Telepictures
Diversified Systems worked with Telepictures to do a facility upgrade at its Victory Studios location in Glendale, CA, for the "Extra" news show. The project combined a sophisticated HD upgrade with a migration to full file-based workflow. Included in the HD build out were the equipment room, production Control Room A, video control room, three ingest rooms and 15 Avid Media Composers.
The project consisted of an upgrade to HD involving a complete rebuild of the production control room as well a new IT infrastructure to support the workflow. An additional challenge included an aggressive timeline. The project started up in April, and "Extra" went to air in September. In a little more than five months, the entire system was designed, installed, commissioned and launched, all while keeping the existing SD system running and on-air.
Production Control Room A was completely rebuilt from the ground up to accommodate the new Grass Valley Kayenne HD production switcher. Three Sony HDC1400R HD cameras were provided for studio production. The signal infrastructure was designed and built around the Evertz EQX HD/SDI router using X-Link to drive the multiviewer displays in production control and ingest, combined with the new Evertz EMR AES/analog router. The EMR router provides for any discreet audio source to be embedded or de-embedded within the router itself, thus eliminating the need for any external embedders and de-embedders.
Telepictures standardized on all content being ingested into the servers in XDCAM 50Mb long GOP. Omneon servers provided a common platform for ingest and storage. The server system consists of 12 channels of Spectrum server space with two MediaStore storage arrays with 7TB of expandable storage.
But this was much more than a high-end HD upgrade. The post-production side of this project consisted of moving the client from a tape-based workflow to a workflow that was totally file based using Avid ISIS/Interplay. The post-production build out consisted of 15 Avid edit bays tied to the ISIS. The central storage unit of the ISIS stores all content that is edited in the bays, eliminating the need for local storage.
All clips are available to the editors and producers throughout the production cycle. As content is ingested into the Omneon MediaStores, it is simultaneously transferred into the ISIS via MOG SPEEDRAIL as a rewrapped MXF file. The SPEEDRAIL ingest tool rewraps the MXF OP1A file into OPAtom and creates a metadata file that references the ingested clip. The file is available immediately for the editors to start working on. This allows the editor to preview, log and edit while the recording is still happening.
The end result was an on-time switchover of both the HD production system and the new file-based workflow.
- Post & network production facilities
Submitted by Diversified SystemsDesign teamAvid: Todd Smelser, proj. mgr.
Diversified Systems: Duane Yoslov, sr. VP ops.; Mark Sackett, proj. mgr., sr. eng.; Alan Bourke, lead eng.; Todd Pekala, sr. eng.; Larsen Cottrell, install. super.
"Extra:" Meredith Fox, exec. in charge of prod.
Telepictures: Pat Brennan, dir. of eng.; Jason Schroeder, sr. broadcast eng.; John Ankwicz, exec. VP; DJ Birnbaum, dir. of prod.
Teleproductions/Universal: Chris Circosta, VP of prod.Technology at workAvid: ISIS/Interplay file-based workflow, Media Composer editing software
Evertz: EQX router, terminal equipment, X-Link
Grass Valley: Kayenne production switcher
Omneon: MediaStore server
Sony: HDC1400R cameras
© 2010 Penton Media, Inc.
