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AV Systems
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Video wall technology helps manage multiple sources
Jul 17, 2007
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by Joy Zaccaria
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With the proliferation of the video processor came the ability to juxtapose images from data products involving various video and computer sources onto one display as opposed to a bank of CRT monitors. With the goal of helping people do their job better at facilities that involve property security, homeland security, and command and control, any place where many different pieces of visual information arrive and have to be observed and analyzed presents an opportunity to display that information on a big wall for many people to view simultaneously.
The thousands of available images relating to a particular facility are useless unless the one most important at that moment is on screen at that moment. Making the video wall the interface for resources and control achieves the new timeliness necessary in critical security installations. In addition, the mechanics of installation and its physical environment can make or break a video wall.
"It's necessary to present what's important when it's important and can be of the best possible use," said Mike Piper, RGB Spectrum's product marketing manager for its MediaWall product. "That's the strength of a video wall and the technology that supports it. It becomes a visual resource management system -- and the more important the information is the greater priority it gets in terms of how it's presented."
New York City OEM
Video wall technology is one piece of the AV puzzle for the New York City Office of Emergency Management. SPL Integrated Solutions collaborated with AV designers Shen Milsom & Wilke on a job under the Brooklyn Bridge for the integration and installation of all the AV systems throughout the OEM headquarters. Formerly a building that housed the Red Cross, it now serves as the nerve center for processing information to weather a potential large-scale crisis.
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| Multi-view technology is an important part of the AV capabilities of the New York City Office of Emergency Management. |
The Watch Command provides field responders with necessary communications and logistical support during major emergencies. The central display screen consists of five Mitsubishi 61-inch DLP rear projection units installed side-by-side as one unified display image. An RGB Spectrum MediaWall 2000 processor allows numerous video, broadcast, and computer generated images to be displayed. On each side of the central display configurations are two 42-inch NEC plasmas.
At the center of the EOC is a large, two-sided rear-projection enclosure directly above the oval-shaped command podium. Each side of the enclosure contains two 160-inch diagonal rear-projection screens. Inside the enclosure are four Christie Digital 8000-lumen projectors (one for each screen) in a 16:9 format. Two RGB Spectrum Media Wall 2000 multi-image processors allow a variety of video, broadcast, and computer images to be arrayed simultaneously across the screen surfaces. On each side of the enclosure, 84-inch plasma displays were installed to provide additional image area.
The Situation Room is designed as boardroom for strategic meetings and conferences. The video wall is a 2x2 array of four 67-inch Barco Atlas C-4 video cubes.
Advances in interface design at RGB Spectrum have incorporated a cursor into the display space itself, providing on-screen control of window positioning, sizing, and scaling, and even allowing the cursor to do duty as a pointer. To harmonize the controls of the display space as well of the source computers, seamlessly and in real time, RGB Spectrum has developed a solution for its MediaWall and SuperView display processors known as Integrated Control System with KvM (Keyboard, video, Mouse).
Larry Politti is SPL's senior project manager for the installation at the NYC Office of Emergency Management. The biggest coordination effort for him was getting the four 160-inch screens for the EOC onto the premises.
"They were too large to come into the building any other way besides through the wall during an early part of the construction process," said Politti. "We rented a crane." SPL also extended the roof and built in substantial extra steel in order to accommodate the truss system to support the weight of equipment and personnel.
Assess The Situation
Concepts of size, resolution, flexibility, scalability, and reliability need to be assessed in order to find the right system or to determine if a video wall is even necessary. "You want to figure out what you need to accomplish first," said Earl Jamgochian, CTS, manager of product marketing for Extron Electronics, which launched the MGP 464W WindoWall System at InfoComm last month. "Determine what is the goal of the facility and work from there. That's preferable to starting with how big the display surface is."
Harris Corporation has addressed the video wall's timeliness issue at NAB2007 in April with its CENTRIO product with built-in automation, providing for a critical data source to become prominent on the wall when something important happens. "CENTRIO is architected in a way that allows an extra degree of flexibility." said John Delay, director of strategic marketing for government solutions at Harris.
