any traffic going through a central server. The software uses TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) as the connection and data encryption protocol.

Read more on the cutting edge video wall control.

Every control room operator has a preferred workflow. They often have different mindsets on how they want to view or access the most important sources, sometimes depending on whether it’s coming from a map application, a train station software, or cameras.

Being able to customize layouts and easily switch sources makes the overall operation more streamlined and efficient. This is especially important when more than one operator is using the same station, such as when one shift ends, and another begins.

APIs are available so that external control panels or systems can plug into a video wall control system to control a layout, switch a source file, or source a device. “That’s key,” says Darin Crosby, Global VP Sales at Datapath’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania headquarters. “With pretty much every security install, we usually have to connect with some other third-party software or device at some point.”

Easy integration with third-party video management systems is essential. “The VMS software is the management layer. It stores the video coming in and tags it, making it available during a crisis,” explains Mark Bohs, Director of Sales for the Americas at Datapath’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania headquarters. “This adds to the functionality and the ability of a video wall controller to put different sources up there. It receives commands from the VMS, and if some activity’s going on that they deem important, whether someone’s opening a door to a certain location, the camera will turn on and will be directed by the VMS to bring up that camera on the video wall.

Whether motion detection, unwanted access, facial or license plate recognition, or temperature changes, there are numerous event triggers that can tie into the overall system.

Being able to build a workspace that optimizes an operator’s workflow means having easy integration with third-party control systems. “For a facility that already uses Crestron or AMX, it becomes very useful to have that integrated into the video wall control system so the control panel they’ve been using for years can now change the source on ‘window five,’ or change the entire layout,” says Crosby.

Related Reading: Recent technological advances are enabling AV designers, integrators, and managers of control centers to rethink lifecycle planning, reduce the amount of video wall controllers, and share content with satellite rooms more easily and securely for their customers. Sharing mission-critical content from a central control room to a crisis room or another secure location was once a desired feature, and is now a trend. Until recently, this has required duplicate AV equipment for each room.This white paper discusses how the role of advanced AV/IT video wall control technologies and content collaboration tools is undergoing a sea change.

Having all the customizations be able to change quickly when something happens is crucial. “For example, if that crisis event occurs, how quickly can they get the right sources and the right feeds not only to monitor the situation but to control it?” asks Crosby. A control software might allow them to lockdown doors.

A Flexible Canvas

To monitor the Automated People Mover (APM) Control Centre at the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, ICON Media Communications, a division of Ontario-based Icon Digital created a large, near-seamless video wall canvas using eight 55-inch video wall displays, with 3.5mm bezel-to-bezel seams arranged in a 4x2 landscape pattern.

“The client wanted to be able to resize any of the camera feeds into whatever size they wanted on the video wall canvas,” says Anthony Ferreira, Solutions Engineer at ICON. Varying window sizes helps prioritize images displayed on the wall. “Some larger regions of the wall are used to display the more important cameras needed to monitor on a regulator basis.” The remaining cameras are displayed in smaller areas around the canvas. A Datapath VSN1172 video wall controller was chosen for its ease of use and flexibility.

“It’s essentially a Windows-based program,” says Ferreira. “Most people are familiar with resizing windows and the general navigation inside of the Windows operating system. This made it very simple for the end user to be able to resize and configure all of the windows to their liking.”

Click here for more stories on the cutting edge of video wall installation, operation, and maintenance.

The price of AV over IP cameras has become cost-effective, making them the go-to for surveillance. However, some installations comprise hundreds of legacy analog cameras, making it impractical to replace all of them at once. Without an infrastructure or video control system that can accommodate both on the same network, facilities are burdened with ‘ripping and replacing’—or buying old camera technologies.

Control centers are moving to open architectures, enabling some to have phased upgrade paths. It’s critical to ensure the video wall controller can concurrently accept old and new camera sources such as DVI, SDI, DisplayPort, older IP methods as well as the latest IP codex—and with varying resolutions.

“Big installations may have cameras that have been there for years, and if they want to add new ones, some are going to be HDMI or DVI out, others will be IP out,” says Darin Crosby, Global VP Sales at Datapath’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania headquarters. “Being able to switch instantly between the sources and display them all on the screen, and size them any size you want, is probably the most important point.”

