For some time now, Rule Boston Camera has been working hard to become the leader in New England of shared storage, digital asset management and archiving. As the industry moves away from tape and into file-based media, safely and intelligently storing your digital video files has become increasingly important. Our goal in this “Smart Storage Initiative” is to provide the best possible solutions for each customer’s needs—from the one-man-band all the way up to the enterprise-level customer. Naturally, a significant part of this initiative is education and not just for our customers. Recently, we have been putting our vendors’ shared storage products through rigorous testing to see which products fit perfectly with which workflows. No single product, be it from Avid, Facilis, SNS or Apple/Promise, is right for every need or for every customer. We’re doing speed tests, checking compatibility with third-party software, figuring out how you can use each one in collaborative workflows (and more) in order to find how each shared storage product shines and in which areas. The end result:  when you tell us about your business and your needs, we will be able to confidently recommend a product that will be a perfect fit for you and your workflow as well as your budget. While shared storage products like Apple XSAN/Promise V-Trak, Facilis Terrablock, Avid ISIS and SNS EVO are a significant part of the puzzle, we also provide solutions for digital asset management and archiving with products like CatDV from SquareBox and the Cache-A line of products among others. Don’t need or can’t afford a large shared storage system or LTO-5 backups? We can recommend the right storage and backup solutions to fit exactly what you need and want with products from Promise, LaCie, G-Tech and more. The industry is constantly changing and as a result it can be difficult to navigate which is why we’re always on the lookout to find the best solutions out there to match your specific needs. Peter Brunet, Engineering Technician, brunet@rule.com

In the last couple of weeks, the System Integration Team has been putting together the final pieces for the launch of the Harvard School of Public Health’s FORUM series.  The AV and lighting are now in place in the room that will be used BOTH as a conference room and production studio.   The production studio portion of the room is hosting its first event today, which will be (both) recorded and streamed live for a worldwide audience on the inter-web. The topic is: The Impact of the 2010 Elections on U.S. Healthcare Reform: Presented by The Forum at Harvard School of Public Health in Collaboration with Reuters.  Time: 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EST.  Watch at:  www.ForumHSPH.org Ian Tosh, Director of Engineering Services

In mid-October, the System Integration Team installed the Panasonic 103″ monitor in the 10th floor conference room (which looks really great).  The monitor was hoisted by a crane up 10 floors through a window and then was stored in a closet while the construction part of the project was finished. Like everything in this installation, the monitor will serve two separate masters.  In the conference room it will take the place of a typical projector and be used to show presentations and video conference calls.  When the room is used in production mode, the monitor will serve as an adjustable background.  Any of the sources in the room can be fed to the monitor through an HDSDI router.  It might “host” a still for one of the Forum presentations or you might see a moving background from the Final Cut Pro laptop system — really, it could be anything! In a typical conference room set-up, we would have created this scenario with a rear projection screen.  In this case, there was no room behind the screen for a rear projection system, but the necessity to show it on camera, perhaps under lights, made it necessary to use this monitor. The monitor is a great showpiece for the room, and as they say “It really ties the room together.” Earlier last month, we received and installed the camera lifts that are now holding the 4 installed cameras in the ceiling.  I have to give credit where credit is due.  These lifts came from a company called Display Devices, and they were a pleasure to work with.  They customized the lifts per our specifications, and they delivered them on time. The builders and carpenters who installed them did a great job compensating for the weight of the cameras and tying everything into the ceiling in a way that looks great and works well! Now the cool part… What these lifts do is allow the camera to mount flush with the ceiling in the “up” position in order to keep them out of the way when the room is used as a conference room — yet they can still be used as a video conference camera.  In the “down” position, they arrive at about eye level so that they can be used in production mode without the high angle at which these cameras tend to me mounted. These lifts have the cameras inverted, but the same lifts can be used with the cameras mounted inside the box allowing them to completely disappear from the room until they are needed.  Very cool.  I’m  looking forward to working with these lifts again on future projects. Ian Tosh, Director of Engineering Services

The most recent integration project started with a phone call from a local producer who planned to build a portable HD control room for Harvard’s School of Public Health. As initially conceived, this would involve a switching flypack that would move between 2 separate spaces in one building and provide all the control gear to turn a conference room or large performance space into a remote camera production studio.  We were familiar with the construction of a portable flypack and the installation of remote cameras but putting these functions together presented some interesting challenges.  For example, where was the line between the portable and the installed equipment?  How do we connect the 2 systems so they’ll work well together and separate easily?  These questions made the project unique, and we were definitely up for the challenge. Once we started working on the portable production aspect, the architects who were overhauling the conference room suggested we design and build the audio/visual portion in that space.  Consistency was the main objective.  By building the mobile flypack first, once in the conference room, it had to work in tandem with the audio visual components (e.g., teleconference, boundary microphones, resident computers, a VERY large display, etc.) in this more permanent space. It was the right way to handle this type of design, and as we moved through this particular phase, we became increasingly aware of the relationship between both aspects of the project. Overall, whether the production equipment is mobile or in the control room, the objective was to produce the highest quality HD material for both live streaming over the web and broadcast feeds to a variety of news outlets.  Because both systems would overlap in some of their hardware, it meant that much of the equipment in the conference room would conform to very high specifications.  For example, it’s not common to use a high-end HDSDI signal to feed a teleconferencing system.  It’s also not common to use Lite Panels (production lighting) on the speaker in a conference room setting.  The dual purpose for this space made the high-end choices budgetarily necessary. After wrapping up the design phase, and then preassembling and testing the gear in our shop, construction is finished and we’re now moving the gear on site in order to have the entire room tested and ready for production early next month. At this particular point in the project, it strikes me that despite all the overlap within these 2 co-existing systems (and no matter what the final purpose of the room) — video is still video and audio is still audio! Ian Tosh, Director of Engineering Services