NAB 2016: IHSE USA, Vizrt Offer Live Demo of High-Performance, Long-Distance KVM Connection
IHSE USA (Booth SL13916) and Vizrt (Booth SL2417) are exhibiting high-performance, long-distance KVM capabilities by connecting a live source between the booths, which are located at opposite ends of the South Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The manufacturers are demonstrating mutual compatibility of their products based on real scenarios. The intent is to show long-distance connectivity in real time.
“Vizrt visualization software is widely used in digital workflow for the broadcast industry, quite often for real-time ingest of live data and video into the on-air video stream,” says Dan Holland, marketing manager, IHSE USA. “In this scenario, broadcasters require high video quality and instant remote access from studios and control rooms. As longtime partners, Vizrt and IHSE have worked together to optimize IHSE’s KVM technology and operational concept for this typical broadcast application. This demonstration is an example of what’s possible when broadcasters combine Vizrt’s visualization software with IHSE’s KVM technology for live production: they get immediate high-performance access to their signals without loss of quality. In fact, IHSE KVM systems are used to manage Vizrt workstations at Fox Business Graphics and Al Jazeera, as well as many European networks.”
The NAB 2016 demonstrations involve IHSE Draco tera enterprise and compact matrix switchers and the full line of IHSE vario Series extenders for DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. The IHSE equipment will manage all Vizrt workstations running the Viz Engine real-time compositor, Viz Artist modeling and animation tools, and the Viz Trio character generator. A fiber connection between the booths — a distance of about 1,500 ft. — will connect a live workstation at the Vizrt booth to a workstation comprising Vizrt hardware and software at the IHSE booth.
The demonstration in the Vizrt booth shows instant KVM switching between Vizrt control PCs and Viz Engine graphic engines based on an eight-port IHSE Draco tera compact matrix. Vizrt is using the system for its video wall and augmented-reality show, with live demonstrations every 30 minutes. These large public demonstrations require a full control room. IHSE’s equipment enables Vizrt to reliably connect to servers in the rack room and allow operators to swap between multiple machines without fail, avoiding mistakes in the live presentation. Vizrt relies on two operators during the live presentation, and the KVM system makes it possible for both operators to work in tandem to ensure smooth operation.
At the IHSE booth, IHSE demonstrates the seamless integration of Vizrt user stations with other broadcast applications. The Vizrt source is distributed to several workstation areas, showing simple access through IHSE’s KVM tie-line management using Draco Grid Manager and the Draco enterprise KVM matrix switch.
Together, the joint demonstrations create a real-time operational environment that proves the IHSE equipment can perform latency-free switching among editing stations over long distances with no loss of quality or resolution, even with large graphics processors. At the same time, NAB 2016 visitors can see how multiple Vizrt processors with different functions can be easily interconnected at a single user workstation. Vizrt uses off-the-shelf hardware with OEM graphics and video cards, so the IHSE KVM equipment works easily with all of Vizrt’s hardware and is easy to set up: users plug in the security dongle, assign it to a workstation, and start working.
“NAB is our largest show of the year, and we need a reliable KVM solution to ensure that our operators are able to access every server as needed,” says Vizrt Chief Engineering Officer Gerhard Lang. “The systems have worked so well for us that we have installed them in our new state-of-the-art R&D center in Vomp, Austria.”