Pacific Northwest-based audiovisual solutions provider MeyerPro recently took on AV for the Microsoft Ignite conference in San Francisco. Its team architected and deployed a robust video infrastructure, leveraging fiber conversion, frame synchronization, and recording technology from AJA. Designed to support on-site and remote production needs, it helped ensure smooth production and live delivery of keynotes, technical sessions, and other event highlights to in-venue LED walls and audiences online.
Fiber-based conversion was crucial to ensuring signals seamlessly and reliably flowed across multiple locations, including the Moscone Convention Center and Microsoft’s Seattle studio. “The transmission path was a big challenge on this project," said MeyerPro broadcast engineer Cole Miller. “Dropped frames, blips, or errors were unacceptable, so we used AJA FiDO 12G-SDI and 3G-SDI Fiber Mini-Converters to transmit 4K signals from one side of a venue building to the other, and to support the transmission of HD signals to Microsoft’s Seattle studio.”
At the outset of the project, Miller and his team collaborated with Microsoft’s executive team and other event stakeholders to determine the project’s scope and gear requirements. The production format was set at 1080p 59.94, and the plan included transmitting live event coverage to a single stage in the middle of the venue surrounded by LED walls. To capture the festivities, MeyerPro brought about 30 cameras, including broadcast-quality cameras, spider cams hanging from ceiling cables, and techno cranes. All cameras were fed to a centralized camera control room.
To ensure everything functioned properly, Miller and team established two on-site engineering centers connected via fiber, and a full control room with a set of racks, which proved to be the core processing piece driving the production. All camera feeds came back to the control room, where the standard routing and switching equipment was located, and a director and a technical director cut the show from there. With an assist from FiDO Mini-Converters, the final feed was shared with the transmission team and sent up to Microsoft’s Seattle studio, where they added captions or any other little elements.
The FiDOs primarily supported the transmission of computer feeds of Teams or PowerPoint presentations and other sources. All the feeds were converted from HDMI or SDI to fiber, and Miller converted them back to SDI with another FiDO for integration into the main broadcast fly-pack system on site. “My favorite thing about FiDO-12G converters is the two outputs. We could feed one to the transmission team and loop the other into another FiDO and back to me on site,” he noted. “It gave me confidence that there weren’t any errors, and the transmission team could better troubleshoot on their side as well. They’re built so rock solid that we always make sure we have one in our final transmission path.”
MeyerPro’s setup also included a rack housing five AJA Ki Pro GO multichannel H.264/5 recorders. Each unit recorded four channels of HD, and all recordings were archived for editing down the line. Via Ki Pro GO’s flexible recording options, Miller and team recorded to NAS (network attached storage) and then onto a network hard drive for client access. AJA FS4 frame syncs helped ensure ingested content was synced, without additional latency or delay, and allowed Miller to use Proc Amps to color correct content with a smooth signal.
While these tools were crucial to the success of the production, Miller expressed a soft spot for another AJA tool he leveraged, the DRM Mini-Converter Frame. “The DRM is compact, and you can put tons of converters in there. It provides a single power supply for multiple devices,” he explained, “DRM is one of my all-time favorite products.”
