Atlanta, GA (June 25, 2008) – Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana transitioned its Emmy-winning cable television channel to a file-based workflow on-air this week. The Southeastern Channel produces over 600 hours of original programming each year, and airs over 100 hours of original programming weekly as part of its 24/7 schedule. The state-of-the-art production facility provides training and hands-on experience for television students at the university, many of whom go on to commercial assignments after graduation, as well as providing local news, education, sports, and fine arts programming to the community at large.
For the transition to digital production from their existing tape-based workflow, the Southeastern Channel installed two Apella™ LCS media servers with two bidirectional channels each for ingest and playout, a VT Database server, 1.5TB of network attached storage, and a VT CG Server with Chyron Lyric for character generation. The installation includes a VT News Edit Plug-In for Final Cut Pro®, VT Scheduler™ for automated script-based ingest and playout, and a VT HotFolder™ for seamless ingest of QuickTime files. VT Proxy Editor™ and VT Director™ are shipped standard on the Apella LCS media servers.
According to Rick Settoon, General Manager, “The Video Technics solution gives us greater flexibility in the scheduling and playback process, enabling us to have fewer re-runs. The change will increase our efficiency in logistics and traffic as we move toward a tapeless environment, and we can already see an improvement in the quality of our footage on the Apella. I’m impressed with the ease and speed of operation with which we can move content from the editing workstation to on-air playback.
The new graphics will also improve branding for the channel and enable us to provide timely announcements, such as emergency weather bulletins, for our viewing audience. One reason we chose Video Technics is because we get to deal directly with the manufacturer rather than going through a third party – and we have already seen the benefits of that in the fast support, training, and personal service we have received to date.”
Operations Manager Stephen Zaffuto remarks, “Video Technics was the only vendor we looked at which had integrated all on-air functions into its own system – all the others had to bring in third-party software, hardware, or both, which has created complications for us in the past. We liked that it is scalable both in terms of future storage capacity and in the ability to expand our workflow to HD production. Previously, we spent a lot of time managing our storage capacity by manually deleting and moving content. Now with the new storage capacity, combined with VT’s import and export tools, we can keep more content accessible nearline, and easily bring it online whenever we need it.”
The Southeastern Channel uses Final Cut Pro for craft editing and content generation, exports the content via the VT HotFolder and then automates 24/7 playout on the Apella LCS with VT Scheduler.
About Video Technics, Inc.
Video Technics, Inc., a pioneer in revolutionary systems development, supplies the global broadcast industry with innovative, feature-rich workflow solutions built around the company’s IT-based media servers. Video Technics’ Apella™ and NewsFlow™ products streamline the entire production process, and feature inherent proxy editing, embedded ingest/playout tools, and digital asset management. For more information visit: www.videotechnics.com.
About Southeastern Channel
The Southeastern Channel is the educational cable television channel for Southeastern Louisiana University. On-the-air 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Southeastern Channel broadcasts over Charter Cable Channel 18, reaching into 92,000 homes with a potential audience of over 240,000 viewers throughout the North Shore area. This area includes Tangipahoa, St. Tammany, Livingston, and St. Helena Parishes. The Southeastern Channel airs on Charter Cable Channel 17 in Washington Parish. For more information visit: www2.selu.edu/thesoutheasternchannel/.
