NY1 Captures Conventions With Omneon
Uses video server for field production.
By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/26/2008 12:00:00 PM
NY1, Time Warner Cable’s 24/7 all-news channel in New York City, is using an Omneon Spectrum video server as the foundation of its coverage of the Democratic national convention in Denver, Colo. this week and for the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn. next week.
NY1 has created an end-to-end field production system that uses the Spectrum server as a single storage platform for ingest, editing and transfer of finished packages back to New York headquarters. Video shot in the DV25 SD 4:1:1 format using NY1's Panasonic P2 solid-state cameras is ingested to the Spectrum server as a file transfer. It is then immediately available to six Apple Final Cut Pro nonlinear editors using the ProRes 422 mezzanine compression format. The Spectrum allows the video to be “edited-in-place” on the server, without the Final Cut systems having to transfer or copy files. Completed stories saved on the server are formatted as .mov files and sent as baseband video via fiber to NY1's Manhattan facility for final transmission and Webcasting.
According to NY1 director of technical operations Michael Chan, the edit-in-place capability of the Omneon system should result in a 50% improvement in workflow efficiency compared to NY1's coverage of previous conventions.
“For us, the ability to share clips and to secure them -- with no tape to misplace -- makes a tremendous difference,” said Chan in a statement. “And as for setup, once the network with the FCP stations has been established, it's a matter of plugging it in, hooking up the wire, flipping a switch, and it's done.”
