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| The Harris Platinum router |
GAINESVILLE, FLA.—WUFT-TV, a PBS member
station operating from the University of
Florida, is part of the college of journalism
and communications, and provides four television
program channels.
We work with Gatorvision Online, the
live streaming home for Florida Gators athletics
events, which delivers news, highlights
and other sports video content.
Both entities operate from a new centralized
control room facility created by
the University Athletic Association, which is
responsible for the intercollegiate athletics
program at the University of Florida. This facility
allows resources to be shared and simplifies
content distribution.
GREATER ROUTER CAPACITY
The control room was part of a
multiphase project that included expanding
our existing infrastructure
and increasing the capacity of our
Harris Platinum router to 96 x 128,
nearly doubling its original installed
size. This allows us to easily bring back
and switch live camera feeds from remote
venues, and also lets us air live
and recorded sources with ease.
Our system integrator, A.R. Beck
and Associates, handled all phases of
the control room project, including
the Platinum router expansion.
The Harris router is central to our operation,
as it is responsible for sending and
receiving our signals throughout the plant.
The Platinum communicates with all other
major components across the workflow and
infrastructure, including Harris Nexio video
servers for news and program playout.
We hghly value the ability to customize
control panels used with the router
as it allows us to specify the sources
that can and cannot be accessed
from each point, and to make changes
as production requirements dictate.
The Harris router protocol allows
us to control a large number
of parameters in connection with
user access of these panels. It lets
us allow or reject access to various
sources at different points in the
system to better manage its overall
usage.
We also really like the Platinum’s
quick-button feature in master control. We have mapped sources to 16 hotbuttons
to speed up our productivity—
just push a single button and that source
is on the air.
MULTIVIEWING CAPABILITY ADDED
We’ve also integrated a Harris HView
SX Hybrid multiviewer with the Platinum.
This saved us a great deal of rack space
and has improved the way we process
and monitor control room signals. The
picture resolution provided by the multiviewer
is excellent and it gives us a lot of
screen layout and other options.
As shutting down our air operations
was not an option during router expansion,
installation of the new gear was a bit
more challenging than normal. However,
Harris support worked with us to ensure
there were no glitches that could impair
our air operations.
The Harris team that programmed the
system worked hard to make sure there
were no interruptions, and in working
with a single vendor, we were assured
that there would be no fingerpointing
between manufacturers slowing down
the installation. I’m proud to say that everything
went just as planned and we’re
now reaping the benefits of this new operational
capacity.
Brad Noblitt is director of engineering
at the University of Florida College
of Journalism and Communication. He
may be contacted at bnoblitt@jou.ufl.edu.
For more information, contact Harris
North America at 800-231-9673 or
www.broadcast.harris.com.