QLD College Hall Overhaul

Kelvin Grove State College is a prep to 12 college and is currently the largest school in Queensland with 3600 students across two campuses. After years of issues with its out-of-date system in its middle and senior campus performance hall, Videopro were brought onboard to upgrade the space.

The space hadn’t been upgraded in many years and the school expressed that there had been a variety of issues with the existing AV. The hall is used primarily for dance and musical performances and occasionally assemblies. With the previous solution, students were unable to see the screens from the back of the hall and it was difficult to hear the audio which led to issues with engagement.

Considered in the upgrade were the executive team, who wanted to ensure the audio and visual components were upgraded to be more accessible throughout the entire hall. The IT team then stressed that they wanted a simple and easy to control system so a teacher, no matter their experience level, could walk up, press a button and start presenting without needing IT support. The third brief came from the drama teacher, who wanted to make sure that the hall could still be used as an effective performance space. This meant increasing the audio coverage across the space and improving the sound quality throughout.

Videopro’s solution utilises three Epson laser projectors at the front of the hall; one 12000 lumen projector in the centre with two 6500 lumen projectors on either side. Each projects onto their own motorised, retractable screen with the middle at 250” and the left and right at 120”. To ensure everyone can see, there are two Samsung 65” overflow displays at the back of the hall, another 65” display in the kitchen and a 55” display downstairs in the green room. There is also a PTZOptics 1080p camera mounted in front of the stage allowing for any of these displays to become a foldback video monitor.

The audio was significantly improved with multiple QSC power amplifiers, a QSC DSP, two QSC 18” live sound-reinforcement subwoofers and six QSC 12” two-way loudspeakers.

The equipment is controlled via a Crestron system, enabling the hall to be used as a simple presentation space in which any teacher can plug in a laptop and use the touch screen to begin presenting. The Crestron panels control all the video matrixing throughout the building as well as the audio and microphone level sliders. The system can also be used in performance mode where all the control is given back to the technical booth’s vision mixer and audio desk. A brand new AV rack has been installed in the booth to allow further control by the AV or IT teams as required.