2017 A/V Upgrade Project

The 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 Howie Collin and 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 expertise which CES lacked.

Existing equipment

Much of the equipment in place in LL1 was already out of date when it was installed in the 2008 A/V upgrade project. The podium had one VGA-A input, which would turn the video source green occasionally because of broken connectors. Audio was routed through Mixed Berries, 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, since 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, which Stevens described as "Janky."

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 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.

Side screens

Elaine Papoulias wanted larger side screens because she found the projection screen behind the panel table distracting. The wall mounts were replaced with low-profile mounts to keep the new screens in compliance with ADA.

Ceiling-mounted cameras

Although the room already had three ceiling-mounted PTZ cameras, they were not used because of their low quality. Instead, a third party would record events. Upgrading the cameras to a modern resolution would decrease costs for filmed events. The number was decreased from three to two to keep budget low and to reduce inputs required for DM switcher.

Stevens was concerned that the ceiling mounts made the video look like "7-Eleven security camera footage." Mounting the cameras on the walls or the confidence monitor mount was ruled out for accessibility reasons.

Issues

When the project was completed in September 2017, Stevens reported numerous issues 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 an email in June 2017 that CES expected voice lift as well.

Voice lift will be added in the ceiling microphone 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 seamless switcher upgrade project.

Projection

The projector was calibrated to fill the screen, causing panel members to be blinded during events. AdTech recalibrated it to be smaller and aimed it higher on the projection screen.

The new projection screen was installed in the same location as the old one in the soffit. However, when lowered, it collided with the step-and-repeat banner. Pioccone modified the banner frame to allow it to be placed closer to the wall. Unfortunately, because the banner was closer to the air register, a visible crease was caused by the fabric being drawn against the chalkboard ledge. The banner crease will be fixed in the step-and-repeat banner upgrade project.