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Government Video
October 2007
AV Systems
Florida Court Not Lost In Translation
by Joy Zaccaria
At the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court serving Orange County, FL, a centralized interpretation system has been activated since the beginning of this year to provide an efficient way for a translator to do his job while not necessarily on site, and with the key ingredients of privacy for the client and high quality sound.
John Byram, the courthouse chief audio/visual engineer, designed the system using gear from Biamp, Tieline, Extron Electronics, and Middle Atlantic Products along with some ingenious use of fiber optics from Meridian to bring everyone together no matter what language. "The issue we were trying to rectify was the cost to the court system in travel time for our interpreters," he explained. "We currently have four locations plus two auxiliary courthouses that require interpreting. Our interpreters spent a lot of time on the road traveling between locations."
Often, interpreters would often be stuck waiting for the particular individual that needed interpretation to appear before the court, which exacerbated the situation. The court was spending a lot on overtime and expenses, with some of the remote locations as far away as 32 miles.
Florida had experienced cutbacks and the state was looking for a way to trim the budget and still provide necessary services. "We were contacted by the head interpreter to develop a system that would mimic our centralized court reporting system and do the same thing with interpreting," said Byram. "Myself and a second engineer, Jamie Crum, designed a system. From the interpreter's desk at the main courthouse, it allows the ability to participate fully in a trial in any courtroom within the Ninth Judicial."
The second challenge was to develop a system whereby the interpreter could control the audio system in the courtroom from his desktop so that he could have private conversations with either the inmate or the inmate and his attorney. It was also necessary to facilitate simultaneous interpretations through the PA so that instructions from the judge could be heard simultaneously in whatever language.
John Byram and the five engineers he has on staff all have a background in broadcast engineering. They looked at a telephone analog-based codec system from Tieline, the Commander G3, which would allow communication over standard phone lines to a receiver system.
"The interpreter has a Commander G3 on his desk and a Sennheiser broadcast headset," explained Byram. "The unit allows a broadcast-quality, bi-directional audio feed to the other end, which is another Commander G3 but it's a rack-mounted version of it."
Because of the number of locations they service, Byram and his team implemented centralized systems rather than individual courtroom systems. For a new jail facility with three operational courtrooms and the juvenile center with six juvenile courtrooms, they used a centralized racking system to provide audio and video back and forth.
"We used broadcast codecs, rack mounted, and integrated them in to the courtroom audio systems which are Biamp AudiaFLEXes," said Byram. "We developed a simple three-button screen using Biamp's DaVinci software to control the FLEXes."
In order to come up with the three different scenerios for the interpreter, they created presets within the Biamp AudiaFLEXes that directed audio back and forth to interpreter headsets in the courtroom (using the Tieline codecs). The courthouse has more than 80 FLEXes in operation on its network.
The setup still didn't solve the problem of how to get the courtroom infrastructure in place for the headset feeds. "We decided since we had limited infrastructure in terms of conduits, it would be best to go with fiber optics," Byram said. They created a bi-directional fiber optic feed to each of the attorney tables within the courtroom, as well as the witness stand and the podium where the defendants and their attorneys often stand in court. "We're using Meridian Technologies' fiber optic units with a combination of Extron MLP 101s, which create line level audio feeds from mic level. You need to convert to line level to travel across the fiber."
The Meridian receivers were mounted underneath each attorney table and then connected to five-pin female XLRs on each of the tables, at the podium, and at the witness stand. Through the fiber optics network, the bi-directional audio feeds from the microphone and to the headset went back to the Biamp AudiaFLEX in the central rack room.
"The biggest advantage is the quality of the audio," Byram continued. "A major issue was that the interpreter had to sound like he was actually in the courtroom. Very good audio quality was a must, along with the capability to activate different presets within that mixer."
Byram has talked to the state level about creating regional interpretation centers, which would be call centers that cover the whole state. "The court systems that implement this concept would be capable of interpretation from anywhere in the state of Florida or the world," he offered.
For example, if Miami-Dade County would use the same system, the interpreters could participate in one another's trials for accommodating translations.
"As far as I know, we're the only court system in the world that has AV engineers on staff," said Byram. "We're called upon to solve budgetary issues through technology. We have quite a creative staff around here."
Byram and his staff currently have eight courtrooms in operation. They are currently planning on outfitting Florida's Osceola County Courthouse, part of the Ninth Judicial, which has 15 courtrooms. Byram guides about seven tours a month for those from outside court systems sent to learn from what the Ninth Judicial does.
The staff does all the installing and maintenance themselves, while Byram handles almost all of the design work in the court system. "We have substantial budget as far as equipment because we don't spend money on consultants, design engineers, and integrators. We're able to stretch our dollar further."
MORE INFO
Biamp biamp.com
Crestron Electronics crestron.com
Extron Electronics extron.com
Meridian Technologies meridian-tech.com
Middle Atlantic middleatlantic.com
Sennheiser sennheiserusa.com
Sony sony.com/government
Tieline tieline.com
SIDEBAR
Juvenile Issues
In the juvenile courtrooms of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court, there was a problem with proper viewing of displays. The solution: Courthouse chief audio/visual engineer John Byram took two plasmas and mounted them strategically in the center of the courtroom in a triangle or "pie" shape for viewing from both sides.
"We wall mounted two 42-inch plasmas in that pie formation," he explained. "Then underneath we placed a Sony BRC-300 camera for videoconferencing. We put the plasmas on retractable arms so you can turn them in a different direction if you don't like the pie." Five courtrooms were outfitted with the displays in April.
Another challenge in the juvenile courtrooms was the fact that the courtrooms themselves individually didn't have any rack space. Byram had a custom-built lectern installed that rotates 180 degrees with working surfaces for a laptop and a built-in visual presenter, along with typical video sources like a VCR/DVD player.
"Because there was no other rack space in there, we took the lower half of this lectern and put in a Middle Atlantic racking system that would allow the rack to be pulled forward and rotate for wiring purposes and then it pushes back into the podium and locks in to place," he explained.
Meridian fiber optic units were used again: the RGB-T-110 is the transmitter and RGB-R-110 is the receiver. "We've incorporated one of those units in the podium and we're using an Extron DVS 304A as a sub-switcher in the podium," said Byram.
The output of the small switcher is connected through one of the Meridian RGB-T-110 units to the centralized control room that continues on to a master Extron 32x32 crosspoint switcher. All courtroom microphones and other audio sources, including Crestron control systems, go to the center podium in the courtroom -- and from there it's interconnected to other audio systems.