live news & sport


time, but it is only in the last few years that it has entered the broadcast lexicon. There is still some confusion over precisely what an SOA is, so allow me to offer my definition, based on three key characteristics: • First, it is organised around outcomes not technology. We should be defining the tools by the tasks we need to complete, not limiting our workflows by what our technological infrastructure will allow us to do. • Second, an SOA bridges a number of distinct systems. This allows it to deliver best-of-breed performance, which again should be something we continue to demand, while at the same time delivering to the user the functionality required to complete the task at hand: nothing more, nothing less. • Third, as its name suggests, it is based on the concept of ‘services’. These can be delivered by compact and efficient code, connecting and communicating through simple, open interfaces, rather than today’s approach of software systems which incorporate all the tools any user anywhere at any time might conceivably need. Television news, therefore, is an


ideal SOA environment. There area large number of tasks - ingest, metadata creation and management, editing, archiving, graphics, running order planning, prompting - which are required to be performed by different people with different skill sets and different priorities. What unites them is that virtually all are time critical and mission critical, so giving each member of the team just the tools they need for the particular task in hand greatly improves productivity and reliability. Virtually every television newsroom


is already structured around an editorial computer system such as ENPS, iNews, Octopus, and many others. These are mature products which serve television news well, and the particular product chosen by each broadcaster will have been selected and fine tuned to precisely match the operational requirements. What we can do with the new


generation of SOA infrastructures, such as the Stratus media workflow application framework from Grass Valley, is to add production capabilities to the newsroom computer as and when they are needed. When they are no longer needed they go away, keeping the software load on the individual computer light, agile, and, most importantly, stable.


So a journalist might call up a


simple video editor to work alongside the script, crafting the story in one single pass. Once completed, a graphics pop-up might appear allowing names and places to be cut and pasted into standard caption templates. The edit can be published directly or handed on to a craft editor working on Edius, Apple, or a variety of other editor candidates, because they too can sit on the SOA, swapping EDLs and content as needed. Most importantly, as soon as the


functionality is no longer required, the software plug-ins go away again. So the next person to sit at that computer might be a planner, who can call up the satellite schedule, for example. In a well-crafted SOA, users call up


the tools they need as lightweight pieces of XML over MOS, two well known, proven, and hugely reliable open standards. Any competent third- party can create their own functional tools using the same, simple web services-based interface.


Connectors


The key to this is communication between all of the applications. Rather than create multiple point-to-point interfaces, which multiply exponentially with increasing sophistication, an SOA has each process talk to a common bus in a common language. If an individual piece of equipment changes its communications protocol, or if it is replaced by a similar tool from a different vendor, all that you need to do to keep the SOA working is change that single simple interface. A good analogy can be seen in


laptop computers. Each laptop is provided with its own power supply, which delivers the appropriate voltage through the appropriate connector, which changes from country to country. We do not care about the details of this - all we know is that this simple connector interface provides us with an essential service: charging the battery. In an SOA, the connector is the


communications interface between each device and the common data bus. The user wants the tools for the task at hand, confident that the latest content and data will be available. When the task is complete, the user is equally confident that the updated information and content will be delivered to the right places, which may be in a number of different physical devices from different


My vision for the next generation of newsroom systems is that all the production, post production, and repurposing technology will sit on the existing newsroom editorial network as a series of highly targeted plug-ins, interfaced with simple adaptors. As a solution, it has much to commend it.


feature


vendors. The connectors ensure this flow. Here is the great bonus: like the


service connections themselves, interfacing connectors are simple pieces of XML code. That makes them easy to write, update, and maintain, and they are undemanding in processing power and bandwidth, so they will not become limiting factors in performance. My vision for the next generation of


newsroom systems is that all the production, post production, and repurposing technology will sit on the existing newsroom editorial network as a series of highly targeted plug-ins, interfaced with simple adaptors. As a solution, it has much to commend it. First, it preserves the broadcaster’s


capital investment in the newsroom system, and its human investment too, as all the journalists and production staff are comfortable with its operation. It adds infinite flexibility because any functionality you need to add, now or in the future, can become a plug-in through connectors which the broadcaster’s own engineering team can create. Hot desking or remote access are automatically empowered: provided you can connect to the network, you can call up any tools that are needed. But this is not a vision for the


future. Stratus, the Grass Valley SOA solution, is available now and is already being used by broadcasters across the globe to create powerful and innovative workflows. It is the powerful, reliable, and cost-effective way to implement the flexible newsroom.


www.ibeweb.com l november/december 2011 l ibe l 47


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