TV Technology - January 7, 2009 - (Page 33)

BUYERS GUIDE USER REPORT 360 Systems Provides Solid Platform by Darren Doerschel Technical Operations Supervisor Santa Monica CityTV SANTA MONICA, CALIF. S anta Monica CityTV covers city council meetings, school district meetings, planning commission meetings, and rent control board meetings. It’s also an Emmy-winning channel known for its programming quality and innovation. We program four Time Warner channels, reaching approximately 24,000 households. We recently added a 360 Systems Maxx 2400 server to augment the 360 Systems Image Server 2000 we purchased two and a half years ago. That original server has been extremely reliable—there have never been any failures—and it could easily accept files from our editing system. Our goal was to increase our capacity with two record channels and to be able to ingest two separate files simultaneously, so we went with the Maxx 2400. The two servers juggle record and playback duties for our flagship station CityTV16 and replay channel, CityTV20. We record public meetings, call-in shows, and other shows on both servers. Programs are shot on Sony XDCAM and edited on Final Cut Pro. The edited files are stored on another server to give us high bandwidth access to all XDCAM video. When the files are scheduled for play-out, they are transferred via Gigabit Ethernet to the 360 System servers, which also handle archive and playback storage. The servers accept native files, so we don’t have to compress or transcode, saving time and money. FUNCTIONAL PACKAGE Darren Doerschel Two operators can use the Maxx 2400 at the same time, and the GUI makes learning easy for our production assistants. I also like the ability to edit in the server. Many times we’re not sure when the public meetings will end, so we just start recording at the scheduled time and trim later. We can control playback through our Tightrope automation system and BroadcastPix switcher. A systems engineer, three editors and two production supervisors work from our master control and five edit bays, four of which are equipped with NLE systems. One small insert studio is used for green screen video, program wraparounds and hosted segments. We also rent production facilities all over Los Angeles. Content is 70 percent original, with the remaining 30 percent coming from other government access channels in California and around the country. We also stream video to a Web server, so viewers can watch meetings online. We’re managing the transition to HD by shooting in 16:9 digital format so the aspect ratio will match HD specs, and we can then upscale the video through conversion. Most equipment can be converted over to the new format, and we may be looking at acquiring an HD server as well. Darren Doerschel is technical operations supervisor at Santa Monica CityTV. The opinions expressed are those of the author alone. He may be contacted at darren.doerschel@smgov.net. For additional information, contact 360 Systems at 818-991-0360 or visit www.360systems.com. USER REPORT Ross SoftMetal Serves Up Weather by Steve Fahey Manager, Production Control The Weather Channel ATLANTA he Weather Channel is a 24/7 weather and news operation. We are staffed and structured like a news organization, and on a daily basis, we produce 18 live hours of programming. There are four hours of taped programming and two hours are replay hours. The Weather Channel is viewed all across the United States, reaching more than 60 million homes each month. Like many in our industry, we have been concerned about limited high-definition space for program carriage on cable systems and felt it was time to upgrade our facility and all equipment to HD. We use the Ross SoftMetal Video Server (SMS) as a graphics server to add production value to our programming. The clips that play out of the SMS are animated keyable transitions, keyable bugs, monitor loops, and T Steve Fahey similar production elements. The SMS is very flexible for our production needs. We chose to allocate one pair of channels for video and keying that are controlled via VDCP (video disk control protocol) from our Snell & Wilcox Kahuna production switcher. The other two server channels are manually controlled by our graphics operator. We’ve all been very happy with SoftMetal’s performance on a day to ROSS, PAGE 41 www.tvtechnology.com • TV Technology • January 7, 2009 33 http://www.360systems.com http://www.forecast-consoles.com http://www.forecast-consoles.com http://www.tvtechnology.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TV Technology - January 7, 2009

TV Technology - January 7, 2009 NFL Enters a New Dimension Mobile DTV Looms Large in 2009 Contents A ‘Flexible Framework’ Doing More With Less ‘X’tra-Streamlined Finish Line in Sight for BAS Transition Ahead of the Relocation Curve DTV Transition Survival Guide ENG and the Lines of Communication DTV Transition Survival Guide Who Do We Really Work For? Obama to Expand Internet Access The Wizard Takes a Holiday The Solid-State Disk Revival To Light the Ear... or Not Hulu Gets It Right—the First Time User Reports—Video Servers & Recording/Controllers Reference Guide Product Showcase Classifieds Marketplace TV Tech Business

TV Technology - January 7, 2009

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