Industry Leaders: New Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall Control Rooms, IP Infrastructure Set IU Apart
1/23/2019 11:50:00 AM | General
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – What is different about Indiana University's new Control Room space, the behind-the-scenes site where the Assembly Hall in-game men's and women's basketball scoreboard shows and Big Ten Student U game broadcasts are produced?
In a word, everything.
"We didn't have a permanent space before," says Eric Garabrant, IU Radio/Television Services Associate Director. "We were really nomads."
Now, they do. Funded largely by IU Athletics through the Mark Cuban Center, the two new cutting edge control rooms are located along the east side concourse on the ground floor of Assembly Hall, in a space that once housed IU Athletics' photo and video services department. Over the last year or so the space has been gutted and reimagined, with the end result providing IU-RTVS staff, IU Athletics and Indiana University students with a site for its more than 100 annual productions.
"This is a beautiful space with cutting-edge technology that is another example of the leadership role IU Athletics plays in innovation and innovative thinking," said IU Vice President and Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Fred Glass. "It is a big part of fulfilling the vision of the Mark Cuban Center of Sports Media and Technology. IU Radio and TV Services is a wonderful partner and has done a phenomenal job with this project, which will have an enormous impact on our fans, our programs, and IU students who have the opportunity to utilize it."
Inside, you will find all the people and the IU-RTVS equipment needed to produce the shows that you see on the in-venue scoreboards for IU Football and Men's and Women's Basketball games, as well as the approximately 80 Big Ten Student U broadcasts and productions of various other IU home sporting events that are streamed live on BTN Plus or BTN2Go. With each space housing a stand-alone control room, two productions can be done simultaneously.
Before, all of those people and all of that equipment was often traveling from venue to venue, requiring not only the manpower to move it from Point A to Point B, but also the time and expertise to tear everything down and reassemble it time and time again. Without a dedicated space, they also found themselves invading the space of others, which presented its own problems.
"When you move around like that and you are building a control room from scratch every day, there's the problems of things not working. So you spend all your time trying to make things work, and all of your time gets wasted doing that instead of having time to really rehearse and build a better program and show," Garabrant said.
That's no longer an issue. Everything is now largely plug and play, providing IU Athletics, the IU-RTVS staff and the 50-plus Indiana University students who are involved in the Big Ten Student U productions with a state-of-the-art space and equipment. That, in turn, provides Hoosier fans with a better viewing experience, and IU students with the type of experience that is invaluable as they prepare for careers in the industry.
"For our students, they're touching the same stuff they'd touch if they were in NBC Studios in New York, or the production truck doing the Super Bowl," Garabrant said. "The surfaces they have access to are identical. The new graphics system that we put in to do our (Big Ten) Student U productions is the same thing that Fox is using."
While those similarities with the leaders in the sports broadcasting industry is invaluable for IU students, there's also something about IU's new control rooms that is different.
Very different.
And for that, according to Garabrant, you need to look under the hood.
In every other broadcast control room, you will find all of the equipment connected point to point, resulting in countless cables running to and fro and in every which direction. With the engineering help of equipment manufacturer Beldon/Grass Valley, Indiana University was the first to abandon that in favor of an IP infrastructure set-up, allowing for the sharing and access of information without the need for everything being directly connected.
"The back of our video switcher that has 78 inputs on it, used to have 78 cables going to it," Garabant said. "Now it has eight. Everything travels over those eight cables."
To say Indiana University is one of the leaders in the move to an IP set-up would be an understatement. The IP standard that is being utilized was just ratified over the summer, and IU is the first to make the switch.
"Th
is is where the industry is going, but our chief engineer (George Hopstetter) likes to say, 'we're on the bleeding edge of this technology,'" Garabrant said. "This is stuff that the vendors and their engineers are still scratching their heads going, 'how can we do this?'
"Even though you can't see it, this stuff is really cutting edge."
The IP set-up and the new control room facilities puts IU at the forefront, but Garabrant said it doesn't end here. Whether it's expanding the use of IU's Intel True View system (which utilizes 28 cameras mounted around Assembly Hall to create a 3-D replay experience) or doing new, exciting things with the green screen studio located in the Cuban Center, the new control rooms make those ideas and many other more possible.
