The Harris Platinum routerGAINESVILLE, 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 atbnoblitt@jou.ufl.edu.
For more information, contact Harris North America at 800-231-9673 orwww.broadcast.harris.com.
