46 TVBEurope The Workflow
Philip Stevens explores recent major studio and infrastructure improvements undertaken by the Polish State broadcaster TVP
FROM ITS impressive headquarters in Warsaw, TVP (Polish Television) broadcasts two general entertainment channels, one 24-hour news outlet, 16 regional channels and seven speciality channels, including a high definition channel with pure HD content. The broadcaster’s stated mission is to give its viewers the opportunity to contact with Polish culture, tradition, language and, most importantly, national identity. About one third of the public broadcaster’s income originates in the receiver licence fee, while the remainder comes from commercials and sponsorship. “Over the past several years,
a variety of upgrade projects have been undertaken by TVP, especially in connection with the transition to high definition,” states Wieslaw Lodzikowski, head of Technology at TVP. Local systems integrator Studiotech was involved with many of these projects, including the HD upgrade of the facility’s Studio 3 and the installation of a new ingest area. “The part of the upgrade
project that involved the studio had to be completed within a four week period,” reports Tomasz Frankowski, CTO at Studiotech. “Studio 3, which has been built
www.tvbeurope.com November 2013
“Isilon provides TVP with… a very easy way of administrating the whole MAM package”
Big green studio for TVP Poland
newsroom and video production.” All the regions are connected to each other using Dalet NetXchange. This enables the easy exchange of video content and stories between any sites, using the broadcaster’s WAN. All the produced material is also exported to the Warsaw Information Agency. NetXchange also ensures exchanges with TVP sports. “In each site, Dalet News Pack
The upgraded gallery serving Studio 3 includes a Snell Kahuna Flare vision mixer
for virtual reality productions, is mainly used for political talk shows along with documentaries and commentaries. TVP already operated a Vizrt virtual studio, so we carried out an upgrade of hardware to HD. Although this was a standard VR package, the configuration and calibration was tailored to suit the needs of the broadcaster. We also increased the number of licences for the cameras in the studio.” Those cameras are four Sony
HXC-100 models, all manually operated. Each camera has a dedicated Ultimatte 11 chroma keyer to provide increased flexibility for directors and camera operators. When it came to vision
mixers, three manufacturers were considered, before a Snell Kahuna Flare was purchased. According to Frankowski the reasons for selecting that equipment included the adoption of Format Fusion, which allows the integration of SD material — such as live feeds in SD or from the archives — into HD productions without the need for upconversion, an easy GUI and a competitive price. A second stage of the upgrade
Tomasz Frankowski, CTO at Studiotech
programme has seen the production gallery equipped with a Soundcraft Vi4 audio console. Other equipment involved in the upgrade has included the re-installation of an existing intercom system from Telex and a Harris Inscriber G5 for graphics production. A number of products from Evertz have also been
is integrated with Harris Inscriber graphics system,” says Cospen. “Other integrations include Harmonic Omneon for playout video servers, Apple Final Cut Pro 7 for advanced editing — using Dalet Xtend for the integration, Autocue teleprompters and Rhozet transcoders for file-based ingest.” When it comes to storage, Cospen reveals that in the main regions, 400 hours in MPEG-2 IMX 50Mbps with four PCM stereo 1.5Mbps at 48KHz 16-bit WAV is provided. In smaller regions, 200 hours of storage is available. Video is stored both in 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios, with a proxy resolution being generated for browsing and editing. He continues, “TVP needed a
The upgrading of Studio 3 into an high definition virtual facility formed a major part of the recent upgrade at TVP
commissioned. These include a routing system for video, tally, video and audio processors, glue for amplifiers, embedders, de-embedders, multiviewers for video walls and, most importantly, a management system that includes names and tally information. “Again, we opted for flexibility, reliability and the quality of processing and displaying,” states Frankowski.
Integrating ingest “The work surrounding the ingest area was a major task,” states Frankowski “Previously, TVP had employed a single server for ingest, but the upgrade required a massive number of feeds. The first stage called for a capacity of 400TB.” He says that five suppliers were considered before EVS was selected to provide the ingest system. “We felt that EVS offered a good understanding of TVP’s requirements, along with reliability and effective integration to the broadcaster’s MAM system.” That media asset management element is based on Video Media Engine from VizRT. The ingest system also includes Isilon from EMC as central storage. “Isilon
provides TVP with flexibility in management, scalability in terms of size and bandwidth, Ethernet connection, and a very easy way of administrating the whole MAM package.”
Although quality control is not included in the system at present, plans call for this to be added in the near future. “The system that was commissioned has allowed TVP to increase the speed of work, and to introduce a full file-based workflow.”
News needs Another company that has been heavily involved in providing equipment to TVP has been Dalet. All 15 regional operations have been equipped with Dalet News Pack for end-to-end, integrated news production. This package provides the broadcasters with a complete set of tools from NRCS, video ingest, production to playout. “Eleven regions are equipped with 24 workstations and four smaller regions with 15 workstations,” explains Raoul Cospen, director of Marketing and Business Development at Dalet. “Each workstation has access to all functions of the
very cost-effective system and this met the criteria. The integrated aspect of Dalet News Pack gives journalists, with a unified interface, all the tools they need on a daily basis. It simplifies drastically the training of the system. In the meantime, there is no specific integration that needed to be developed, while the hardware is fully IT-based, lowering total cost of ownership. Because TVP needed a very cost-effective system, Dalet News Pack was an ideal solution.” Frankowski believes that the
recent upgrades have greatly enhanced the output of the TVP programming and the general workflow of the operation. “With Studio 3 they are offered completely new possibilities through the use of the biggest green studio for television production in Poland. With the Central Ingest they have a faster, file-based — which means higher quality — throughput, plus a ready-to-implement digital archive. These projects have been a big success, and have been completed on time.”
www.dalet.com www.emc.com www.evertz.com www.evs.com www.harrisbroadcast.com www.pro.sony.com www.snellgroup.com www.soundcraft.com www.studiotech.com.pl www.telex.com
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