At the IBC show Avid introduced a package of equipment and services, properly installed and tested, that could have a television station news department HD news production in a matter of weeks. It’s called NewsVision, and it’s basically a collaborative production workflow in a few boxes.
Chris Gahagan, senior vice president of products and solutions, called it “the first time Avid is looking beyond separate products and seeing this as a long-term relationship with the customer. This a step forward [for Avid].”
The cost-effective solution offers a station a digital news production system — which Avid employees will install and train staff to use — that quickly allows it to edit HD files, make better productions and really compete for ratings in their market. For many stations, that’s not a reality now due to cost.
“We have a lot of experience in setting up IT facilities [mostly post-production houses], so we think we have a lot to offer in this space,” Gahagan said. “We even make accommodations for legacy equipment. We’re trying to make things better, not more complicated.”
The NewsVision package includes one year of “Avid Uptime Support” (the company will send someone onsite to help), five days of training and nine days of professional services.
It also features the following equipment: a four-channel Avid AirSpeed Multi Stream server (for ingest and playout in SD, HD or both), five licensed clients (in any combination of Media Composer and NewsCutter workstations) and 32TB of Avid ISIS 5000 shared storage with 20 client connections.
A station could still use its Final Cut Pro workstations and ENPS newsroom system, even though Avid does not make them. And they can add editing clients, bandwidth or storage capacity as needed.