"This gives us a wonderful new facility, but I kind of look at it as a foundation that you can build on," Garabrant said. "With all of those ideas of things we could potentially do, they always came with limitations because there wasn't a foundation to put those things. I likened it to building a swimming pool before you built your house. Now we have a house and we can put in all the other things and go wherever we want to from here."
In a word, everything.
"We didn't have a permanent space before," says Eric Garabrant, IU Radio/Television Services Associate Director. "We were really nomads."
Now, they do. Funded largely by IU Athletics through the Mark Cuban Center, the two new cutting edge control rooms are located along the east side concourse on the ground floor of Assembly Hall, in a space that once housed IU Athletics' photo and video services department. Over the last year or so the space has been gutted and reimagined, with the end result providing IU-RTVS staff, IU Athletics and Indiana University students with a site for its more than 100 annual productions.
"This is a beautiful space with cutting-edge technology that is another example of the leadership role IU Athletics plays in innovation and innovative thinking," said IU Vice President and Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Fred Glass. "It is a big part of fulfilling the vision of the Mark Cuban Center of Sports Media and Technology. IU Radio and TV Services is a wonderful partner and has done a phenomenal job with this project, which will have an enormous impact on our fans, our programs, and IU students who have the opportunity to utilize it."
Inside, you will find all the people and the IU-RTVS equipment needed to produce the shows that you see on the in-venue scoreboards for IU Football and Men's and Women's Basketball games, as well as the approximately 80 Big Ten Student U broadcasts and productions of various other IU home sporting events that are streamed live on BTN Plus or BTN2Go. With each space housing a stand-alone control room, two productions can be done simultaneously.Before, all of those people and all of that equipment was often traveling from venue to venue, requiring not only the manpower to move it from Point A to Point B, but also the time and expertise to tear everything down and reassemble it time and time again. Without a dedicated space, they also found themselves invading the space of others, which presented its own problems.
"When you move around like that and you are building a control room from scratch every day, there's the problems of things not working. So you spend all your time trying to make things work, and all of your time gets wasted doing that instead of having time to really rehearse and build a better program and show," Garabrant said.
That's no longer an issue. Everything is now largely plug and play, providing IU Athletics, the IU-RTVS staff and the 50-plus Indiana University students who are involved in the Big Ten Student U productions with a state-of-the-art space and equipment. That, in turn, provides Hoosier fans with a better viewing experience, and IU students with the type of experience that is invaluable as they prepare for careers in the industry.
"For our students, they're touching the same stuff they'd touch if they were in NBC Studios in New York, or the production truck doing the Super Bowl," Garabrant said. "The surfaces they have access to are identical. The new graphics system that we put in to do our (Big Ten) Student U productions is the same thing that Fox is using."
While those similarities with the leaders in the sports broadcasting industry is invaluable for IU students, there's also something about IU's new control rooms that is different.
Very different.
And for that, according to Garabrant, you need to look under the hood.
In every other broadcast control room, you will find all of the equipment connected point to point, resulting in countless cables running to and fro and in every which direction. With the engineering help of equipment manufacturer Beldon/Grass Valley, Indiana University was the first to abandon that in favor of an IP infrastructure set-up, allowing for the sharing and access of information without the need for everything being directly connected.
"The back of our video switcher that has 78 inputs on it, used to have 78 cables going to it," Garabant said. "Now it has eight. Everything travels over those eight cables."
To say Indiana University is one of the leaders in the move to an IP set-up would be an understatement. The IP standard that is being utilized was just ratified over the summer, and IU is the first to make the switch.
"Th
is is where the industry is going, but our chief engineer (George Hopstetter) likes to say, 'we're on the bleeding edge of this technology,'" Garabrant said. "This is stuff that the vendors and their engineers are still scratching their heads going, 'how can we do this?'"Even though you can't see it, this stuff is really cutting edge."
The IP set-up and the new control room facilities puts IU at the forefront, but Garabrant said it doesn't end here. Whether it's expanding the use of IU's Intel True View system (which utilizes 28 cameras mounted around Assembly Hall to create a 3-D replay experience) or doing new, exciting things with the green screen studio located in the Cuban Center, the new control rooms make those ideas and many other more possible.
"This gives us a wonderful new facility, but I kind of look at it as a foundation that you can build on," Garabrant said. "With all of those ideas of things we could potentially do, they always came with limitations because there wasn't a foundation to put those things. I likened it to building a swimming pool before you built your house. Now we have a house and we can put in all the other things and go wherever we want to from here."
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