New Zealands public television broadcaster and largest free-to-air broadcaster has replaced its studio production tape-based playout systems with a multichannel Omneon Spectrum media server system with 4 TB of shared storage. The Omneon installation allows TVNZ to replicate its earlier playout functionality while implementing file transfers of content from the facilitys edit suites.
For 20 years our operation relied on Sony Betacart machines playing out
analog Beta SP tapes into studios for live-to-air production and for ‘as
live’ record-to-tape production, but as we transitioned to a digital
operation, it was clearly time for a modern nonlinear solution, said Paul
Hedges, studio resources manager at TVNZ. Our new Omneon Spectrum servers ability to accept digital content improves quality, and the nonlinear workflow speeds up production time, minimizes error, and eliminates the issue of lost tapes.
The scope of the project at TVNZ included replacement of the original
playout functionality of the Betacarts, and the Auckland-based broadcaster took the opportunity to design and implement new ingest, production, and playout workflows enabled by the Omneon Spectrum server system.
The Omneon server system allows TVNZ staff to continue familiar playout
operations while working with digital content ingested via an Omneon
MediaController interface. The MediaController panel and software provide robust ingest functionality, giving users single-button control in driving a VTR and an input port on the Omneon server system to execute
frame-accurate dubs from VTR systems, crash records from tape or live
feeds, or scheduled records from satellite.
In the near future, digital content prepared by the production team will be transferred from Avid edit systems onto the Omneon server system for
playout. Two Hi Tech active CartBox controllers, which mimic the operation
of the familiar Betacart operators control panel, allow the studio team to cue and roll clips from the server, playing those clips out on specific
channels or assigning clips to programmed shots.
An exceptionally cost-effective and flexible media server designed for the
professional television industry, the Omneon Spectrum media server provides
a reliable and scalable infrastructure for broadcast playout and storage
applications. The server system is built on an open architecture that
allows it to support a broad variety of third-party applications for
control and transmission, as well as media management, archiving, and
collaborative production.