AVL Fundamentals
AVL
Overview
Audio, Visual, and Lighting - this term is used to specify either the department in charge of these elements, or the elements themselves. "AVL department," or "AVL gear." You may also hear "Production," or "Media." Simply put, this is the department and/or the people that make the theatrical elements of a worship or event service possible including the cameras, lights, and sound and all of the equipment that makes this possible. Often we will create an AVL VLAN that we may call the "Controls," ''Media',' or "AVL Controls" Network to isolate their traffic from other functions. This is important because a lot of equipment used by AVL use the Multicast protocol to interact with each other and this data traffic can be disruptive to normal operations. Many times, the network equipment used for these functions uses physically separate equipment that is managed by teams outside of Enable.
tags: #AVL #BasicTerms
Dante
Overview
Dante is a program and protocol made by Audinate for AVL purposes. It allows you to plug in audio and/or video devices into switches to provide transmission of sound and video between all of these devices. The benefits are similar to VOIP in that you reduce the need for even more wires. The potential setback is that it most often runs on Multicast and if plugged in to the wrong Network can bog down traffic when not properly configured and maintained, even to the point of making the entire network unusable.
tags: #AVL #networking
Digital Asset Management
Overview
DAM - Digital Asset Management - a program (and sometimes accompanying hardware) that can index and catalogue all of your media files for AVL or marketing purposes, etc.
tags: #AVL #BasicTerms
Live Stream
Overview
The Live Stream is the way AVL teams can put a real time output of the sound and video happening during an event onto the Internet. Typically there is a device used to "encode" the camera and sound feeds and "push" them to a service like YouTube, Facebook, the church website, etc. Resi is Enable's top recommendation for Live Streaming services.
tags: #AVL #BasicTerms #networking
Multicast
Overview
Networks use several different methods to send information to devices. Unicast is a two way communication between just two devices. Broadcast is one device talking to every other device on the same network. Typically this is a "short term" interaction looking for something like DHCP. Multicast is is often a ''long term" conversation in which lots of devices are constantly sharing information with each other. We often refer to this as "chatty," and it can be very disruptive to normal operations if not configured properly. Dante and QSys are protocols used by AVL to provide sound and/or video over the network that use multicast. NDI is a video protocol that uses multicast.
tags: #AVL #BasicTerms #networking
NDI
Overview
Network Device Interface - this is a program used by AVL to send video streams over the network. One common scenario is the use of TVs in lobbies, overflow rooms, or nursery areas so that people who are not in the auditorium/worship center/sanctuary can watch the service in real time. SDI is a similar product that connects directly via analog cables.
tags: #AVL #networking
QSys
Overview
This is a similar protocol and program to Dante with the same risks and rewards.
tags: #AVL #networking