THE COMPANY
Shine deploys its own studio hardware for smaller shows such as Masterchef, Biggest Loser, The Bachelor, The Face, Top Model etc while for the larger shows they will contract external outside broadcast or rental houses to supply gear. Those prime time light entertainment franchises attract major viewing audiences — and the production company needed to find a cost-effective solution that would meet all their many requirements in a single environment.
Nick Parker, Shine Technical Manager, became interested in BroaMan solutions mainly because of the fact that other network transmission systems Shine had reviewed had either been cost prohibitive or simply didn’t meet their requirements. For instance, one was video only rather than a true stage box, while another was messy, with lots of adapters and fibre cores all doing the same thing.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- Transport of multiple professional video, audio, intercom and data over fiber
- Routing of analog and digital audio
- Simultaneous transport of data and control signals
- Interfacing with multiple intercom brands
- Flexible easy to setup system with short configuration time
- Comprehensive single-channel status monitoring
SOLUTION
Mux22 was a stand-out product from the moment it was introduced. It had all of the required features and allowed for the ability to scale to future needs. Various configurations were available, and through CWDM a single fibre pair had the ability to carry a multitude of signals.
Shine Australia has the device configured to transport six HDSDI inputs and two HDSDI outputs. AES on one system allows for AES/EBU audio — along with four communications panels for the studio floor.
IC485 which is RS485 and Analogue Audio, is also great as these ports can run as RTS Communications Panels or as IFB’s or Sends to the studio floor … or a mixture. The system allows for Gigabit Ethernet and also is conveniently switched on the unit for additional ports.
Nick Parker states that while many fibre systems exist in the market most of them don’t cover as much functionality as the Mux 22 with 8 or even 16 x SDI Video, Fast Ethernet Data, GPIO; with Audio Options (AES, MADI, Analogue, IC485), bandwidth- independent Fibre Pass Though, Ability to run Communications Panels (RTS, Riedel or Clear-Com).The system scales with the SANE Optocore network and the possibilities on your audio capacity grow to a large scale audio network when required.
KEY ADVANTAGES
- Transport of multiple 3G/HD/SD SDI video – depending on side of the system 4 up, 12 down or 12/4.
- Flexible Intercom ports carrying full intercom connection or only analog or digital audio
- GPIO ports transporting trigger signals, e.g. for tally
- Auxiliary fibre optic ports for 3rd party protocol transport
- Build-in Fast Ethernet interface with guaranteed Quality of Service
- Optocore Control software which monitors each video and audio signal
“Always when building a studio, running cable is the biggest issue, and this has given us a new way to keep costs down and still give us the full feature set we require on a constant changing production environment. If you count the amount of I/O that the Mux22 can handle — running the same amount of cables compared to the single fibre cable — this is the biggest way it keeps costs down, with all the feeds that we can run through just two pairs of single mode fibre!”
Nick Parker, Technical Manager
Nick Parker, Technical Manager
