Editing 2017 A/V Upgrade Project

'''The Summer 2017 A/V Upgrade Project''' was a project to revamp the A/V in the [[Lower Level Conference Room]].  The work was performed by AdTech with Matt Fionda as project lead until his abrupt departure from AdTech, at which point John Pioccone took over.  The upgrade was engineered by Michael Merrill.  Richard Silvia supervised the installation, which was performed by Marcus Demartin.  Jerry Bates programmed the Crestron system and interface.  

==Design==
Discussions to upgrade the A/V systems in LL1 began in October, 2016. [[Elizabeth Johnson]] managed the project with advice from [[Peter Stevens]].  [[Greg Morrow]] at MTS was heavily involved in the design and provided needed advocacy where CES lacked expertise.  

===Existing Equipment===
Much of the equipment in place in LL1 was already out of date when it was installed.  The podium had one VGA-A input, which would turn the video source green occasionally because of broken connectors.  Audio was routed through an eight-channel mixing board.  There were six wired goosenecks on the panel table, with XLR extensions running up the left flank of the room.  Three add-on wireless lapels were used in special circumstances.  Two add-on wireless handheld microphones were frequently used for the Q&A portion of events.  This required one or two staff to attend the event to hand out the microphone.

Video conferencing was a prominent feature of the previous system.  It was expected to reduce travel and lodging cost by allowing speakers and discussants to appear in events remotely.

===Future Proofness===
At the time design discussions began, Stevens had been at the Center for less than a year.  Video conferencing was not the asset it was expected to be, as it was rarely used.  Live streaming was growing in popularity after being used experimentally by Bart Bonikowski.  Early live-streamed events were done with a webcam attached to the back wall with gaffer's tape.  It was not aesthetically pleasing.

Since the lifespan of the new upgrade was expected to be up to a decade, Stevens believed future proofness to be an important requirement of the new A/V system.  He viewed software components as being the key to maintaining future proofness, as hardware components would show their age quickly, and would require expensive replacements.  For this reason, an AV bridge was provided to allow the any video source to be captured by the resident computer, and an HDMI input was added to allow the resident computer output to be sent to any display in the room.  This was intended to prevent CES from being locked in to any service for live streaming or video conferencing.

===Audience Voice Lift===
Johnson and Stevens identified many practical and aesthetic problems with handheld microphones.  Recordings frequently did not have complete audio of questions because the audience member would begin speaking before being handed the microphone.  Some participants would refuse the microphone believing that their voice was loud enough for the small room.  Johnson objected to the microphones because of the appearance of sexism.  The staff members who handed out the microphones were almost always female, which, she said, "Looks a little Vanna White."

Early discussions revolved around the Shure ceiling array, which Michael Merrill said could replace all of the audio capture devices in the room, giving it a cleaner appearance.  Johnson and Stevens were concerned that voice lift would not be good enough, and that audio capture would include too much roomsound and background noise.  Furthermore, they considered the device to be too expensive.  They later decided to use the existing ceiling microphones and to add an all-wireless system with six goosenecks and two lapels.  The existing podium microphone was integrated into the new system.  

==Issues==
When the project was completed in September 2017, numerous issues were reported to AdTech, many of which remain unresolved as of June 2018.

===Ceiling Microphones===
The ceiling microphones were not amplified through the ceiling speakers. Stevens and [[Michael Berrio]] devised a workaround that involved unplugging the podium microphone and using its XLR input to plug into the wireless handheld microphone receiver.  When asked, Merrill said that the ceiling microphones were only expected to provide audio capture.  Johnson had stated in June 2017 that we expected voice lift as well.

Voice lift will be added in the [[Summer 2018 A/V Upgrade Project]].

===Video Source Switching===
When switching video sources on any of the displays, the feed would go black for about a second between sources.  The output from the AV bridge was worse, showing color bars between sources, and giving the source a green tint for more than a second.  AdTech replied that CES never specified that it required a seamless video switcher.  Johnson and Stevens maintain that the seamless switching is implicit in the use cases described in the design phase of the project.

Seamless switching will be added in the [[Summer 2018 A/V Upgrade Project]].

===Projection Screen Placement===
The new projection screen was installed in the same location as the old one in the soffit.  However, when lowered, it collided with the backdrop.  Pioccone modified the backdrop frame to allow it to be placed closer to the wall.  However, because the backdrop was closer to the air register, a visible crease was caused by the fabric being drawn against the chalkboard ledge.