St. Joseph College, Gregory Terrace, a highly reputable Catholic school for young men, has always viewed sports as a vital part of learning and an important element in the formation of the ‘Terrace Gentlemen’. Back in 2022, the sporting fields were flooded with rain downpours that rendered its AV infrastructure largely inoperable. The college took this challenge as an opportunity to renovate its audio-visual system to meet current and future needs. The administration approached Ashburner Francis Consulting Engineers to design and develop, not only a new ground-up top class PA system for the entire sporting complex, but took advice to re-imagine the AV recording and broadcast system for the college’s main sporting field and surrounding buildings… rather than simply replace what was there before!
Having won the tender, VIDEOPRO (the System Integrator) in close collaboration with the customer, consultant and relevant manufacturers, implemented a cutting-edge complex AV solution that underpins the impeccable reputation of St Joseph’s College. The new AV infrastructure was set to provide video broadcasting and recording based on the low-latency transport of 4K@60Hz video via fiber optics over a 10 Gb network. It needed to be robust, reliable, have a minimal footprint, and be easy to use.
VIDEOPRO, with their award-winning practice of valuing quality provided by the world’s leading brands, strategically implemented Lightware’s UBEX 10Gb AV-over-IP transport solution for sourcing 4K video signal from professional cameras on the sporting field, patched over into the fiber optic points around the field and transported with zero latency to the AV stadium bunker for sending them out onto the arena’s LED screen and live broadcasting.
VIDEOPRO, in particular, utilized 3 units of UBEX-Pro20-HDMI-F110 optical scaling extender that allows 4K UHD@60Hz 4:4:4 uncompressed signal extension with latency-free multistreaming. UBEX’s operate as portable Transmitters for 3x field cameras to enable patching 4K video over into fiber optics AV-over-IP points around the field. Delivered into the AV bunker’s network switching devices, the 4K video is then received by 3 devices of UBEX-Pro20-HDMI-F110 operating as Receivers supporting HDR video and high bitrate audio standards. The UBEX units, installed within the bunker rack, demand minimal patching and are easy to operate for both the in-house AV team and external professional operators that utilize St Joseph’s AV system to live-broadcast large rugby union games and cricket matches.
Lightware’s UBEX-MMU-X200 Matrix Management unit controls and supervises the virtual matrix that operates as a crosspoint for the UBEX TX/RX units in the system.
UBEX technology enables scalability and asymmetrical build of the solution, should the college need more inputs or outputs in the future, they will easily meet the requirement by leveraging Lightware’s 10Gb AV-over-IP UBEX extenders which can simply be added as required and grow with changes in demand.
A number of DA2HDMI-4K-Plus distribution amplifiers are also included in the design to provide duplicated outputs where required.
The Roger’s Pavilion next to the sporting area, is a multi-use room where students and coaches meet to workshop, discuss and analyse games, but there can also be a requirement to send content from here to the outdoor LED screen, other buildings and facilitate Video Conference calls. As such, for this space, the customer needed a user-friendly meeting room layout with UC functionality, plus the ability to control certain elements of the entire AV system. To enable seamless collaboration here, VIDEOPRO utilized Lightware’s TAURUS UCX-4x2-HC30D USB-C powered matrix switcher that enables 4K60 video between laptops and displays, USB 3.1 host-switching layer for hosts and peripherals, charging at 60W, and DANTE audio capabilities as the heart of the system.
As the entire venue is controlled by QSC (which also forms the DSP backbone), the Rogers pavilion benefits from integration of the Lightware technology with a QSC Touchpanel to not only control all functionality in the room but also provides a central point to manage and route signals to other end points across the venue.
Here as well an UBEX-Pro20-HDMI-F100 extender operating as transmitter/receiver enables connectivity of the Roger’s Pavilion technology with the main rack switch, which means content from here can be utilised anywhere the 10gb distribution system reaches.
VIDEOPRO’s Account Manager of the St. Joseph’s College project, Mark Chaplin, says UBEX saw no competition, it was the right instrument for the challenging job of zero-latency extension of uncompressed supreme quality 4K UHD video over long distances via a 10Gb network.
St. Joseph’s College, which excels in fostering young men embracing values, has leveraged the same responsible and profound approach in renovating its AV technology. Lightware’s team was excited to be instrumental in creating the state-of-the-art AV solution for the college’s sports fields.
