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“Integration” is a key word in today’s TV
newsrooms. Most people think of integration
as referring to the connection of various pieces
of equipment, and of course that is a major issue
in many places, as we shall see. But it’s rather
more than that. The most important integration
taking place in most newsrooms is that of the
procedures and functions which make up the
news production process.
Those with long memories will recall the days
when a journalist was barely allowed to touch
a videotape, let alone actually edit moving
pictures. Now, many of the restrictive practices
and procedural barriers which so badly got in
the way of the process have disappeared. Job
descriptions are merging, multi-skilling is
becoming a way of life and the old barriers
which separated job functions and media types
are being broken down. It could and should be
possible for journalists and production staff to
virtually ignore the limitations of technology
and concentrate on what they really care about:
telling stories, and getting those stories on the
air first and best.
This functional integration process is driven by
several factors, including the new business
imperatives being forced on today’s
broadcasters which demand greater output,
enhanced speed-to-air and the adoption of a
variety of new delivery channels such as
continuous news and web portals.
And yet in many newsrooms there is a lingering
reminder of the old days, in that the various
systems which are used to carry out different
parts of the process do not fit together very well.
It can take half a dozen separate systems, from
a variety of manufacturers, to make up a
newsroom these days: the building blocks might
include a newsroom computer system; a high
resolution server and ‘craft’ editing system; low
resolution browse server and ‘cuts only’ desktop
editing; ingest and media management;
automation; graphics; and prompting. There
might also be archiving and possibly web
publishing and other functions on their own
systems.
Why so many separate technologies? Because
each of the functions is needed, but the various
systems available to carry them out have been
developed independently to address only their
own part of the problem. Most of themwere not
originally designed to fit into today’s streamlined
workflows. This has given rise to some very
significant integration problems, all the more so
because the standards necessary to connect
systems together have been slow to develop.
There can be no doubt that MOS, the Media
Object Server protocol originally developed by
the AP to link their ENPS newsroom to other
manufacturers’ systems, is a major step forward.
It is the only standard which is universally
recognized, and as such is a benefit to all. But
not even its most fervent proponents would
claim that MOS does all that it could or should,
and indeed developing, ratifying and
implementing a standard which can deliver not
just integration but the kind of interoperability
that today’s fast-moving newsrooms want and
need is a significant task indeed.
While many admirable integration projects have
been built round MOS, there is another way of
approaching the integration of
functions
as
opposed to
systems
in the newsroom, and it is
represented by one of the oldest-established
companies in the industry, Autocue, and its
QSeries suite of newsroom and automation
products. There the strategy is not so much one
of integration, but of centralisation.
No-one needs reminding that Autocue started
life (in 1955) as a prompting company, and it
remains to this day the worldwide market leader
in prompting. However, Autocue has developed
into a significant newsroom and automation
company as well…one which has built up a
loyal customer-base of news broadcasters both
in the UK and around the world.
Not unnaturally, Autocue started its
development process with teleprompting. Years
ago the company produced the first fully digital
prompter, which of course required scripts to
be entered or imported into the system rather
than typed or printed onto paper. But the
engineers at Autocue couldn’t find a suitable
scriptwriting word-processing package…so
they wrote one themselves which provided all
of the special capabilities that no-one else had.
The system grew from there, as customer
demand called for more and more functionality.
Running order management, script and show
timing, news agency interfaces, script archiving
and a host of other features were added, all based
on the same central client-server network with
a single master database, and all still built
around the central operation of any newsroom:
the preparation, management and live on-air
presentation of news stories.
A major step forward came with the
development of whatAutocue refers to as a DCI
or Device Control Interface. This allows two-
way communication between the newsroom
system which is the journalists’ working
environment and a wide selection of remote
production devices such as Video Servers,
VTRs, Character Generators, Stillstores,
Mixers, Switchers, and so on.
The DCI is a gateway between the TCP/IP
network which supports the newsroom
computer system’s servers and workstations,
and the technical environment of the control
room and studio. It works in close partnership
with Autocue’s own Media Library, which is a
core component of the centralised system. This
tracks every media object on every connected
system, including high and low resolution
versions of video clips wherever they may be
stored.
This tight partnership between newsroom
system, Media Library and DCI is the key to
QSeries’s very comprehensive automation,
media management and machine-control
capabilities, which include:
•
Allowing any authorised workstation to
take temporary manual control of a device,
for example to record an incoming feed or
to review an edited package
•
Scheduling ingest of feeds
•
Recording live material
•
Digitizing camera tapes
•
Moving, copying or transcoding material
from server to server
•
Driving on-air events, sequenced by the
master running order, and triggered by a
QSeries workstation
•
Playing out a scheduled transmission list
on one or several channels, in conventional
or “wheel” format
•
Seamlessly combining a pre-planned
automated playout schedule with live
inserts, i.e. news bulletins or individual
items
•
Archiving material from server to tape,
DVD or HSM systems (and retrieving it
later)
Why is all this so different frommore distributed
systems? It’s really all about centralised control.
With a single master database at its heart (which
is of course housed on clustered, redundant
hardware to protect against equipment failure)
Integration in the TV newsroom means marching to a different drummer, suggests
Tom Wragg,
Director of Autocue
ews
Wragg:
business imperatives demand
greater output, enhanced speed to air
l
