Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre

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When development of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) was completed in 2009, it marked the introduction of a new standard of excellence in the local and global world of convention hosting.

At the environmental level, the Melbourne Convention Centre is the first 6 Star Green Star environment rated centre in the world; assisted by technology integration with products such as the Extron ISM 824 and ISS 506.

The MCEC was constructed with an audio visual, communications and IT infrastructure that set a new standard in services to the convention, meeting, event and exhibition industries.

"…Extron and RGB Integration were fully committed to ensuring we had the best possible solution….they understood right from the start what we were trying to achieve; and pulled out all stops to help us in that endeavour.".

Michael Walsh, Director of Technical Operations
Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

The design and development of the MCEC were exceptionally complex undertakings, the scale of which had never before been seen in the Australian audio visual and technology market. At every level and at every stage, the MCEC, architects, builders, developers and contractors all strove for nothing less than excellence. Interestingly, it was excellence recognised with the 2010 National Award for Public Architecture, the 2010 Victorian Architecture Medal and, when it comes to audio visual, the 2010 Audio Visual Industry Award for A/V solution provider, Rutledge Engineering.

According to MCEC Director of Technical Operations Michael Walsh, one of the key requirements of the convention centre was that each of the meeting rooms and the 5,550+ seat plenary was to incorporate fully integrated state-of-the-art audio visual facilities. “It’s something we didn’t have at our previous facility,” he says, “and the result was that it would previously take a team of about nine technicians anywhere up to a full day to set up the A/V systems for each client’s conference.”

Managing I/O diversity
Key to the A/V design was the need for a signal switching solution that would streamline the connectivity between various video input and output devices. Rutledge Engineering National Operations Manager, Matthew Edgcumbe, comments: “We saw that there would be major difficulties with matching the different resolutions and aspect ratios of laptops brought in by MCEC clients.

“At that time, the Extron ISM 824 was the only product on the market that would enable us to design a solution to address those difficulties. As a result, we put forward that the ISM 824 be used as the central video routing device.”

In proposing the Extron ISM 824 MultiSwitcher, Rutledge met several key MCEC requirements in a single move. The first of those was versatility, with the switcher’s ability to detect automatically the video output specifications, such as resolution and scan rate. The automatic signal detection and internal scaling means that clients have a significantly more streamlined experience.

“It’s very much a plug-and-play model,” Mr. Walsh states. “When you consider we have over 50 rooms in this building, and it’s a very rare day indeed that most aren’t booked out, having a device that can take virtually any video input signal and automatically scale it to our projectors represents potential savings of hundreds of hours every day.”

Aside from those stated benefits of the ISM 824 video switching and scaling capabilities, other factors for considering the ISM 824 for the MCEC development were the potential power saving and additional reliability of having one product performing the tasks of multiple units.

Prior to the introduction of the ISM 824, A/V integrators were generally forced to use separate video matrix switchers which needed to be integrated with external video scalers, thereby introducing additional potential points of failure, increased rack space and greater power consumption.

In addition, with the ISM 824’s modularity, MCEC has a single box solution that can be upgraded to meet system need changes – a critical requirement for the organisation to keep pace with client demands and video technology evolution.

"What that demonstrated to us was that Extron and RGB Integration were fully committed to ensuring we had the best possible solution.”

Staying in control
A further advantage of the ISM 824 for the MCEC is the ability to control the switcher over an IP network. This is particularly important in light of the organisation’s focus on reducing the need for a dedicated technician to be in attendance at each event.

MCEC Technology Operations Manager Michael Walker says, “From our central control room, we can see if a client is having difficulty in getting their device, such as a camera or notebook computer to be matched with the switcher. Because of the web-based interface with the ISM 824, a control room operator is able to log in to the ISM and set the changes immediately without having to send a technician. It’s all about delivering on the speed and quality of service that clients demand in this market.”

High quality video throughout
In providing clients with the versatility to take full control of their presentations, MCEC ensures there is also the ability to provide them with a back-of-house technician to manually drive the presentations. In those cases, the Extron ISS 506 Seamless Switcher plays a major part in that capability, especially given that the cable run from the switcher to projector and other video output devices can be upwards of 120 metres.

“Because of the unit’s 1080p capabilities and high refresh rate, we’re able to run a single coax cable and push through the video – even HD-SDI – without any degradation at all,” Mr. Walker says. “The ISS 506 is the real workhorse when it comes to driving manual presentations. It’s a product that easily connects to virtually any input device and outputs the required video perfectly.”

On demand support
It’s worth noting that at the time the MCEC AV infrastructure was being implemented, the Extron ISM 824 MultiSwitcher was still relatively new to the market. That, by itself, was far from being an issue, but with the organisation’s demand for total versatility for its AV infrastructure, it was the ready buy-in from RGB Integration and Extron engineers that made all the difference.

Mr. Walker comments, “We wanted to have the ISM 824 do even more than it was initially capable of. We went to Rutledge and explained that we wanted the output scan rates to be customisable from the Web interface. The result was an almost immediate buy-in from Extron in Singapore, with engineers writing new versions of the firmware.”

Once the firmware had been developed and installed, the MCEC AV team set out to do what every good technical team does – try to break it. “Every time we discovered something new that we wanted to do with the product, we’d get right back to Extron and the engineers would, once again, write a new version of the firmware for us. Within only two months,” Mr. Walker continues, “we had requested and received three new firmware versions.”

From Mr. Walsh: “What that demonstrated to us was that Extron and RGB Integration were fully committed to ensuring we had the best possible solution. The response was fantastically fast and, most importantly, they understood right from the start what we were trying to achieve; and pulled out all stops to help us in that endeavour.”