Mexico. St. John Baptist de La Salle, the patron saint of education, founded the Institute of the Christian Brothers more than 300 years ago in France. The Congregation of Catholic Teaching can now be found in more than 80 countries. Today, Mexico is one of the nations with the highest presence of the institute, with La Salle University located on 15 campuses throughout the country.
Each November, campuses come together for one of the biggest events of the academic year: the La Salle National Sports Games. The four-day event is similar to a mini Olympiad, in which each school sends the best to compete in basketball, soccer, taekwondo, chess, volleyball and futsal.
In previous years, games were a relatively isolated event; the host school would sometimes share some photographs or short clips after the event, but the participating school communities were unable to track their teams' progress throughout the competition.
When La Salle University's Nezahualcoyotl campus was named the host of the upcoming event, they wanted to provide full coverage of the event, including live streaming, so that fellow students, friends, and family of competitors could watch the games live for the first time.
Daniel Aguilar Martinez, content manager at La Salle University, was tasked with finding a way to simultaneously broadcast from six different facilities on campus where the games would be held and, at the same time, record the matches with superior quality for use in post-production editing.
The University had already been using a live broadcast production system to broadcast its lectures and seminars, but buying more over the event's tight budget was simply out of reach. Hiring a station, which would have cost more than $25,000 for the service, was also not an option.
Martinez decided to buy a solution that the school could continue to use on a regular basis once the games were over. Through a quick online search, the University discovered the Matrox Monarch HD. In terms of capabilities and budget, the Monarch HD professional recording device was exactly what they were looking for.
Exceptional performance
The six Monarch HD units purchased for the event were easy to set up, only quick setup was required. While the devices remained active for up to 12 hours a day, the transmission and recording operations were simple for the AV equipment to start and stop via the unit's pressure buttons.
All the facilities in the different sports facilities were equipped with at least one camera and a Monarch encoder, but the exact setup differed a bit from day to day. For example, during the basketball preliminaries three games were played at once to ensure that there was enough time for all the games.
This was an interesting opportunity for the team to use a single GoPro HERO6 camera to film three basketball courts with a wide shot, while capturing ambient audio with the camera's internal microphone. Video and audio from the camera were sent via HDMI to Monarch HD.
However, during the finals and semi-finals, three professional-level SDI cameras, a switch and an audio mixer were set up for individual matches. Fewer games meant that more equipment could be dedicated to each game. To capture different angles of the games, the different cameras were connected to a video switcher via an SDI connection. The switch output then went through an SDI to HDMI converter to connect with Monarch HD. The audio for the final came from a commentator using a microphone that connected to an audio mixer. The mixer plugged into the Monarch HD analog audio input.
The setup of the equipment was simple and was done every night before the next day's events. On game day, all it had to do was connect Monarch HD to a computer and secure the streaming key that changed daily from SmartCast, its content delivery network (CDN).
The broadcasts were made in RTMP at 640p at 1 Mbps to SmartCast, which uses a Wowza Media Server to host the video that was embedded in a landing page, so viewers could easily log into the school's server and watch from home. Some events were also simulcast to Facebook Live, with streaming parameters set to 720p at 2 Mbps.
Matches were recorded at the same time using Monarch HD's file splitting feature, and saved locally to an SD card at 720p60 at 7 Mbps for archival purposes. Once the desired file length is entered, Monarch HD automatically splits the recordings into separate files, without losing a single frame.
The split file feature was particularly useful for the AV equipment due to the extended periods when Monarch HD was up and running; if an error occurred, such as a power outage, all files up to that point would be safe. "The end result was uninterrupted, high-quality video playback, and with the Matrox File Consolidator utility, it allowed us to create a single file for convenient editing and archiving purposes," Martinez said.
After the event, most Monarch HD units are now installed in auditoriums on campus, and are used to broadcast and record a wide range of events and meetings. Martinez concluded, "Discovering the world of live streaming seemed overwhelming at first, until we discovered how simple it was to set up and operate Monarch HD. Going with Monarch HD made us realize that investing in these devices, in the long run, was the right decision.
