Hayward, Calif. — May 14, 2008 — PANORAMAdtv, the video products division of Wohler Technologies Inc., today announced that Canal Overseas, a division of leading French broadcast group Canal+, is using the HDCC-200A HD/SD-SDI closed-captioning bridge to enable efficient handling and storage of World System Teletext (WST) subtitle data within an HD/SD playout infrastructure. By encoding subtitles within an HD ingest workflow and subsequently decoding those subtitles back at the time of playout, this new card supports a single cost-effective video ingest and playout workflow regardless of the availability of subtitles. It also adds to the bottom line by eliminating the need for duplication of SD and HD video storage.
"The teletext data solution provided by Wohler perfectly met our project's functional specifications and constraints," said Gino Ma-Paw Youn, technical manager at Canal Overseas. "We were searching for an innovative solution for managing WST subtitles with HD material, and the Wohler closed-captioning bridge helped us optimize this process within our new HD broadcast facilities. The Wohler system is easy to implement and use, and we consider it to be the most efficient, cost-saving solution with respect to our needs."
Canal Overseas uses 11 HDCC-200A units to embed WST data in the HD-SDI signal (VANC) during ingest. Six programs are simultaneously recorded from external HD feeds with SD and the VBI-related signal, from external SD feeds upconverted during the ingest process, or from HD tape programs with EBU subtitle files and subsequently stored on an HD broadcast server.
On playout, Canal Overseas uses 16 HDCC-200A bridges to extract the HD-VANC data and re-encode it as conventional VBI teletext subtitling into a parallel SD-SDI signal downconverted from HD. The SD-VBI subtitles are then either displayed for local monitoring (preview channels), converted into DVB teletext subtitles on the downconverted SD transmitted channels, or converted into DVB subtitling on HD-transmitted channels.
This solution, installed at Canal Overseas HD facilities outside Paris, simplifies playout of various programs on 14 different channels transmitted by satellite to West Africa, Polynesia, the Caribbean, Caledonia, Reunion, and Mauritius. The cost-saving system allows Canal Overseas to store content only in HD, rather than both SD and HD, while maintaining playout in both formats. A spare kit, including two additional Wohler units, provides backup for the broadcaster's subtitling operations.
"Our HDCC-200A product is designed to provide flexible encoding and decoding of closed-caption data for media companies working in any broadcast standard," said Carl J. Dempsey, Wohler president and CEO. "The HDCC-200A is the product of extensive work with Europa Australia's Elio Deluca, one of the world's preeminent experts in the field of closed-captioning. The installation at Canal Overseas demonstrates the efficiencies the resulting signal processing technology can bring to European broadcasters working in both SD and HD."
Compliant with all broadcast standards, Wohler's compact HDCC-200A closed-caption encoder/decoder bridge accepts HD/SD-SDI, WST, or live data and automatically formats teletext data for insertion into the HD-VANC space, after which it may be recorded onto storage, distributed over a facility's digital video network, or decoded back to WST, WSS, and GPI data onto the SD-SDI output stream.
The Wohler HDCC-200A was sold to Canal Overseas through U.K.-based SysMedia. More information about the HDCC-200A and other products from PANORAMAdtv is available at www.wohler.com.
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About Canal Overseas
Established in 1959, the Havas Dom Corporation opened to the international market in 1996 and became known as Havas Overseas. After joining the Vivendi Group in 1998, the company took the name of Media Overseas. Today, Canal Overseas is an affiliate of the group Canal+. For the past 15 years, Canal Overseas has specialized in the development of broadcasting French programming to French-speaking countries overseas. More information about Canal Overseas is available at www.canal-overseas.com.
About Wohler Technologies Inc. and PANORAMAdtv
Since its inception in 1987, Wohler Technologies' video products division, PANORAMAdtv, continues to be a world leader in providing in-rack audio and video monitoring solutions for the broadcast, motion picture, and professional audio/visual markets. The San Francisco Bay Area-based company offers a comprehensive range of products that simplify analog and digital source monitoring in facilities of all sizes and complexity. More information is available at www.wohler.com.
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