Reality TV Show Relies on Comprehensive Solution for Multi-Camera Production
Toronto, canada, APRIL 2, 2014 —Pronology, a developer of cutting-edge tapeless workflow solutions, is pleased to announce that once again Insight Productions has chosen its software platform to manage the enormous number of assets that the hit reality TV show, Big Brother Canada will generate during the current production of Season 2. This marks the second collaboration, as the production also relied on Pronology for the reality show’s debut season. Insight Productions produces Big Brother Canada in partnership with Shaw Media and Endemol International.
A production as demanding as Big BrotherCanada requires a fully integrated system that can acquire, manage, approve, log, distribute, transcode and archive all media assets with 100 percent uptime, as there is no opportunity available to recover content in the event of system failure. The Pronology system is the ideal solution for this scenario, as its user-friendly interface and format-agnostic infrastructure offer a complete all-in-one solution that is specifically designed with no single points of failure.
“Working on a high-profile reality show like Big Brother Canada is a huge undertaking as the production is recording multiple angles of the house guests 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 75 straight days,” says Pronology Co-Founder Jonathan Aroesty. “Pronology makes it possible to efficiently capture, edit, organize and archive the more than 12,000 hours of footage that will accumulate throughout the course of the production. No other single system is capable of managing all of this media, and all of the metadata as elegantly as Pronology does.”
To view the multi-camera feeds in real time, Insight Productions utilizes Pronology’s unique ProStream proxy encoders to create a timecode-accurate “stream” of the most significant recordings. This secure live stream is available to all authorized personnel, enabling them to view the live recordings at the stage, and create timecode accurate notes, regardless of their location. Additionally, Pronology allows multiple producers to perform complex searches on the material using a standard Web browser. This is particularly important on a show of this magnitude, which will easily generate hundreds of thousands of separate metadata entries over the course of 10 weeks.
Furthermore, since all of the high and edit resolution recordings are created as Avid-compliant MXF OP Atom, they are immediately available to the edit systems, with no additional importing or transcoding required. In addition to managing all file creation and migration activities, The system also coordinates the movement of crucial metadata to editors embedded in Pronology generated AAF files. When editors drag these files to an Avid bin, the system instantly adds a master clip to the bin along with associated “locators”, allowing the editors to navigate accurately to designated points of interest.
As it takes weeks to unfold, Big Brother Canada also needs a solution to archive the large amount of content produced. The Pronology Archive module, which completely manages the archiving process, was set to automatically archive every time the ingest operator stopped and then started a new group of recordings. This season alone, the system will write to more than 200 LTO-5 tapes.
“Integrating Pronology’s system into our infrastructure ensured that Big Brother Canada was once again a successful production,” says FNTECH’s Technical Producer for Insight Productions Curt Fuglewicz. “The fact that the Pronology system has the capability to control recordings, log multiple streaming feeds, integrate with our Avids, and archive all content seamlessly proves that it is truly one of a kind. No other single system can handle the many different tasks that the Pronology system can. It is the most comprehensive, collaborative system on the market and a production company’s dream.”
About Pronology
A joint venture between Playback Innovations and WheresMyMedia, Pronology’s Digital Asset Management solution simplifies the task of content creation and distribution for today’s tapeless workflows. Designed from the ground up by actual users, the tools have been built first and foremost for ease-of-use. Pronology allows a limitless number of users to simultaneously and remotely acquire, manage, approve, log, distribute, transcode and archive content. Its user-friendly interface and format-agnostic infrastructure offer a complete all-in-one solution, while also providing the flexibility necessary to accommodate a wide range of possible workflows. For more information, please contact us at 212-660-1600 / info@pronology.com or visit us online at
