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Southern Methodist Univerity’s fully refurbished MustangVision broadcast facility stands as one of the most technically advanced production facilities among the ACC’s 18 schools. Housed in a completely renovated space at the SMU Indoor Performance Center’s Armstrong Fieldhouse, the 67,000-square-foot facility is centrally located on the school’s 234-acre campus.

The Goal

To Level-Up as the Newest ACC Member

ZTransform was selected by Southern Methodist University (SMU) for the design, procurement, construction, testing, training and launch support of its flagship Mustang Vision Technical Operations Center (TOC) based in Dallas, Texas.
 
The completed operation leveraged existing common space in the Armstrong Fieldhouse to expedite construction of the technical operation. The TOC maintains fiber optic interconnect to 7 campus venues including Ford Field Football Stadium, Moody Basketball Arena, Washburne Soccer and Track Stadium, Volleyball, Tennis and Aquatics venues. The facility investment came as SMU joined the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) at the start of the 2024 collegiate sports season

The Challenge

Limited Time plus Emerging Technologies

Completed in only 8 months, including heavy construction to retrofit common space, the logistical coordination of all resources and the “just-in-time delivery” of products and systems required significant focus and management of all project resources from ZTransform including client staff and several trades. Plus, the still-evolving interoperability of ST2110 platforms, Dante audio infrastructure, IP intercom, and many entry-level technical operations staff, required a heightened risk awareness and mitigation strategies for any such items that might arise.
 
Due to the concurrent systems design and staging, and on-site construction efforts, ZTransform utilized a 3rd party warehousing facility to deliver all products to Dallas, where items could quickly be transferred to site as the construction team turned over the various technical rooms.
 
The on-site installation was an exercise in parallel process of detailed design, fabrication, installation, and testing to ensure all systems were configured and brought online immediately after their respective installations were complete. End User Training was performed while ZTransform technical staff were still on-site to ensure any anomalies or questions could be addressed without delay.
 

The Solution

Total IP Immersion

The TOC included an ST2110 infrastructure includes 4 video production control rooms, 4 audio control rooms, an 18-camera control and shading room, post-production suites, a green screen insert studio, and the technical equipment rack room. The TOC supports the live broadcast of game play in 7 campus venues, plus original shoulder programming, and in-venue presentation elements.
 
A media asset management platform provides the SMU Content team with comprehensive storage for, and access to, all long form, editorial, and graphic elements of games, events, and venue LED boards.
 
An ACC streaming rack provides signal encoding and transport of all broadcasts to the ACC platform.

The Result

A Game-Changing Improvement

With completion of the TOC, SMU is now able to self-host, produce and distribute more live and packaged events than ever before in its history. And, as a new member of the ACC, this provides the league audience with more content options than previously available, and at a production caliber on par with the best broadcasters in collegiate – and even professional – sports.
 
Because of the capacity and performance of technology deployed in the TOC, SMU can now host crew from major broadcasters, like ESPN, reducing the need for broadcast mobile units to travel to the venues for each event.
 

Key Technologies

  • Evertz NatX ST2110 Core
  • Ross Ultrix 2110 routers
  • Ross Carbonite switcher
  • Ross XPression graphics
  • Evertz Dreamcatcher replay
  • Calrec ArgoS audio systems
  • Sony HDC3500 Series cameras
  • Panasonic PTZ cameras
  • Riedel Artist Intercom
  • Adder KVM system
  • SNS EVO asset management
  • Telestream Master Reference systems
  • Forecast consoles

ST2110 Infrastructure

Intelligent Signal Monitoring

Expansive Creative Feature Set

Key Services

Engineering & Design

An end to end engineering package included schematic design through to construction documentation.

Systems Integration

Our Systems Integration professionals deploy a vast array of technology solutions with a heavy focus on ease of maintenance and support for the life of the systems.

Operational Readiness

We provides both systems configuration programming and proof of performance testing on all installed systems prior to shadow and launch.

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