The City of West Jordan is a rapidly growing municipality in Salt Lake County, UT. The City of West Jordan selected GENCOMM to create a hybrid environment that enabled in-person and remote attendees to seamlessly meet across various platforms with the Visionary PacketAV Duet Series.
Named after the nearby Jordan River, the City of West Jordan occupies the southwest section of the Salt Lake Valley. West Jordan is a mountainous city with more than 100,000 residents across approximately 30 square miles. Situated within West Jordan City Hall, the Council Chambers serves as a meeting facility for elected City Council members and other relevant city committees. All noticed meetings within the Council Chambers are open to the local community and the general public.
“With ongoing restrictions around COVID-19, elected officials and community members were not able to attend City Council meetings in-person,” said Alan Anderson, MPA, IOM, council office director for the City of West Jordan. “Our elected officials are doing the people’s work and the Council body wanted to provide our community with access to these meetings. We wanted our community to have an opportunity for their voices to be heard without restricting them to an in-person meeting.”
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Based in Draper, UT, GENCOMM has more than six decades of experience designing and integrating advanced audio and visual communications systems. “The City of West Jordan wanted a future-proof system that was fully expandable,” said Shawn Sandberg, systems engineer for GENCOMM. “It was also important that we integrated a reliable system that was easy to use regardless of who was using the system. They required an uncomplicated user interface with highly automated background processing that they could confidently count on every time.”
GENCOMM designed and installed a powerful AV-networked system based on Visionary’s PacketAV Duet Series. “We selected Visionary’s PacketAV Matrix Series for the video distribution throughout Council Chambers,” noted Sandberg. “We have been using Visionary’s technology for over three years now. We’re always impressed with the reliability, low latency, and overall value of Visionary’s products. The PacketAV Matrix Series was the backbone of this installation. We integrated QSC’s Q-SYS Core to route the audio and serve as the main control processor. The PacketAV Matrix Series is the networked video between everything.”
Visionary’s PacketAV Matrix Series redefines traditional switch matrix systems to create a flexible, scalable, cinema-quality solution for IP networks. The PacketAV endpoints offer ultra-low latency with unlimited distribution capabilities. Utilizing existing network resources, the encoders and decoders can be rapidly deployed to enable cost-effective distribution of multichannel Dante/AES67 audio and video over IP.
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“We integrated numerous encoders and decoders and the new MV4 IP Multiviewer. Council, staff and the lectern have a decoder that enables them to see what’s going on with a personal monitor,” noted Sandberg. “We integrated four monitors in the gallery with two on the front wall and the remaining two on the rear wall. We integrated Visionary to manage the streaming feed, which allows our remote attendees to access the meetings via Zoom, YouTube or a phone. We’ve enabled everyone, whether in-person or remote, to observe what’s happening in the room.
“We integrated Visionary’s MV4 IP Multiviewer to enable presenters to share images, documents or other content side-by-side within the video feed. It can be distributed through Zoom or YouTube to recreate the in-person experience for remote attendees.”
The MV4 IP Multiviewer connects to a network and combines up to four AV-over-IP streams from Visionary’s PacketAV Matrix Series 4K encoders. Each input can be scaled and positioned using default presets—such as quad view, side-by-side, full screen, picture-in-picture and others—or via a custom, user-defined layout configuration.
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The result was successful at all levels. The new system greatly increased collaboration and connection for the City of West Jordan. “GENCOMM has created an efficient, reliable hybrid environment for the City of West Jordan,” said Anderson. “It enables council members, residents, staff and elected officials to choose whether they participate in-person or remotely. Most importantly, if attendees want to speak or share content from an offsite location, they can do so. It enables participants to join via Zoom and it has become a regular part of our day-to-day meetings. Our goal was to embrace the new normal. We have certainly accomplished that.”
