City of San Antonio Implements Ross Legislative Control System

The City of San Antonio has implemented the Ross Legislative Control System to manage the broadcast of their city council meetings. The system leverages the Ross Carbonite Switcher and XPression real-time graphics controlled by the intuitive touch screen Legislative Control System.

“Previously we had four to six operators in our control room, each with a dedicated task to ensure that our meetings were covered to the citizens of San Antonio. This meant long hours and a crowded control room,” says Cliff Brannon, AV Production Supervisor, City of San Antonio. “With the Ross Legislative Solution we are able to broadcast professional quality meetings with one or two operators allowing us to have shorter shifts reducing operator fatigue and being able to do other aspects of our jobs instead of having the whole team in the control room.”

San Antonio has two chambers that are controlled by the Ross Legislative Control System. In each chamber there are multiple Sony pan, tilt, zoom (PTZ) cameras. At the touch of the screen, three cameras focus on a representative. Each camera has three programmable shots available allowing the operator to quickly select the best angle to frame the speaker.

Once the shot is lined up, which can be adjusted using the Ross Converged joystick if needed, they simply press the TAKE button. This pulls out the current graphic, cuts the source on the switcher to the new camera, and pulls in the name of the speaker. A touch screen side panel was created using Ross DashBoard to display additional graphical information, such as the item number or selecting a guest speaker’s information from a drop down list.

While one operator is controlling the Ross Solution, the second operator is adjusting audio levels and preparing presentations for the speakers. Operational training for the system was completed in a matter of minutes and the first meeting was broadcast within days of the system being set up.

“We are pleased to add San Antonio the growing number of cities that are leveraging the Ross Legislative Solution,” says Greg Quirk, Legislative Product Manager for Ross Video. “Broadcasting these meetings is vitally important for open governments to ensure that their constituents have the opportunity to know what is happening in their community.”

The Ross Legislative Solution is being used at all levels of government, from city to state to international. The scalable solution is flexible for the end user to make modifications as their assembly changes. Whether that is managing unassigned seating, setting up to broadcast a different meeting in a matter of minutes, or changing the graphical information that is displayed.