New studio technology - station
KNTV and Telemundo share resources
KNTV and Telemundo are two completely individual stations that share resources to transmit simultaneously from the same building. Both owned and operated by NBC, the stations relocated from smaller quarters to occupy a 100,000sq ft shared space in San Jose, CA. A corporate mandate to consolidate resulted in a single facility that houses all offices, technical facilities and mirror image studios, offering sweeping vistas of airy newsrooms.
Ascent Media served as the system integrator for the turnkey move and digital upgrade, including the satellite facilities that took approximately one year from design to launch. The firm worked with the NBC team and Gensler, an architectural firm, to design an infrastructure based upon SDI signal distribution, with two-channel non-embedded AES audio.
A central equipment room contains 140 racks of core gear, including routing switchers, the NBC hub racks, distribution equipment, MATV, networking equipment, patching, audio equipment, intercom, clock, and reference and studio gear. One Grass Valley Trinix switcher accomplishes routing for both stations.
Two separate, but nearly identical, production control rooms have a fully loaded 64-input Sony MVS-8000 production switcher system, Calrec audio consoles and Pinnacle EFX Dekos. KNTV’s monitor wall consists of 120 CRT monitors. Approximately 70 monitors are used for Telemundo’s channels. The Sony MVS-8000 production switchers drive Image Video UMDs monitor wall tallies.
A third control room, used mainly for linear editing by both stations, is equipped with a limited complement of legacy equipment, including an upgraded Sony SDI production switcher, to serve as a backup in the event either of the other control rooms suffers a catastrophic failure.
A common technical operations center (TOC) is located between the two control rooms. Satellite dishes are steered, and incoming and remote feeds are monitored and processed in the area. The TOC also acts as the video control center with a hub router control panel, format conversion capability and dubbing for the entire plant. Flexible shading for the six BVP-900 Sony studio cameras, two flash cams and two overhead Eagle Cam ENG cameras also is handled in the TOC. Robotic control workstations are situated in the center to control the Vinten robotic pedestals on the studios’ floors and at remote locations, such as the NBC hub in San Francisco, via remote telemetry.
Twelve Grass Valley NewsEdit nonlinear edit suites, capable of being used by either station for news and sports are attached to a Grass Valley Profile redundant (media area network) system for shared ingest, storage and play-to-air.
Design TeamTechnology at Work NBC: Avid: Paul Russell, technical consultant Pro Tools audio editing and sound design tools Ascent Media: Symphony SD mastering tool Mark Sackett, proj. mgr., lead eng. Adrenaline DNA hardware Steve Vitale, proj. mgr. Calrec audio consoles Graham Benteley, sr. video eng. Grass Valley Trinix router Jerry Stalder, sr. video eng. Sony: Tim Caldecott, sr. video eng. MVS-8000 production switchers Eddie Ly, sr. video eng. 7350A production switchers Chris Crummett, sr. video eng. BVP-900 studio cameras Andy Knieriem, install. sup., lead technician Pinnacle EFX Dekos Vinten robotic pedestals
HomeNext article
