Colombia. To deal with the current situation, the Caracol channel recently purchased a 48-fader mc²56 mixer console with DALLIS frame for its news studio, another mc²56 for its new OB pickup and a mc²36 console for its Studio 10 installation.
Caracol's safety protocols during Covid-19 require the company's engineers to be able to monitor and measure critical audio signals from home, so they contacted Lawo for a solution. On April 30, Lawo engineer Daniel Egea demonstrated remote monitoring solutions for Caracol engineers through two possible monitoring methods: one with Lawo AoIP Stream Monitor software and one with RƎLAY VPB software. Both solutions use RAVENNA/AES67 connectivity to monitor mc² consoles.
Since the demonstration of both configurations met Caracol's requirements, both software packages will be configured for long-term testing, and will eventually be a permanent part of your studio's installation.
"The question for us was, how can engineers hear and measure audio signals while they're not on site?"
The solution was an infrastructure that allowed the core of the mc² console to supply its audio signals to a computer in the facility. "The audio signals were supplied to the transmission network via the Ravenna card in the kernel and collected from the network on a PC using the AoIP Stream Monitor or RƎLAY VPB software. By accessing this computer via Teamviewer or Remote Desktop via a second NIC, Caracol engineers can now conveniently monitor the most important signals from their home. This configuration offers a very flexible monitoring situation and has simple and intuitive graphical user interfaces to quickly create a proper monitoring overview."
Not only can Lawo's solutions broadcast world championships and other games remotely, but they're also ideal for customer-facing services, according to Jesus Lozano, CEO of Lawo's solutions partner Videoelec.
"The Covid19 pandemic has certainly driven the advancement of remote infrastructures, but Lawo has attached great importance to the development of products and solutions for remote purposes for years," Lozano said. "We can now use them not only for production but also, in adverse circumstances such as the pandemic, to maintain project schedules and delivery schedules, and to allow customers to remain airborne or in production."
Camilo Peñuela, sound manager of Caracol TV, is very satisfied with Lawo's response to his need. "With this solution we can save considerable costs, and we have a friendly and reliable remote tool to keep our sound under control at all times. Not only can we guarantee our audio quality standards, we can also access our audio network in seconds to check the status of any stream. This is just one more example of why Lawo is an excellent company to partner with."
