Pilates Convention 2022 — We should have agreed a mileage allowance for this order

The request from the German Pilates Association heralded a challenging project: Equip four conference rooms each with a permanently installed camera including microphone, then transmit four video signals live and in parallel to a password-protected website of the association, with charts and promotional videos being shown on each channel at individual times.

Let’s start with the “simple” things: Internet with sufficient bandwidth — four streams in HD quality require at least 5–7 Mbits each — could unfortunately not be provided by the hotel. A look at the Vodafone network map provided relief, as it showed the availability of 5G. As it turned out later, the radio mast was within sight of the hotel and our radio router, equipped with two external antennas, did its job reliably.

The next checkpoint was a little trickier: the conference rooms were arranged in pairs, but with a little distance between them. According to the room plan, there were almost 60 meters between them, plus a stairwell on the first third of a winding path and a fire door on the second third, which in any case could not be obstructed by anything.

Sending radio signals for video and sound over 60 meters works without any problems on a straight line. But no chance here. We pulled 200 meters of HDMI fiber optic cable for the picture and 200 meters of XLR cable for the sound through the aisles and interrupted them midway with suitable splitters and connectors. This ensured that we could clear the routes at night and in the event of an emergency, as we always had the fire door in view during the day. Two conference rooms alone, which were in the immediate vicinity of the control room, could be connected to the sound console via radio. But here, too, the camera signal was transmitted via HDMI.

So far, so good. The signal paths are in place, transmit reliably and “only” need to be streamed. In fact, only our Pearl‑2 would have sufficed. This versatile and robust encoder can stream multiple video feeds simultaneously to different platforms and record in parallel.

However, as the schedule included various lecture and practice sessions, videos from advertisers were to be played during the breaks and covers with titles were to be displayed at the start of each session, we equipped the control room extensively from the outset. This included two additional consoles, a video player and a PC to control the four streams running in parallel. Another control panel was used to switch the image signals from the cameras, the advertising videos and the covers of the individual sessions in each of the many channels individually.

We have chosen Vimeo as our video platform. In contrast to YouTube, we were able to integrate the four streams into the Pilates Association’s website via iframe code without any additional disruptive information. As soon as the users had entered their password, the corresponding subpage opened and provided a view of all four streams. Clicking on the desired stream then opened the video across the entire monitor area.

And what about the mileage allowance?

Streaming projects of this type are ideal for AV-over-IP, i.e. the parallel transmission of image and sound via a high-performance network. At the same time, control signals can be sent from the control room to the cameras for alignment. However, this solution was not yet available to us at the time. So we had to walk the route between the control room and the four lecture rooms several times a day. On the one hand, to help the speakers put on the lavalier microphones and check their batteries, and on the other hand, to readjust the cameras every now and then so that the sometimes very mobile protagonists were always in the picture.

The great effort, combined with a little running training, was worth it. As a result, we sent four HD streams over the airwaves without interruption and in top picture and sound quality. The parallel video recordings of the sessions were made available as video-on-demand after the convention.

There was only one challenge that we almost failed at the end: the really large gift baskets that Taro Kataoka and I received as a token of our clients’ satisfaction only just fitted into our van. The next one will definitely be bigger.