This flexibility comes with the ability to have multiple SQX boards and baseband capture cards in the chassis of the video wall controller. “You need a system that can ingest all of those seamlessly, display them side-by-side, and make it so that the operator doesn’t need to care if it’s the old system or the new,” says Mark Bohs, Director of Sales for the Americas at Datapath’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania headquarters.

Recent technological advances are enabling AV designers, integrators, and managers of control centers to rethink lifecycle planning, reduce the amount of video wall controllers, and share content with satellite rooms more easily and securely for their customers. Sharing mission-critical content from a central control room to a crisis room or another secure location was once a desired feature, and is now a trend. Until recently, this has required duplicate AV equipment for each room.This white paper discusses how the role of advanced AV/IT video wall control technologies and content collaboration tools is undergoing a sea change.

A video wall control system should be able to integrate with an open video management system (VMS) platform. “If an incident occurs, the operator can bring up the live camera feed from the IP cameras themselves, and at the same time go back and pull up a recorded feed from a network video recorder (NVR) on the VMS,” says Bohs. At the same time, they can look at the existing live stream and the NVR stream. “The VMS can tell the video wall what streams to display so the operator can then manipulate what they’re looking at on the video wall through the VMS,” he says.

Think beyond camera sources. “During a crisis event, the control center might want to see CNN News on the video wall, or they might want to have the Weather Channel on there as well,” Crosby adds. “Being able to grab all these different sources, regardless of where they come from, various web pages containing maps, media networks, or wherever and being able to throw them on screen is very powerful.”

Click here to read more on the current state of video wall technology.

In the past few years, technology has created a sea change in user expectations affecting many aspects of business. Users expect to instantly share information such as video and data from one device to many, video conference with multiple people, enjoy security features such as facial recognition, and have fingerprint and multi-level user access control. High-resolution displays are a given, and the ability to pinch and zoom has been around for more than a decade. Yes, we’re talking about smartphones.

The smartphone has been pushing technology innovators of large-scale commercial applications to deliver the same or better experience. Intuitive user experiences have become a must in today’s fast-paced control rooms.

Kristian Sigston is the Equipment Services Co-ordinating Engineer at an NHS Foundation Trust, which provides the CCTV system comprising 350 cameras and access control for the public-facing premises of a single site hospital in the county of Kent in southeast England. “All the security staff needs to do, using a mouse or with the swipe of a finger, is flick an image from a camera up to the video wall much in the same way they would with their smartphone,” says Sigston. “The less they see of the backend stuff, the better.”

Control center technologies such as this are quickly evolving, enabling a more agile approach to how video data is used and shared. Teams can act quickly—as operators isolate and share secure mission-critical visual information inside and outside the primary control center.

Related Reading: Recent technological advances are enabling AV designers, integrators, and managers of control centers to rethink lifecycle planning, reduce the amount of video wall controllers, and share content with satellite rooms more easily and securely for their customers. Sharing mission-critical content from a central control room to a crisis room or another secure location was once a desired feature, and is now a trend. Until recently, this has required duplicate AV equipment for each room.This white paper discusses how the role of advanced AV/IT video wall control technologies and content collaboration tools is undergoing a sea change.

Open architectures and IP technologies allow flexibility, modularity, and scale—ultimately changing how AV/IT consultants, integrators, and end users approach the design of today’s control room.

When researching video wall solutions, look for the elements below:

7 Mission-critical Elements of Today’s Control Room

1. Share Secure Content

Encode and share any source securely to authorized users via IP, wherever needed.

2. Source Flexibility

Ensure the video wall controller can concurrently accept old and new camera sources, as well as varying resolutions.

3. Modularity and Scale

Easily expand from small systems with a dozen cameras on a few displays to hundreds of inputs on up to 64 displays.

4. Flexible Layout Creation and Switching

Customize layouts and easily switch sources to make the overall operation more streamlined and efficient.

5. Easy Integration

Integrate multiple external control surfaces to customize each operations room. Ability to integrate with third-party applications.

6. Carousel Inputs

Enable hundreds of sources to be monitored on a rotating basis.

