Town Hall style meetings at multiple locations with SX80 A/V Integration

[Michael Marzol]

We have to build out solution to facilitate town hall style meetings across 5 different sites over our MPLS network. I was thinking the SX80 as a potential solution. The requirement is that all 5 sites need to be able to see and hear each other when a speaker is passed a microphone to speak or answer questions from any one of the other sites. There will be multiple size rooms ranging from an auditorium, where we will connect professional style hand held HD cameras and mics to the SX80, all the way down to large open rooms housing up to 25 people where we might consider using the Cisco cameras. At the auditorium site, our media production business unit would have a video switcher connected to the SX80who would switch between the different locations. Is this even possible with the SX80? I'm very familiar with Cisco's MX and SX line of products and the way they function in ordinary conferences and I'm having wrapping my head around how this would work with a single video switcher, if it would even work. For example, when a conference attendee speaks, the Telepresence endpoint will automatically switch video to that speakers video feed....how would that work when we want to use an external switcher connected to the auditorium SX80 to do all the switching between sites.

Any help or insight is greatly appreciated!

-Mike Marzol

[Enrico Conedera · Accepted solution]

When you are in a video conference that has multiple participating sites, there is a video bridge in use.  There are a number of options for which bridging technology to use, including using the MultiSite option in the SX80 codec itself, which is the least expensive.  But the decision about which bridging technology to use depends on what the customer may already have, in addition to other factors.  It is best to engage a Cisco Collaboration Systems Engineer for that discussion.

The bridge is the entity that switches between the locations.  In other words, if you are sitting in the auditorium, it is not the video switcher which determines which remote site you are seeing on your screen - instead it is the bridge itself.  If someone in Site A starts to speak, then Site A will be seen on everybody's screen. 

The SX80 is the right Cisco device to use for an audio visual integration, such as the auditorium.  Again, you should consult a Cisco CSE in order to get the needed guidance.