9 November 2007
The Voice of America’s Urdu Service has expanded its radio news broadcasts to 12.5 hours daily from five hours in response to the crisis in Pakistan. “The Pakistani government has shut down all independent media inside Pakistan,” said VOA Director Danforth Austin. “We find ourselves, along with the BBC, among the only international broadcasters currently heard inside of Pakistan.”
VOA’s Urdu Service is now broadcasting an all-news format on radio in response to the Pakistani government’s crackdown. VOA’s two television affiliates-GEO TV News and Aaj TV-are off the air inside of Pakistan. However, VOA continues to reach the audience via radio and the Internet.
Today, VOA Urdu added an additional radio broadcast from 11:30 a.m. to 12 noon Pakistan time to supplement its 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Pakistan time live news and current affairs programming.
Some highlights of coverage include live interviews with Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, two former Prime Ministers of Pakistan, who were guests on the VOA Urdu program Roundtable Discussion, as the news blackout was being imposed in Pakistan. VOA Urdu also interviewed many Pakistani opposition figures, including Iftekhar Gilani, spokesperson of Benazir Bhutto’s party, and religious leaders such as Qazi Hussain Ahmad, along with man-on-the-street reaction in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, and Islamabad.
In addition to VOA Urdu, VOA’s six-hour Deewa Radio, live broadcasts in Pashto to the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, also switched to an all-news format to cover the crisis. Deewa has also provided extensive coverage inlcuding the U.S. and international reaction and has interviewed a large number of political, religious and tribal leader inside Paksitan who are under house arrest.
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.
26 October 2007
Channel 4 Television’s Media Access Project, a new installation centred on the Pharos Mediator media management system, is now live. The Media Access Project empowers Channel 4 to migrate from videotape to fully file-based operation. A landmark development in Channel 4’s 25 year history (the network went to air in November 1982), the contract also represents a major achievement for Pharos on its 10th anniversary.
“Our objective was to create and maintain a tapeless store of all our programmes so that we could make them available in any format the market required, including the recently-launched 4oD television and film on demand service,” explains Kevin Burrows, Chief Technology Officer at Channel 4. “We have used Pharos Pilot as our technical control system for several years. A Pharos MPEG1 video browse system was installed in 2003, replacing a VHS library. The browse system worked very well and Mediator was a natural extension, effectively adding all the facilities the channel needed for file-based ingest and playout in a single architecture. We chose MXF 50i as the generic file format so that we can maintain optimal quality. If the need arises to send content elsewhere, recipients will be able to use MXF 50i relatively easily. Mediator was initially deployed for SD and will soon be handling HD content. It controls the ingest server, content store, archive server, Sony Petasite tape robotics and transfer management. The system provides enough storage to archive up to 18 months of MXF 50i programmes.”
“The Media Access Project at Channel 4 incorporates a Petasite data tape system which, at the time of delivery, was the largest installed for a European Broadcaster,” adds Spencer Rodd, Technical Director of Pharos. “Incoming programmes and interstitials are ingested at full 50 Mbit/s I-frame MPEG2 transmission resolution to a 36 terabyte Isilon server storage cluster. An MPEG1 browse copy is made simultaneously. Content is held on an Isilon disk cluster before being automatically transcoded to 15 Mbit/s Long GOP MPEG2 for playout via the existing Pinnacle server system. Using Mediator, Channel 4 is able to perform the entire broadcast operation from its online digital library store.”
Pharos Mediator is a fully scalable broadcast management system which can be configured to co-ordinate single or multiple workflows in any broadcast environment. It allows all ingested content to be catalogued, researched, loaned and shared between users, providing true collaborative working. Content can also be outgested to any selected format, such as complete programmes on DVD for internal distribution or music compilations for post-production. Multiple client libraries can be configured to provide security and privacy for clients without the expense and complexity of separate hardware for every client.
Pharos is focused on developing software architecture to deliver better broadcast process management for service providers in television broadcast, radio, IPTV and telecommunications. For over 10 years Pharos has continually developed its unique Mediator, Playtime and Pilot desktop broadcast management solutions to offer a next-generation platform to better manage the flow of media through broadcast facilities.
26 October 2007
Vizrt’s graphics software now powers a paperless newspaper review segment during Sky Italia’s 24-hour news channel, Sky TG24. The anchor of ‘I Giornale di Oggi’ browses the morning’s press articles with a touch screen application, which, according to users and viewers alike, is a marked improvement on watching the anchor read through a stack of newspapers.
The Special Projects team at TG24 came up with the idea of digitizing the newspaper review while retaining the ‘hands on’ approach of the existing segment. The anchor selects thumbnails of newspaper pages, dragging them to an ‘active’ work area on a high-definition touchscreen. Headlines, photographs, and finely-printed words and phrases are then centred, scaled and highlighted. Several external cameras capture the screen’s HD quality, while the content of the active area is fed concurrently in standard definition directly to the switcher.
Pat McGuinness , Manager of Special Projects at Sky Italia’s news and weather channels, said, We chose Vizrts Viz|Artist 3.1 animation platform for our project because of its power and flexibility. Viz|Artist impresses me as an application-builder for which your imagination is the only real limit. In addition, the project was cost-effective. We use Vizrt for our 24-hour weather channel and leveraged the existing hardware for the newspaper segment. Vizrt’s flexible, multi-use architecture was a key reason for selecting Viz|Weather and Viz|Trio systems when we launched Sky Meteo24 a couple of years ago.”
The graphics team from Sky, together with system specialists from Vizrt, created an application based solely on Viz|Artist 3.1. The logic of the application, including all of the tools such as ‘zoom’, ‘pan’, ‘pen’ and ‘highlighter’, is programmed with the internal scripting language of Viz|Artist. The only exception is the ‘Space Manager,’ which automatically optimizes the size and position of pages in the application’s ‘active’ work area. This complex logic was written as a plug-in in c++.
McGuinness said the paper-free newspaper review is just the first application for Sky Italia’s new ‘touch’ system: “Our next task is to integrate video clips and then content such as finance, sport, weather and traffic.”
26 October 2007
Alisher Saipov, a journalist who reported extensively for the Voice of America (VOA), was killed outside his office earlier today in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. Mr. Saipov reported for VOAs Uzbek language service on a variety of sensitive political issues critical to the audience throughout Central Asia.
We call for a full and complete investigation of the circumstances surrounding this tragedy, said James K. Glassman, Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal government agency that oversees the Voice of America.
Preliminary information is that he was shot dead at close range some time after 6:00 p.m. local time in Osh.
A professional journalist has paid the ultimate price by doing his job, said Voice of America Director Danforth Austin. We are all deeply saddened by Alishers brutal death but firmly resolved to continue reporting events in Kyrgyzstan and throughout Central Asia.
VOA colleagues remember Saipov as a fearless journalist, with impeccable skills and deep knowledge of the region, who was always willing to go to the scene to report events. His reporting focused on the volatile Ferghana Valley that straddles Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and is a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism.
Mr. Saipov, age 26, was a native of Osh. He leaves behind his wife and three-month-old daughter.