7. User Rights Management

Like an enterprise network, not everyone should have full access to every area.

Read more on the latest developments in video wall technology.

When you have 350 CCTV cameras running on four servers surveilling public-facing areas of a hospital, migrating to a new control-room video distribution and video wall system is done methodically—and with caution.

Kristian Sigston is the Equipment Services Co-ordinating Engineer at an NHS Foundation Trust, which provides the CCTV system and access control for the public-facing premises of a single site hospital in the county of Kent in southeast England.

In 2017 Sigston and a colleague embarked on a journey to install a new video wall control system in its control room to provide scalability, flexibility, and ease of use. The monitors receiving camera video feeds from the old system could not be controlled centrally, and to change camera views was no simple task.

“The massive scale of the improvement means that the old system has to be running alongside the new,” says Sigston. Having any part of the system offline is not an option. “We’re taking our time to switch from the old to the new system.”

One of the goals of installing and integrating a new video wall control system is to allow for easier viewing of cameras by the security staff. “With the current system, you need a certain skill level in IT,” says Sigston.

A Familiar UXA Datapath VSN video wall controller system was chosen primarily for its ease of use. “All the security staff needs to do—using a mouse or with the swipe of a finger—is flick an image from a camera up to the video wall, much in the same way they would with a smartphone,” says Sigston. “The less they see of the backend stuff, the better, which is why we chose the Datapath system.”

Flexibility with IP

When the transition is complete, the Datapath system will be connected to 12 monitors on the video wall and have the ability to access all 350 cameras.

“The old system was proprietary, which meant we were tied to that one manufacturer’s cameras,” explains Sigston. “Datapath runs on Windows 10, which is not proprietary, and we’re now able to pick from the vast swath of cameras, which is saving a lot of money.” The proprietary cameras cost three times the money. “Datapath allows us to put in any camera we want, providing we can pull an RTSP stream from it.”

Multiway Integration

Not only does Sigston’s team need to monitor live streams, if a suspicious event occurred a request will come in from the Police to look at video data from the past. This is where the integration of Wavestore, an open Video Management Software (VMS) platform, comes into play.

“Wavestore’s open-platform means that it integrates with a wide variety of cameras and technologies from the world’s leading brands,” said Enrico Bizzaro, Head of Integrations at Wavestore. “What’s more, we are able to re-stream images into Datapath to give complete situational awareness either as an event is happening or during post-event interrogation.”

Wavestore’s VMS also enabled integration with other third-party devices and sub-systems to provide total security solutions, utilizing technology such as License Plate Recognition (LPR), facial recognition, and access control.

Related Reading: Recent technological advances are enabling AV designers, integrators, and managers of control centers to rethink lifecycle planning, reduce the amount of video wall controllers, and share content with satellite rooms more easily and securely for their customers. Sharing mission-critical content from a central control room to a crisis room or another secure location was once a desired feature, and is now a trend. Until recently, this has required duplicate AV equipment for each room.This white paper discusses how the role of advanced AV/IT video wall control technologies and content collaboration tools is undergoing a sea change.

Bizzaro explains, “If a number plate is added to the ‘authorized entry’ list and read by the LPR system, Wavestore’s VMS can enable the automatic opening of a barrier to the car park as well as turning the lights on, for example. Or if the face of a known trouble maker was identified when walking into the building, Wavestore’s VMS can send an alert to security staff as well pop-up live video of them onto the Datapath monitor wall to for security operators to oversee the situation. Access control works the same way, it’s all about using the data sent from these systems, linking disparate technology together and adding the power of video in order to help people make better decisions and handle these types of situations more effectively.”

Lessons Learned

Sigston and his colleague are well into the migration of the old system to Datapath. “We have done a lot of it by ourselves, and that’s why I recommended you don’t.” There was a learning curve to understanding security and integration issues. “We moved from a closed system to an open system, which required a lot of configuration of different cameras. Sometimes we would struggle with a problem for a few days because we thought we should have known it. When we finally asked, we had the problem fixed relatively quickly.

“The support from the team at Datapath building the system was great. If I need to contact my rep or any of the help desk team, generally they get back to me within an hour. Their support behind the scenes is also good.”

