New studio technology - station
WMHT-TV moves its six productions without interruption
Located in New York, WMHT operates three TV stations, plus two radio stations and a radio reading service for the visually impaired and print disabled.
To meet the challenges of the new digital age, the station purchased a 42,000sq ft office building and added 10,500sq ft of studio space for its new production and broadcast center.
The facility hired systems integrator Communications Engineering, (CEI) to provide a turnkey design and integration solution. A major requirement was to move the station’s production and on-air operations 22mi with no disruptions.
CEI engineers coordinated every aspect of the buildout and transition including: new satellite downlink antennas, tower construction for television and radio STLs, a multichannel master control room, two television studios, a production control room, a 5.1 audio control room, three nonlinear edit systems with shared storage, an FM on-air studio, an FM production studio, audio editing, three audio live and record control rooms, tape and DVD duplication systems, and media-capable conference rooms.
A primary goal for all new systems was efficient operations with digital file-based content flow between editing, studio productions and on-air operations. The systems were designed with a digital infrastructure to accommodate the facility’s current and future production needs. All new equipment chosen was HD-compatible or has a clear upgrade path. New viewing monitors were either LCD or DLP. CRT-based monitors were only purchased for critical quality control monitoring.
The production control room can easily accommodate a wide range of live and live-to-server programs. It has four Clarity Bobcat 40in LCD monitors that are driven by Miranda Kaleido Alta multi-image display processors, allowing the display of 40 simultaneous input sources. The control room is capable of recording directly to Omneon video servers with networked file transfer direct to the on-air playback systems.
Audio control is capable of content creation and monitoring of Dolby 5.1 audio and has shared content storage with all systems.
The multichannel master control is capable of monitoring all sources and air return signals via two Clarity Margay 50in DLP displays. Miranda’s Kaleido-K2 processors allow configurable monitoring of HD and SD signals. The master control room is interfaced to the first operational PBS ACE system.
Design TeamTechnology at Work WMHT: Apple David Nicosia, mgr. eng. op. Final Cut Pro HD Derk van Rijsewijk, chief op. XSAN storage Anthony Tassarotti, IT sys. admin. CEI Euphonix Max Air digital audio mixing system CEI: Grass Valley: Brinton Miller, proj. mgr. Trinix routers Paul Sherriffs, design eng. Apex Routers Rob Goldheim, design eng Logitek Console router system Don Brassell, system config. and support MassTech MassStore archive and asset management system Amundsen Electronics: Omneon media servers David Amundsen Ross Synergy 3 production switcher Allen Tower: Sony BVM D Series monitors Patrick Allen
Previous articleNext article
