9 November 2007
The Voice of America’s (VOA) main Internet site, VOANews.com, is currently ranked third in the world as both a Number One Source and Home Page Source in Newsknife’s ranking of the top 10 news sites for the year so far.
Newsknife, a project of the New Zealand software development organization Industry Standard Computing Ltd (ISC), rates news sites on relevance based on analysis of the main Google News site.
For the first ten months of 2007, Newsknife rated VOANews.com as the third-ranked Top Source for news on Google News. VOANews.com was also the third most-cited news source (Home Page Source) on the Google News home page during the same time period. Twenty-five percent of traffic to VOANews.com comes through Google Search and News.
In October, Newsknife ranked VOANews.com as third Top Source for the two top stories on the Google News home page. During this month, VOA’s coverage of the crisis in Burma helped drive traffic to VOANews.com to an all-time high of more than 5 million visits. This is a 16 percent increase over our previous record of 4.7 million visits set in September.
9 November 2007
BBC Arabic has announced that it will host a series of interactive workshops called The World as You See It for aspiring broadcasters across the Arab world. The workshops are announced as the BBC prepares to launch its integrated Arabic-language multi-media offer, a first for the region, incorporating radio, TV and online.
Aimed at developing talented future broadcasters in the Arab world, The World as You See It workshops will be held at universities in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Egypt and Morocco (read on for full details).
Experienced BBC journalists will share their knowledge and experience with media students, encouraging them to complete short video packages of stories they believe will be of wide interest. The best work will be featured on the BBC.
Hosam El Sokkari, Head of BBC Arabic, said, The BBC wants to support and develop talent in the region, and these workshops will be a first step in building relationships with the multi-media broadcasters of the future. I have no doubt that audiences to BBC Arabic in the years ahead will be enjoying some of the talent that emerges from The World as You See It. The initiative will also give us the opportunity to see a different young perspective on todays world.
The tutorials with BBC journalists will encourage individuals or teams to create video footage using on-campus facilities and guidance from their tutors. The BBC will provide additional support via online Q&As and downloadable tutorials. All submissions will be evaluated by BBC journalists. All The World as You See It submissions will be in Arabic and a maximum of three minutes long. Full credit will be given to students and their university.
Students at participating universities register for the tutorials online at bbcarabic.com.
The locations and universities are as follows:
UAE
United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain; Sharjah University, Sharjah
KSA
King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah
Palestine
Birzeit University, West Bank Palestine
Egypt
American University in Cairo, Cairo; Al Ahram Canadian University, Cairo; Cairo University, Cairo
Morocco
Mohammed V University, Rabat; Université Hassan II, Mohammedia, Casablanca
9 November 2007
NorCom Information Technology AG has gained a further customer for its NCPower Pro newsroom, planning and production system. An innovative new TV broadcaster based in Kempten, OUTPRO will be covering a wide range of outdoor activities when it goes live at the end of the year. It will be primarily offering high-quality reports, service-oriented contributions and exciting documentation for outdoor sports fans and Alpine lovers.
OUTPRO TV was looking for a media production solution containing all workflow components such as ingesting, research, scheduling, playing out and archiving while also being capable of processing video, audio, graphics and text files.
NorCom offers in NCPower Pro a long-term future-proof solution incorporating open standards meeting all of OUTPROs requirements and additionally permitting it to react flexibly to changes. All processes including research, copy-writing and editing can be performed. As well as this, the status of all contributions from the initial idea to scripts as well as broadcast scheduling and archiving can be monitored at all times. All tasks can be assigned electronically to internal and external, stationary and mobile staff and monitored efficiently. The NorCom solution is being installed on a total of 20 desks at OUTPRO. ‘We have set ourselves the goal of offering an innovative and cost-efficient solution by providing a suitable combination of editorial, technical and creative support,’ explains Viggo Nordbakk, CEO and founder of NorCom Information Technology AG.
OUTPRO is a special-interest broadcaster under the same management as Deutsches Anleger Fernsehen (DAF). After successfully installing NCPower Pro at the financial IPTV broadcaster DAF, NorCom has now additionally been awarded a contract for OUTPRO.
‘We are very pleased to have received the contract for OUTPRO as this confirms the strong trust being placed in NorComs NCPower Pro solution for this interesting project,’ adds Viggo Nordbakk. The decision-makers at OUTPRO were particularly taken with the open software architecture and platform independence. ‘The complete end-to-end integration of the Apple editing solution in NCPower Pro was one of the many strong arguments in favor of this product. Most of the systems which we looked at offered only individual standardized solutions. However, the integrated NorCom system contains everything that we were looking for,’
says Peter Rampp, Managing Director of OUTPRO TV GmbH.
