Acoustic and Audiovisual Consultants

Audio   Video   Control   Acoustics

Design  and  Engineering

COUNTY OF RIVERSIDE BOARDROOM DETAILED SYSTEM OVERVIEW

Within the Boardroom a number of different types of meetings take place.  The County Board of Supervisors seats seven plus staff, whereas the Transportation Council seats 35 Board members plus staff.  The room is a facility that can be rented to the "community" for large meetings as well as a room that can be used for county staff training.

Broadcast Systems

The main feature of the room is its video broadcast ability.  Each meeting has the ability to be fed to the local cable system for distribution throughout the county.

The basic broadcast system contains the following:

• Basic production capabilities.

• House synchronization for locking of all cameras and monitors together.

• Six cameras on remote controlled pan tilt heads with zoom lens for coverage of the meetings.

• VCR for source play back.

• Computer to Video converters to allow all presentation material seen in the Boardroom to be viewed by the audience at home.

• Press feed to minimize the need for the press to bring their cameras into the Boardroom for meetings.

Meeting Display System

The information presented to the Board and Councils at meetings is changing to computer based presentations.  To support this type of presentation style the Boardroom is computer friendly.  To support the presentations the following was provided: 

• Computer input at the podium for public presentations and training events.

• Computer inputs at both staff benches for staff to Board presentations.

• Computer input at the clerk's desk for clerk to Board presentation and training events.

• A video overhead at the podium to allow 8.5 x 11 inch paper documents and other three dimensional material to be viewed by the Board and the public.

Because of the number of people that are Board/Council members, and the wide layout of the Boardroom, each Board and Council position has a local RGBHV flat panel monitor to allow the Board, Council and staff to view images that are presented to them.  The audience views this information on two large projection screens on either side of the room roughly in line with the podium location.

The 11 panels at the Board location are also touch sensitive control panels to allow any person seated in the board location to be the Chairperson for a portion of the meeting.

Audio System

The audio system consists of an automatic microphone mix - minus system that gates microphones on and off either automatically as people speak into it or as controlled by the chair of the meeting.  The podium has a gooseneck microphone that is able to pick up the most “timid” of presenters.  The board microphones are gooseneck microphones about the size of a pencil.  Staff microphones are gooseneck microphones on moveable bases.

• For ceremonially events two wireless microphones are utilized.

• Loudspeakers for the Board are located in the tabletop.

• Loudspeakers for the pubic are high quality loudspeakers mounted in the ceiling.

Meetings are recorded for archive purposes by a hard disc recording system.

General items are recorded by a cassette player located in the control room.

Video System

The video system is built around two matrix switchers. The primary video matrix routes all of the NTSC video sources and broadcast images, while the RGBHV matrix routes all of the Display and Graphics images within the Boardroom.

Images are converted from RGBHV to NTSC via scan converters for broadcast viewing. NTSC images are “scaled up” to high-resolution images for display in the Boardroom.

All NTSC video images are locked together with a house synchronization system.  Production is “cut only” video from images pre selected on a preview monitor system.

A computer graphics generator provides titles and overlays for meetings.  Meetings are recorded on two video recorders found in the control room.

System Control

All of the functionality of the existing Boardroom was retained.  In addition, the flat panel display at the main Board dais allows the passing of the chair of the meeting, as their portion is active.

Each Board member is able to vote, mute their microphone, and request to speak.

The clerk and the control booth have the ability to override any activity but the voting module. This allows these trained individuals to assist in the use of technology during a meeting.

The control system has a speaker timing system to equalize public comment on a topic.  A series of green, yellow, and red lights let the presenter know the status of their time.  The duration of the presentations can be set by the clerk, at the Board's direction.

Future Systems

In the future, the County foresees using Webcasting and other emerging technologies.  All of these new communications technologies are supported by the audio and video feeds similar to what is being provided to the press. These feeds will allow the new technology to capture and process the images in the Boardroom as their uses and circuitry grows and become more efficient.

Major Equipment List

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