FHNW (Switzerland) redefines its streaming processes with Bridge Live from AJA

Der FHNW Academy of Art and Design at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland has implemented AJA‘s Bridge Live multichannel live video contribution, backhauling, streaming and delivery system.

The educational institution is using the solution to transport high-quality, low-latency video from 3G or 12G-SDI equipment via the SRT protocol over the public Internet. FHNW is moving both uncompressed 8K and HDR assets, as well as broadcast-quality content in 4K and multichannel HD.

Spread across six campus facilities, the network is fiber-connected and managed from a main control room, where most of the equipment resides. In addition to supporting the transmission and archiving of high-quality multimedia projects developed on creative workstations, the network also provides the foundation for all of the university’s video production and distribution.

An infrastructure around Bridge Live

For most projects, the academy team uses active inputs on their Riedel multimedia network device with multiple incoming sources. They then select the input they want to transport through Bridge Live. Suresh Surenthiran, head of media and broadcast infrastructure at FHNW, elaborates, “All of our buildings are fully cabled, so we can easily route signals to Bridge Live for streaming to our website or through Vimeo and SRT Streaming via 3Q. It’s our bridge between broadcasting and webcasting.” “It also allows us to manage four parallel video streams in different languages,” he notes.

Der FHNW manager also notes that they are using AJA’s U-Tap to bolster their remote workflows: “U-Tap touches most of our webcasts and video conferences that require bringing in remote feeds. Using it, we can take the SDI signal from whichever conferencing platform an instructor or video participant is using (i.e. Zoom, Webex, Facetime, Skype, etc.) and bring the live feed into our video mixer, where we can then manage it and transport it for delivery to the CDN using Bridge Live. Bridge Live provides a dashboard to connect our team to the conference participants.”