Emerson College Utilizes Evertz Solutions to Develop New Broadcast Teaching Facility

Evertz has provided the broadcast infrastructure for Emerson College’s newly upgraded Tufte Performance and Production Center Television Facility. Emerson College, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the only college in the US dedicated exclusively to communication studies and liberal arts, including television, film, radio, and theatre.

By deploying Evertz Software Defined Video Networking infrastructure and control solutions, Emerson College now offers their students a state-of-the-art broadcast facility that supports, SD, HD and UHD (4K).

The original project was planned as a straightforward upgrade from standard-definition to high-definition technology, but with the guidance of alumnus Ira Goldstone ’71 combined with the support and hard work of the Emerson team including Bill Gilligan, Jane Pikor, Tim Mc Arthur, Antonio Ascenso and The Systems Group, the facility has been transformed into a modern professional HD broadcast facility with support for UHD (4K, HDR, WCG)) and future expandability.

“We recognized that 4K and 8K are here already and those formats will require IP based transport, routing and infrastructure. We also recognized that 1080p60 is a great transitional acquisition resolution to capture new content, providing a pathway to evolve as high performance up-conversion technology already exists to support the evolution to 4K. We built the base infrastructure on 3G within the Evertz EQX router and within all the Evertz infrastructure components to ensure that we could support that 1080p60 in the SDI world,” said Ira Goldstone, project consultant. “We chose Evertz because we saw a road map to meet our requirements today, investing at a level we could afford  today, and yet not be limited years from now in bandwidth, control or expandability.”

The Emerson facility rebuild consisted of upgrading one of the existing broadcast studios from 480i to 1080p60 and the other studio from 480i to 720p60. The broadcast facility now houses an Evertz expandable 158 x 284 3G/HD/SD EQX video router, along with two Evertz EMR audio routers for 96×96 analog audio and 48×48 unbalanced AES audio routing. Evertz also equipped the facility with numerous Intelligent Control Panels, 500 series Distribution Amplifiers, 7847 Frame synchronizers, 3405 series fiber transport solutions and Evertz advanced 7867VIPA Multiviewer platform. To round out the infrastructure control, Emerson College deployed Evertz MAGNUM control and orchestration solution to manage and control all the components within the content creation chain.

“MAGNUM provided us with the capability to support an SDN. With a Software Defined Network we could stack a MAGNUM controlled IP layer on top of the 3G 1080p60 SDI layer providing the capability of working outside a coax constrained environment in the future. Using MAGNUM we can talk to an Evertz IPX switch fabric as well as any COTS switch to route a higher bandwidth of 12G uncompressed 4K 60 or 24G uncompressed 4K at 120 frames per second. MAGNUM facilitates the flexibility and expandability we needed to handle the routing, Intelligent Resource Management and distribution of all these signal types,” explains Goldstone.

“One of the main reasons we went with Evertz was because of their longer term vision on virtualization of baseband processing wrapped around a Software Defined Video Network control core,” said Ira Goldstone. “Evertz strategy will allow the typical broadcast processes to happen within a virtualized IP environment, which will allow for the facility to evolve and support higher resolutions, higher data rates and unconstrained bandwidth requirements. I’d say by today’s standards it saves the college a lot of money in the end because we will not be purchasing additional hardware, we are simply enhancing our resources and virtualizing processes.”

“We are thrilled and honored to have been part of this amazing project with Emerson College. The students will be given the opportunity to utilize highly advanced technology that has been deployed in major broadcast facilities all over the world. This new state-of-the-art facility will allow Emerson College students to graduate more equipped with knowledge of SDI and IP broadcast than anyone else,” Joe Cirincione, Evertz VP of Sports and Entertainment.

“Our goal was to build a facility that would prepare our students for the future of multi platform media content creation while also extending our investment and allowing for growth in the future,” said Jane Pikor, Director, Television, Radio & Film (TRF) Emerson College.

The new Tufte Performance and Production Center Television Facility has been designed to support the evolution of technology for years to come. As content creation evolves to Ultra High Definition 2, Evertz infrastructure enables the flexibility and expandability to support 4K and 8K resolutions, high frame rates, high dynamic range, increased bandwidth and simplified workflows.