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The University of Sydney

One of the most prestigious universities in Australia, the University of Sydney, educates more than 50,000 students with 3,300 academic staff. With the goal of working towards solutions for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, the university launched the Charles Perkins Centre. The new research and education hub includes a state-of-the-art wet laboratory, a specially designed collaboration environment for work with chemicals and other material or biological matter.

Challenge

In order to provide flexibility in the teaching program, the lab needed to hold up to eight classes simultaneously. The challenge was competing audio and visual communication with concurrent classes. Additionally, the university wanted to foster an environment where students could compare their results to professors in real-time, using video content at each lab station. To run coaxial cables from the professor’s lab station to each student lab space would be too costly.

Solution

Considering cost, high definition and low latency video quality, the university chose IP video streaming technology to send content from the 8 teacher lab stations to 240 student workstations. They selected Haivision’s HD H.264 Makito encoders to simultaneously encode 3 high definition feeds that stream the presenter’s lab camera, PC or document camera (or all 3) to a PC screen at each of the student workstations. Students view low- latency video streams using Haivision’s Instream Standalone media players.

Result

In line with the Charles Perkins Centre’s philosophy, the wet lab is bringing together the best minds from the medical sciences with interdisciplinary experts in a state-of- the-art, collaborative environment. Haivision’s solution has not only saved the university significant costs from the traditional cabling alternative, but the high performance encoding gives students and teachers immediate access to high-quality HD video content with very low latency. This allows the class to stay in lock step with the professor during demonstrations.

“The Makito encoders provide students with low latency video so that they can collaborate in real-time with their teachers.” - Jason Wheatley, Manager Interactive Learning Services, the University of Sydney