Communications Corp. of America (CCA) uses the Volicon Observer digital video monitoring and recording system as a solution to repurpose aired news content and post it to CCA affiliates’ Web sites.
“With the Observer, we’ve been able to bring this critical function in-house with a broader range of options for repurposing TV footage to the Web,” said Chris Brantley, Internet development manager for KETK, CCA’s Tyler, Texas-based NBC affiliate. “The system is easy for our reporters to use and extremely easy to deploy; in fact, in very little time we were able to develop a custom solution that publishes Web content directly from the Observer’s video server.”
To date, Observer systems have been deployed at KETK as well as CCA stations WGMB in Baton Rouge, La; KVEO in Brownsville, Texas; and KTSM in El Paso, Texas. The Tyler and Baton Rouge studios produce and format content for broadcast by other CCA stations, as well as specific programs for the Web only.
Since each Observer automatically records every production feed for these programs, reporters and other nontechnical users can log onto the system from any desktop computer prior to a broadcast and quickly access specific video clips for encoding and posting to the station’s Web server. Viewers can access the clip on demand from the Web site after the broadcast.
“We run a tight operation with the minimum of reporters, producers, and camera operators, so everything has to be done on the fly as easily and quickly as possible,” said Brantley. “The Observer makes all produced content instantly accessible, with a much simpler and user-friendly workflow than our previous process. Also, the Observer is a much more cost-effective solution than any other alternative—and its ability to ‘play nice’ and work seamlessly with other custom solutions has been a huge benefit.”
“CCA’s novel use of the Observer to repurpose news segments for the Web demonstrates just how versatile the system can be,” said Julius Perl, vice president of marketing, Volicon. “While most of our broadcasting clients have more traditional uses for the Observer such as advertising verification or competitive analysis, CCA has shown that it has great value for any type of application that requires continuous video recording and instant access.”
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