RTS+OMNEO at Microsoft Production Studios

Among the more complex productions handled by MPS was a series of shoots for MSN Music that featured performances by artists such as Alanis Morissette, Janet Jackson, David Byrne, and Heart. We literally took the stage sets that the artists were using on tour, brought them into one of our sound stages, and then shot videos that were used on the music section of the MSN home page, Ball says.

The bulk of the work these days relates to core corporate functions such as product rollouts and worldwide communications with employees, analysts, and customers. A lot of what we're doing now, Ball says, is remote productions in which MPS serves as a digital hub for production and distribution.

For in-studio work, MPS has three main sound stages and one small insert stage with a capture/demo station. The main stages are big enough that we can have live audiences, Ball says. We also have green screen and a threewall cyc to provide that infinite white effect. The stages are connected to two production control rooms, each of which has recently been upgraded to 3G 1080p/60Hz HD video with Sony MVS-8000 series switchers. There are also 13 video edit rooms, which use either Apple Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere.

Audio facilities include three main audio rooms that double for live broadcast mixing and audio post, including music composition, and sound design. The rooms support mixing to stereo as well as to either 5.1 or 7.1 surround. Each is equipped with a ProTools system mixed on an Avid ICON D-Control. Remote productions use a Yamaha CL5 series digital mixing console. The rooms also each include an announce booth. While music recording is not a primary function of MPS, the audio rooms and sound stages can be used together to provide a control room/recording studio combination when needed, with gobos providing in-studio isolation.

Another key area of the facility is the Technical Operations Center (TOC), which often serves as a transit point for program and comms throughout the rest of the complex and also going out for distribution. We have a satellite farm on top of the building, Ball says. Any set of signals coming in via fiber or satellite, or going out via broadcast, whether it's over satellite or fiber, goes through the TOC. A lot of the communications on our comms are happening either within that room or between that room and other locations. Today we were doing a live broadcast and we had seven people using comms in that room, communicating in the room, to other production rooms, and to people in New York.

Until MPS began using OMNEO, comms throughout the facility were primarily analog RTS 4-wire. We also have the 2-wire systems on our stage, which are cloned into the cameras, Ball says. And we have wireless UHF beltpack systems like the BTR-800 and BTR-1.

copyrighted by liveProduction.tv Dante's debut

Dante's debut on the MPS stage wasn't for comms but rather for distribution of multiple discrete audio programs to a set of distributed audio playback systems. When you walk into a Microsoft retail store, Ball explains, you'll see video screens that run the entire length of each side, creating up to seven digital signage zones per side. For each of these zones there is a different audio track. The system is fed from a proprietary system that Microsoft Production Studios developed for the stores, which uses Dante over Ethernet to send the audio signal to the sound system for each zone.

As well as creating the in-store content, MPS drives the concept, system design, deployment, and production standards. The final sound mixing for the stores happens on one of our sound stages, Ball says. We have a system that we can bring out quickly to make a scale mock setup of the retail environment. We use the Audinate Dante Virtual Sound Card software, which allows Pro Tools to output audio as Dante via the computer's Ethernet network interface card. We feed that into a Symetrix Edge that distributes it to playback systems for the 15 zones. That's how we mix the audio to the video that they hand off to us. Ball says he and his colleagues very much liked what we heard when they started using Dante this way.

This initial exposure to Dante set the stage for MPS's subsequent adoption of OMNEO for comms. The OMNEO media networking architecture enables a standard IP Ethernet network to serve as a platform for the exchange of two key types of data. One is studio-quality synchronized multichannel audio, delivered at near-zero latency using Dante. The other is device monitoring and control data, using Open Control Architecture (OCA), an open communications protocol architecture that is currently being finalized as a standard by the Audio Engineering society. OMNEO networks support exchange of both data types across networks totaling up to 10,000 OMNEO-equipped devices.

OMNEO is implemented in RTS intercom systems using one or more OMI cards in an ADAM or ADAM-M matrix frame. Each OMI card can support from 16 to 64 bidirectional ports, with up to eight OMI cards supported on an ADAM and up to four on an ADAM-M. Connections may be made with standard RJ-45 connectors (for Cat-5 or Cat-6 cable) or using optional single mode and multimode fiber modules that plug into slots on the cards to enable full fiber connectivity. On the keypanel end, OKI keypanel interface cards, which also take the plug-in fiber modules, enable OMNEO in RTS KP-32, KP 32 CLD, or KP 12 CLD keypanels.

Ball says that after nearly 20 years of continuous service, parts of the existing comms system at MPS were showing their age. Our original RTS KP-96 intercom panels were still rocking, he explains, but they were overdue to be replaced. They use 20-plus year old technology, and RTS no longer supports that model, so we knew we would not be able to get replacement parts. Same with some

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