Sigston’s parting advice: “Get the guys who know the system to help you set it up and to provide you some direction. Don’t just dive right in blind.”

Top Reasons Datapath Was Chosen

• Ease of use
• UX is as familiar as smartphone
• Flexible layout
• Customizable
• Non-propriety Windows 10 operating system
• Allows for analog and IP-based video sources
• Allows choice of cameras from multiple vendors to save money
• Scalable

For more on the latest video wall control systems

Related Reading:

Multi-phased Approach to Updating Today’s Control Center Video Walls

Unless a facility is building a new control center, it is unlikely to receive a fork-lift renovation of mission-critical AV equipment.

“There are a lot of existing control centers that were deployed one, two, three decades ago,” says Anthony Ferreira, Solutions Engineer at ICON Media Communications, a division of Ontario-based Icon Digital. “They’re not going to be able to shut down for two weeks and completely rewire everything.”

Such was the case for a recent ICON Media project at the Greater Toronto Airport Authority in Ontario. The Automated People Mover (APM) Control Centre hadn’t been upgraded in nearly 30 years. The upgrade was done in two phases to minimize downtime.

The first phase was to replace the 14 small 4:3 displays that were fed analog video content through multi-viewers, which were then quad-split to each display, explains Ferreira. ICON created a large, near-seamless video wall canvas using eight Samsung 55-inch video wall displays, with 3.5mm bezel-to-bezel seams arranged in a 4x2 landscape pattern.

“The client wanted to be able to resize any of the camera feeds into whatever size they wanted on the video wall canvas,” says Ferreira. Varying window sizes helps prioritize images displayed on the wall. “Some larger regions of the wall are used to display the more important cameras needed to monitor on a regulator basis.” The remaining cameras are displayed in smaller areas around the canvas. A Datapath VSN1172 video wall controller was chosen for its ease of use and flexibility.

“It’s essentially a Windows-based program,” says Ferreira. “Most people are familiar with resizing windows and the general navigation inside of the Windows operating system. This made it very simple for the end user to be able to resize and configure all of the windows to their liking.”

Flexible Architecture

During the second phase of the upgrade, more than 50 analog video cameras feeding the video wall will slowly be replaced with IP cameras. Ferreira says, “Datapath’s architecture is designed so you can select the type of input and output sources or target devices that you want to connect, and order [and] replace the appropriate input and output cards.” For this installation, Ferreira is using seven primary and one backup analog input cards (eight inputs per card) to connect up to 64 analog cameras.

To integrate IP cameras, just power down the system and switch out an analog card for an IP capture card to serve 20 IP-based cameras. “The customer can remove an analog card, put a digital card in, and start upgrading the analog cameras to digital,” says Ferreira.

Set It and Forget It

Ferreira can’t overemphasize how easy it is to use the Datapath system. “It is essentially a Windows-based computer as opposed to proprietary hardware,” he says. “If users are comfortable using the Microsoft Office software suite, the Datapath interface will look and feel familiar.” From being able to drag-and-drop layouts, to online help saved into the Datapath device, or visiting the Datapath website, an end user can get all the information needed.

Related Reading: Recent technological advances are enabling AV designers, integrators, and managers of control centers to rethink lifecycle planning, reduce the amount of video wall controllers, and share content with satellite rooms more easily and securely for their customers. Sharing mission-critical content from a central control room to a crisis room or another secure location was once a dream.

This white paper discusses how the role of advanced AV/IT video wall control technologies and content collaboration tools is undergoing a sea change.

In addition to being easy to use, Ferreira says, “if an end user doesn’t wish to go through an integrator and wants to set up a base and command center on their own, it’s very straightforward to do.”

Not so fast! In addition to replacing the old system, the new displays required extending the digital output signals from Datapath via HD Baluns. Ferreira ensured that it would be easy for his client to configure new layouts in the future. He renamed all the camera feed inputs from “input one, input two, and so on” making it easy for them to configure and save new custom layouts or revert to previous versions.

For more on the latest video wall control systems

Related Reading:

IP-based Video Wall Controller Creates Flexibility and Delivers Intuitive UX