While the initial idea for the system was to enable streaming and recording in different rooms, what had not been in the original plan was for those rooms to work together. With a NewTek VMC live production system at the heart of a single NDI and Dante-enabled network, the building could act as one united venue. “With the help of Tony Gill, Liam Hayter and all of our team, it was all delivered and working by the start of September,” says Hepple. “The whole system now has about 150 NDI endpoints, covering 30 different rooms. The network has 15 switches and about 600 ports around the School. We’ve got a lot of mobile kit we can fly into any room that has CAT-5 infrastructure. It’s so flexible.” Ziajka adds: “There are 20 PTZ cameras and controllers, 30 studio encoders, 25 mini encoders and 15 PCs hooked up to the network that all have the NDI Tools, so we’re able to pull signals in and out of those machines. NDI Tools is a free suite of applications designed to integrate NDI into production workflows.” According to Ziajka and Hepple, the system ‘just works.’ GOLDEN PERFORMANCE In the end, the Gold Medal event went ahead in September 2020. “That was the first orchestra to perform since the lockdown,” says Hepple. “Since then, we’ve done four or five other full orchestral projects, tonnes of big band stuff, plus an orchestral Beatles project. We’ve carried out about 300 public-facing productions over the past year – exactly the same as the School put on in pre-pandemic times. Students haven’t missed any opportunities. Now, they’re just performing live to a camera, instead of an audience. We’ve managed to minimise the amount of disruption to student experience.” Hepple says many suppliers and manufacturers don’t understand that customers like Guildhall just want to do the simple things really well. “Manufacturers might often come at you with a far more complex offering that isn’t necessarily relevant to your environment,” he says. “What we got from NewTek and Altered Images was a total understanding of what we wanted to do.” WHENWE HEARD THAT GOLDMEDAL HAD NEVER BEEN CANCELLED, WE JUST HAD TOMAKE ITWORK
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