Thomson's Grass Valley to Build Tapeless HD News Production & Playout Center for CET 21/TV Nova
Czech Broadcaster Claims a European First in Seamless, File-Based HD News Production and Playout
The order will give TV Nova one of the most sophisticated news operations in Europe: tape-free from acquisition to playout; file-based asset management with desktop and craft editing; and supporting both SD archive content and new HD material for high definition broadcasting.
"News broadcasters all have the same need: to tell their stories accurately, attractively and above all quickly," said Patrick Montliaud, Senior Vice President of Integration and Transmission Solutions for the Grass Valley business within Thomson. "What we are building with TV Nova in Prague is a truly state of the art news production center which gives them real workflow benefits and allows them to move seamlessly into HD news broadcasting. For TV Nova, the workflow improvements mean stories will get to air faster while costs are controlled, and the audience gets news with all the clarity and style of HD."
TV Nova is highest rated, most successful commercial television station in the Czech Republic and in the whole of central Europe. Its newscasts are some of the most popular programs in its schedule. To migrate to HD news, TV Nova is investing in the Grass Valley Aurora News Production Suite™ of technologies. The Aurora Suite provides the ingest, browsing, logging, media management and, in conjunction with Front Porch Digital's DivArchive, a secure and flexible long-term archive. Ingest into the Aurora Suite is from file-based sources, FTP transfers from remote sites, and SD and HD video. Desktop editing is provided by Aurora workstations, and craft editing seats use Grass Valley EDIUS Broadcast systems.
At the heart of the news production system is a large Grass Valley K2 Media Server network, providing all the system storage. The K2 Media Server is an innovative solution to mass storage, using sophisticated clients attached to commodity storage over IT-standard networks, thereby providing high performance at low cost.
Aurora workstations, including online editors — and the EDIUS Broadcast craft editors — are effectively part of the server network, connected to the central storage by the same iSCSI over gigabit network that connects the ingest and playout clients. The read while write feature of the EDIUS Broadcast editor means that even when a story requires craft editing, the operator can start work within just a few seconds of starting the transfer process.
The Grass Valley Systems Group is responsible for the design, installation, integration, commissioning, and training of the system, including establishing seamless interfaces with TV Nova's existing Octopus newsroom computer system. Command and control is shared between Aurora and Octopus using the MOS protocol. The project also includes the installation of further Concerto routers and Jupiter control software.
"High definition broadcasting is the next phase of our development as a television station," said Ivo Ferkl, technical director of TV Nova. "We also needed to implement a modern, tapeless news production system, so we looked at suppliers who could provide a turnkey solution with proven technology for an HD newsroom. Grass Valley demonstrated real experience in this area and could show us tapeless HD newsroom systems on-air today. I am confident they will deliver a world-class solution for us, making TV Nova a technology leader in Europe."
The order for the newsroom system was placed in March 2007, with acceptance testing planned for the summer and an on-air date in the autumn of 2007.
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