City of San Antonio Implements Ross Legislative Control System

Monday, February 29th, 2016 [Ottawa, Ontario, Canada] – The City of San Antonio with BeckTV has implemented the Ross Legislative Control System to manage the broadcast of their city council meetings. The system leverages the Ross Carbonite Switcher and XPression real-time graphics controlled by the intuitive touch screen Legislative Control System.

“Previously we had four to six operators in our control room, each with a dedicated task to ensure that our meetings were covered to the citizens of San Antonio. This meant long hours and a crowded control room,” stated Cliff Brannon, AV Production Supervisor, City of San Antonio. “With the Ross Legislative Solution we are able to broadcast professional quality meetings with one or two operators allowing us to have shorter shifts reducing operator fatigue and being able to do other aspects of our jobs instead of having the whole team in the control room.”

San Antonio has two chambers that are controlled by the Ross Legislative Control System. In each chamber there are multiple Sony pan, tilt, zoom (PTZ) cameras. At the touch of the screen, three cameras focus on a representative. Each camera has three programmable shots available allowing the operator to quickly select the best angle to frame the speaker.

Once the shot is lined up, which can be adjusted using the Ross Converged joystick if needed, they simply press the TAKE button. This pulls out the current graphic, cuts the source on the switcher to the new camera, and pulls in the name of the speaker. A touch screen side panel was created using Ross DashBoard to display additional graphical information, such as the item number or selecting a guest speaker’s information from a drop down list.

While one operator is controlling the Ross Solution, the second operator is adjusting audio levels and preparing presentations for the speakers. Operational training for the system was completed in a matter of minutes and the first meeting was broadcast within days of the system being set up.

“We are pleased to add San Antonio the growing number of cities that are leveraging the Ross Legislative Solution,” said Greg Quirk, Legislative Product Manager for Ross Video. “Broadcasting these meetings is vitally important for open governments to ensure that their constituents have the opportunity to know what is happening in their community.”

The Ross Legislative Solution is being used at all levels of government, from city to state to international. The scalable solution is flexible for the end user to make modifications as their assembly changes. Whether that is managing unassigned seating, setting up to broadcast a different meeting in a matter of minutes, or changing the graphical information that is displayed.

Note: Ross Video’s business partner, BeckTV was instrumental in the City of San Antonio Legislative implementation. They continue to maintain a strong relationship that has extended into the legislative market space.

About Ross Video
Passionate about live production, Ross Video designs, manufactures and delivers dependable technology and services that power exceptional live video productions seen by billions of viewers around the world every day. Ross Video’s goal is to make it easy for customers to create compelling news, weather and sports broadcasts, engaging material for sports stadium screens, legislative assemblies, entertainment shows and rock concerts, and inspiring content for houses of worship.

Relentlessly innovating, Ross Video delivers the world’s widest range of products and services for augmented reality and virtual sets, mobile live-event solutions, real-time motion graphics, robotic camera systems, social-media management, production switchers, routers, infrastructure products, video servers, newsroom systems, terminal equipment and more.

Ross products and services are designed to offer best-in-class system integration and unmatched customer choice by both working together seamlessly and integrating tightly with third-party solutions.

Ross Video has offices around the world, and provides free-for-life telephone support staffed by technical experts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year—even for products bought on eBay. Recognizing the time-critical nature of the broadcast industry, all Ross employees are empowered to provide “whatever it takes” customer service, even down to renting helicopters when necessary to deliver needed parts and service.

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Ross Video Media Contact:
Sara Bell
Media Relations Co-ordinator
t. (613) 652-3020
f. (613) 652-4425
e. sbell@rossvideo.com