On March 4, New Zealand’s Minister of Education officially opened Rangitoto College’s upgraded computer network during the school’s assembly. TorqueIP, the IT infrastructure solutions provider, who designed the system, wanted a high-profile way of demonstrating the capability of the network during the opening ceremony. They turned to IP video provider IndigoVision and their local partner Active Security Services for the solution.
On March 4, New Zealand's Minister of Education officially opened Rangitoto College's upgraded computer network during the school's assembly. TorqueIP, the IT infrastructure solutions provider, who designed the system, wanted a high-profile way of demonstrating the capability of the network during the opening ceremony. They turned to IP video provider IndigoVision and their local partner Active Security Services for the solution.
Rangitoto College is a state coeducational high school based on the North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand. It is the country's largest high school with more than 3000 students. However, due to the size of the school they are unable to accommodate all of the students in the main hall at the same time. So an innovative solution was developed to use a HD network camera to monitor the opening ceremony and Web-cast live video and synchronized audio to more than 600 computers around the school's network, allowing every student to watch proceedings. This was all achieved with one week's notice and without any network modification. Also no new software or expensive user licenses were required on the viewing PCs. It proved so successful the school regularly uses the technology to broadcast whole-school assemblies.
With the combination of IndigoVision's compression and multicast network technology, the school is able to stream high-quality video and audio to all of the school's PC's with a maximum network load of 4 Mbps at any location. Viewing in a Web browser avoided the need to install and configure any software on each PC.
The broadcasts are recorded using IndigoVision's Windows NVR software onto a PC hard disk. A typical one-hour assembly creates a 570 MB file, which can be exported in standard MP4 format for editing and web publishing or archiving. A PC running Control Center, IndigoVision's security management software, allows the staff to control the HD network camera through a third-party PTZ and configure the transmission and recording of the broadcast.
The school has an ideal platform on which to add IP video security surveillance in the future. High-quality surveillance cameras can be rapidly installed across the school's multiple buildings, with minimal load on the network bandwidth.