A Moot Point

Text & Images:/ Peter Swanson (CTS)

BIG TICKET ITEMS

But, I hear you ask, what of the stars? What are the real AV hot shots in this building?

The Moot Court would be the stand-out for sheer quantity of AV equipment per square metre. A total of six flat panels (2 x 46-inch, 4 x 60-inch), five HD cameras, multiple loudspeaker zones, 15 microphones, video processors, streaming devices, HD videoconferencing and live record and playback capability for classroom critique of students’ performance. All with the option to later access stored files via the university’s network.

This level of equipment was needed to help us satisfy three very different briefs: firstly, to operate as a seminar room for teaching purposes; secondly, to facilitate a simulated court environment to assist familiarisation with a variety of modern legal scenarios; and thirdly to act as a host site for major Moot Competitions. In a typical court environment, the three most important parties (respectively) are the Judge, the Barrister (Bar) and the Witness. The relationship between these three, in terms of physical location and interrelations, is rigidly defined and highly structured. Introducing a fourth party (the students) severely challenged the design team’s ability to achieve a layout that allowed students the best possible view of events while still maintaining the traditional alignments between the three key parties.

As should always be the case, functional needs drove the system designs. We had already established by this point that dual screens would form a key part of university standards for teaching spaces, so the question became how to achieve dual screen capability for two groups of students sitting opposite one another across the bar table.

This challenge drove the position of two pairs of 60-inch plasma screens above the bar table, leading to a rather unique ceiling feature. The coordination became even more complex when considering cameras. To achieve the specified requirements with the minimum number of cameras, we undertook 3D modelling to identify the optimal positions and sightlines for each camera.

The adoption of HD 1080p as the preferred resolution was not without complications. The system has been designed so that any source can be routed to any display or output device – but of course not all HD sources are created equal. Component-based cameras mixed with PC-based RGBHV sources and the odd requirement or two for standard-definition outputs to streaming devices. While all sources were routed through a main high-resolution matrix switcher, the programming management of the sub-switching through side-chained scan converters, transcoders and scalers was a Herculean effort in its own right, ably undertaken by John Turner and the team at AT Controls.

The Moot Court also features the capability to simulate a remote witness link-up through direct audio visual interconnection between the Moot Court and the Remote Witness Room.

LECTURE THEATRE

The 300-seat lecture theatre is another space with a serious AV capacity. Two 4:3 aspect ratio projection screens are provided for lecture presentations and a single, 9m x 4.8m projection screen caters for high-definition media and movies. The sound system has full 7.1 capability in addition to providing speech reinforcement for the lecturer and stereo reproduction of non-surround sources.

The theatre is also capable of hosting panel discussions and conference events through the provision of a central floor box and patch cabling infrastructure to the projection room at the rear. To support this, there’s also a 3CCD camera located on a recessed lift in front of the projection room. The camera’s output can be routed to any of the projection screens, the lecture recording system or an auxiliary output on the matrix switcher.

LINKING ROOMS

With so many AV-enabled spaces, one question that arose was how many should have interconnections to enable inter-linked sessions or larger audiences for particular events. We discussed the potential benefits of a dedicated AV cabling network, but we agreed that with IP-streaming capabilities continually improving and reducing in cost, this was the preferred approach.

There are a total of four videoconference-enabled spaces in the Faculty of Law: the Moot Court, the 100-seat Congress Lecture Theatre, the Faculty Seminar Room and the Faculty Boardroom.

The 100-seat congress theatre features a full Bosch DCN congress system, enabling anyone at any seat to participate in a videoconference or a class discussion. Sophisticated programming via the touchpanel control system enables automatic selection of the appropriate preset for the front pan-tilt-zoom camera based on which microphones are active.

We provided headphone outlets with each DCN station, meaning that hearing augmentation can be handled through the system with a pair of ear bud headphones rather than a separate induction loop or other system. As well as serving the needs of a videoconference for 100, we also provided the DCN system to give students the opportunity to experience this type of setup as it is a common feature in many legal/government environments. We also discussed the possible integration of voting, but the design team agreed this was not practical given the cost and the fact the university is already proceeding with implementations of wireless voting systems around the campus.

The Faculty Seminar Room has a relatively small capacity of around 20 students, but many of those attending the faculty’s seminars are dialling in from their company’s videoconference rooms, so this seminar room needs to work just as well for the remote sites as the local attendees. To assist in achieving this, we placed a 50-inch flat panel at the rear of the room with a camera adjacent to it so the remote audience was (as much as possible) on an even footing with those students in the room in terms of the focus of the presenter.

The Faculty Boardroom is very much a corporate boardroom environment, with dual flat panels and videoconference capability.

All four of the videoconference spaces’ systems are connected to the university’s IP network and operate through the established videoconference bridge.

One of the toughest decisions to make was whether to push forward with digital video paths as the main connection methodology in lecture theatres and seminar rooms. Due to the lack of available, practical and economic solutions at the time of design completion, we decided that the main video paths would remain analogue, but that all spaces would have Cat6 cabling installed between racks and projectors to facilitate future digital video connections.

The 300-seat theatre already features a dedicated HDMI link from the lectern to the projection room, enabling full digital high-definition video display from a Blu-ray player to the main high-definition projector. A sign of the times is the fact that an HD-DVD player was originally also specified, but during the design process the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD battle was finally resolved, so this was deleted from the actual installation!

The project as a whole represents a major addition to the University of Sydney’s Camperdown campus and has dramatically improved the appearance of Eastern Avenue, where it is located. The need for audio visual systems in higher education environments has continued to grow over the life of the project and this need is mirrored by the level of audio visual integration provided in the finished building. On a personal note, this concludes the longest running involvement I have had with a project and I am proud to have been able to share in this experience with the various members of the design and construction teams whose considerable efforts brought about the successful outcome.