26 October 2007
The AIB is at India’s Satellite and Cable exhibition at the World Trade Centre in Mumbai. Exhibiting at stand D-7, the AIB is showcasing its members and the activities of the organisation to the expected 12,000 visitors to this annual event.
AIB CEO Simon Spanswick is in Mumbai and will be hosting one of the organisation’s renowned ‘Diners Pensant’ on Friday 26 October. More than 24 local media executives and AIB members will come together for an evening of off-the-record discussion and inspiring debate.
“The Indian media market is of tremendous importance and many AIB membes are keen to support and engage with it,” comments Simon Spanswick. “The AIB helps facilitate contacts and our diners pensant, which we hold in different cities around the world, help to ensure that dialogue and conversations start between the international and the local media.”
The SCaT India show opens daily between 1030 and 1830 on Friday 26 and Saturday 27 October.
26 October 2007
Teletrax, the global broadcast intelligence company, has signed a contract with Agence France-Presse (AFP), a leading global news agency, to monitor broadcast usage of AFP’s video news content by its network and station clients. The announcement was made during the News Xchange conference in Berlin.
Earlier this year, AFP announced a major strategic development of its television division and is now delivering a broader array of video features and news packages daily to subscribers worldwide. AFP will use the Teletrax comprehensive suite of video monitoring and reporting services to track broadcast usage of this news content, enabling the organisation to obtain near real-time proof of what material is being used, aiding in the planning of more effective editorial, marketing and sales initiatives.
“It is critical for us to know precisely how our clients are using our news feeds, and what portion of the segments air,” said Erik Monjalous, commercial and marketing director of AFP. “The intelligence gathered will result in greater efficiency and optimum return-on-investment.”
“We are extremely pleased to be working with such a distinguished news agency and to be recognized as a vital part of its global broadcast analysis,” said Andy Nobbs, president of Teletrax. “AFP’s reliance on our broadcast intelligence demonstrates the importance of our service and reinforces the need for news providers, and all content owners, to know exactly how their video is used around the globe.”
26 October 2007
New K2 Software Option Update Now Available To Enable Immediate and Easy Handling of HD Content Within File-Based Workflows
Thomson has developed a faster-than-real time direct file import option with Pathfire to increase the high-definition (HD) content management capability of the Grass Valley K2 Media Server platform from Thomson. The new K2 Capture Service software application enables the fast and easy handling of HD programs as digital files and eliminates the need for any third-party intermediate solutions that can slow the file-handling process considerablyin many cases to much slower-than-real timesaving organizations significant time and money.
Available immediately, the K2 Capture Service option is the result of a close collaboration between Thomson and Pathfire engineers and requires a simple software upgrade to existing K2 systems. In addition, the Capture Service option will also support SD and HD material transfer from the DG FastChannel Spotbox to K2. No additional hardware is needed.
The new K2 Capture Service feature was recently field-tested by Tribune Broadcasting with nationally syndicated content. During the week of September 6th, Tribune went to air at their WGN, KTLA, WXIN, WPIX, WGNO, KHCW, KDAF, KTXL, WPHL WDCW, KRCW, WSFL, and KCPQ locations from a series of remotely located K2 servers, successfully using the new Capture Service feature to distribute the program as a series of HD files faster than the program has ever been distributed before.
Our recent trial of the new K2 Capture Service option proved its value, as it enabled us to ingest and stitch HD Pathfire content rapidly and cost-effectively for play back and delivery to our station group, said Ira Goldstone Chief Technology Officer at Tribune. This type of fast and highly automatic file conversion is sorely needed and critical to our success going forward.
With this new Capture Service capability, Grass Valley K2 users now have a highly efficient file transfer method that allows HD content to be uploaded to a K2 server timeline nearly instantaneously (5-10X faster than real time), without the need for external transcoding or file conversion. By comparison, existing file-transcoding techniques require the need for a separate server for HD transcoding and current speeds are on-average 2X slower than real time (making it nearly 10X slower than the new Capture Service option). With significant amounts of content needing to be uploaded every day, it could easily take operations departments longer than a single eight hour shift to upload and QC less than three hours of material.
Pathfire has always strived to develop solutions that save customers time and money while streamlining their workflows, said Michael Connell, Broadcast Product Manager at Pathfire. This new Capture Service interface to the Grass Valley K2 server platform does exactly that and more. Were pleased to be working with Thomson to add new capability to the K2 Media Server platform.
The Grass Valley K2 Media Server platform from Thomson has been embraced by a wide variety of broadcasters and content providers, with more than 1,400 K2 systems now in operation around the world. All of these systems can be easily upgraded with the new Capture Service automatic file conversion option.
Pricing and Availability
The Capture Service option is available immediately from Thomson, and is priced at $5,000.
