Hurrairah bin Sohail finds out how the Songeui medical campus at Catholic university performs its function as a teaching hospital with an extensive video recording and remote management system.
Education projects are highly contested in the Korean AV industry. End-users from the education sector have high levels of knowledge regarding technology. They have a clear idea of the functionality AV systems need to provide and integrators have a degree of freedom when it comes to designing and deploying solutions.
The Songeui medical campus at Catholic university is a teaching hospital that aims to provide care for patients while also training Korea’s next generation of doctors. In order to effectively perform its function, the venue requires a wide range of audio and video solutions.
Seonho Choi from Total-Infocomm talks about the project: “We were brought in to provide audio and visual solutions for different parts of the university. The campus is very big and there are a number of control rooms and approximately 30 teaching spaces. Our job was to make sure that all these areas could function as the end-user wanted them to.”
Seonho details one of the core requirements of the university: “What the university wanted to do was to be able to view video feeds from a number of simulation rooms remotely. These rooms are where the students come for practical exams and the video needed to be recorded, routed to different areas and be available to the teachers at their convenience.”
The simulation rooms themselves are low on AV equipment. LG dome cameras and Sony PTZ cameras can be spotted on the ceiling to record visuals. Seonho says: “We’ve gone with two types of cameras. The dome camera provides a full overview of the room, while the PTZ cameras can be used to focus in on a particular area if needed.”
Visuals in the rooms are provided by Sanyo projectors.
Audio is provided by GnS speakers, while AKG ceiling microphones are present for pickup. The majority of the AV equipment is found in the main control room. The core of the video system is a Sierra Video Lassen XL 64 x 64 matrix.
This matrix serves as the hub of the entire video system with a number of other smaller matrices being deployed around the university as required.
Seonho says: “The choice of the central matrix was very important for this project. We needed a product that would provide enough capacity and performance for the university and one that would last them a long time. The Sierra Video matrix was the best option on the market.”
The matrix is supported by Sony remote control for the cameras as well as an Inter-M VRC- 1104TC CCTV / camera controller. These are used to make sure the cameras in the simulation rooms have the correct viewing angles and frames. Four multi-recording PCs are present along with an Aten MusterView KVM unit to help operate the setup. IDIS recording devices are used to ensure no captured content is lost.
Recording content was a core requirement and Seonho says: “We have a complex system for video storage. But at the same time we had to take into consideration the fact that the teachers are not going to be very tech savvy. So the whole point of the system is to record and store video while still being controllable by the teachers. We have made a number of changes to the system, such as having fixed cameras and fixed sources so that it is easy to use and so that the doctors do not have to worry about changing the system.”
A 2x2 monitor arrangement and a number of LG monitors allow operators to view the feeds. The audio system is based around an Inter-M DAP8200A audio controller, DAP8288A audio processor and DSS8232A speaker selector. The units work in tandem with a Kramer VM-55 video and audio distributor as well as an Inter-M pre-amp, Inter-M distributors and power relays. Yamaha monitor speakers in the main control room allow for listening of the audio signal.
While the main control room serves as a central location from where the audio and video system can be managed, smaller control rooms have been set up for ‘on-site’ management of clusters of three to four simulation rooms.
These feature smaller video matrices and the one we visited employed a Kramer VS-162 16x16 matrix. IDIS recorder and an Inter-M speaker selector were also present.
Regarding the installation, Seonho says: “This is a really extensive deployment with a vast scale. We are always monitoring the performance of the systems and getting feedback from the university which we take in board to make changes.”