"If an alarm is set off in a subway, the 1,000 screens in the central control room are still running all the info, but where the alarm was triggered, those videos become prominent on the screen," added Mike Garrido, Harris product line manager for multi-viewers. "Centrio is able to respond to information as it comes in with more ability to respond to situations."
Resolution has a myth attached to it, according to Dave Raden, CTO of Audio Video Systems, an AV integrator based in Chantilly, VA, that concentrates in the federal space. "A lot of people think the more resolution they have the better," he explained. "To some degree that's true. But you can get away with a lower resolution image as you're further from the screen."
Generally, the more resolution in a projection system, the more it costs. "Over time, that will equalize itself as technology becomes less expensive for displaying higher resolution images," said Piper. "A 1024x768 system is the starting level both from a cost and from a display perspective for many users because it's economically feasible."
When assessing a facility for its video wall requirements, the features to keep in mind are a matter of what visual resources have to be presented. "What needs to be assessed is whether or not images are simple, unchanging, if they lack a lot of dynamic motion, whether they have one or two cameras," said Louis Caron, product manager for Miranda Technologies. "Is there some kind of computer graphic that doesn't change very often? If so, the features needed to present them tend to be minimum."
When images are being dragged across and blown up on big displays, scalability is crucial. "The goal is to do as little scaling as possible with computer video," said Jamgochian. "If I could map out an XGA resolution source at its native resolution within a larger display, that's beneficial all around."
More Than Multiple Images
The display's environment is also an important factor. "Is it a raised floor? Is it a cement block? Those things make a difference over time," said Michele Ferreira, CTS, AVS director of sales and business development. "Just like your house settles, cubes settle and if they're misaligned you have to go in and take it all down and rebuild the base.
"A video wall is not just 10 monitors on a wall," she continued. "It's a much more integrated solution. When you put two cubes up to each other you have to make sure they're balanced, their colors are exactly alike."
In a broadcast environment, such as a PBS station, video walls are used in a control room to display all the camera inputs, as well as in master control to monitor what goes on the air. "They make sure the signal reaches home and all the data is properly inserted in the video like the audio levels, close captioning, and V-chip information," said Caron. For broadcasters, Miranda offers its new Kaleido-X multi-room, multi-image processor, with 96 inputs that can be displayed over eight multi-viewer outputs.
When selecting a multi-image system, image quality is obviously important. Miranda designed its own scaling technology, adapted for multi-viewer applications. "We are replacing CRT monitors that are capable of displaying the image with full resolution because our process rescales images," said Caron. "The quality of the scaling engine is very important. Even though the image is scaled very small, the detail and the sharpness of the image is still very good and is perceived as high resolution."
MORE INFO
Audio Video Systems avsinc.net
Barco barco.com
Christie Digital christiedigital.com
Extron Electronics extron.com
Harris Corporation harris.com
Miranda Technologies miranda.com
Mitsubishi mitsubishi-presentations.com
NEC nec.com
RGB Spectrum rgbspectrum.com
Shen Milsom & Wilke smwinc.com
SPL Integrated Solutions splis.com
SIDEBAR
OPB multi-viewer adds versatility to HD upgrade
When Oregon Public Broadcasting recently upgraded its HD production facility (see Government Video, October 2006), it invested in 10 Avitech MCC-8004UE multi-image display processing modules.
Located in Portland, the PBS member station creates the majority of the public_ television programming broadcast throughout the state of Oregon, including a variety of live events._ The crew can view up to 40 sources in either HD or SD, depending on the production. The Avitech system can combine HD-SDI, SD-SDI, and analog video sources, plus it provides on-screen alarm indicators for video and audio status, embedded audio monitoring, and tally, all while maintaining the correct aspect ratio.__ The installation also features the Avitech Cosmos PC-based control software, which allows OPB to easily configure and edit display presets.
"The versatility of the Avitech modules allows us to reconfigure the visual monitoring layout to meet the different production requirements for each event," said Don McKay, OPB vice president of engineering.
MORE INFO
Avitech avitechvideo.com
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