NDI® Provides Help on Media Upgrade of UK Supreme Court

As part of a recent media upgrade, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has opted to use NDI® video connectivity technology, in conjunction with Panasonic PTZ cameras, to create an extensive networked environment. 

Challenge

Formed in October 2009, the Supreme Court is the highest and final court of appeal for United Kingdom civil cases, as well as criminal cases from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is located in a building on Parliament Square in London, opposite the Houses of Parliament. 

Since its creation, all cases have been archived on its website to ensure fair and open access to all. To this end, three court rooms at the Westminster location were each equipped with four Panasonic AW-HN130 PTZ cameras, an AW-RP150 camera controller and NewTek TriCaster media production system. 

Fourteen years on from the original installation, it was time for an upgrade to allow the capture of better quality recordings. Dan Money, Technical Architect at the Supreme Court, explained:

“Our first requirement was updating the camera output from SD to HD. The IT team wanted to implement a system that could do everything the original system could, but make the overall image quality look better with an intuitive system that we could understand.” 

Dan Money, Technical Architect at the Supreme Court

Solution

Motivated by the desire to migrate to fully networked AV over the existing building infrastructure, and in a way that could be maintained effectively in-house, the IT team opted to deploy NDI® video connectivity technology. Taking the NDI® IP connection from the Panasonic PTZs, it was possible to convert this to fiber using existing runs in the building. The stream was then converted back to IP and passed into a NewTek TriCaster. 

“We are also planning to have the audio from all court rooms over NDI® in the future so that we can have networked video and audio over the existing building infrastructure. Being IP-based has made camera technology far more straightforward for individuals like ourselves to get to grips with providing a professional video output.” 

Dan Money, Technical Architect at the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court’s broadcast contractor was engaged to support all of its broadcast operation needs and provide audio/visual engineers to operate the equipment, as and when required. 

Outcomes

The first major test of the new infrastructure was the case of R (Miller) v The Prime Minister, which investigated the latter’s controversial decision to prorogue the UK Parliament during the Brexit process in September 2019.  

“We had originally planned to sign off the system during the recess period over the summer months, recalled Money. “However, the case was scheduled two weeks before the system was scheduled to be implemented, meaning that we had to push the project forward and deliver early to stream this case.” 

To deliver the streaming services, the team employed Microsoft’s Azure Media Services platform. “This is what prompted us to implement the NDI architecture in the first place as the NewTek Tricaster is on their recommended equipment list. We had to work with the lead developer of Azure Media Services to tailor the platform to our requirements to run a 1080p network-based stream on the platform.” 

The end-result satisfied everyone involved, indicated Money: “We were very pleased with the feedback we have received on the picture quality – not only from those around the courts, but also from feedback on the stream and broadcasters too.”