Top of the Class

The Rusden Theatre at Deakin University’s Burwood campus in Melbourne offers the latest in AV for its staff and students after an extensive $250k overhaul earlier this year, with videoconferencing functionality, high quality audio, an intuitive control interface, automated camera system, programmable pro-grade lighting and flexible connectivity.

“It’s Deakin’s largest lecture hall across all our campuses with a capacity of about 670 seats, so it was a massive undertaking,” says Deakin’s AV & Networks Unit Leader Neil Clarke, who worked closely with installer Insight Systems, major supplier Production Audio Video Technology and Deakin’s eSolutions team on the project. “Because it’s our largest space, part of this project was to set it up to be used for major presentations — and it was a combined project with our facilities people who were working on a physical rebuild of the interior of the theatre.”

SETTING STANDARDS

In videoconferencing mode teachers presenting locally can now connect to other sites using either standards-compliant videoconferencing, which Deakin uses extensively, or via the university’s new PC AV integration gateway, which allows PC-based videoconferencing such as Skype, GoToMeeting, Blackboard Collaborate and others: “We tried to stay software agnostic, so that leverages all of the more professional AV equipment in the room. With the two-way audio and video gateway the teacher can choose whatever PC-based videoconferencing software they want,” Clarke says.

Two teacher-tracking iSmart cameras replace older and clunkier IR-based devices and are positioned on either side of the stage to accommodate the width of the room, with a large confidence monitor keeping the teacher’s eyes forward.

“Previously we had analogue video switching and all the limitations you get with analogue video but we’ve standardised on using the Epson 3LCD projectors on campus — high-brightness full HD models that don’t break the bank. From there it’s digital the whole way through the switching system now so you get the crisp full-HD HDMI video without any ghosting or shadows or any of the artefacts we were previously experiencing.

“The main vision switch is an AMX DGX frame — we’re using the HDBaseT solution throughout all our spaces these days so it’s digital switching all the way through. Around the same time we’ve been working on the standardisation of our AMX room control software, so we now have a common software base and a common user interface across all our teaching spaces using AMX touch panels — regardless of the room, staff get the same user interface experience. Some of the features such as the PC video integration is new to them but that is also appearing in several other rooms, so if they’ve been trained on it for one room that knowledge translates across.”