NRK Goes Live With 13-Site OmniBus OPUS System

Norwegian public-services broadcaster Norsk Rikskringkasting, (NRK) has successfully gone to air with an OmniBus OPUS media asset management system.

The MAM system is part of its the NRK Programme Bank project to provide asset management capabilities to its 13 regional broadcasting centres and Oslo-based archive. The system provides access and direct control over programmes in production, raw assets and archive material to 3,000 users across NRK's 13 regional domains and Oslo production headquarters.

The NRK's children's entertainment department was the first to go on air with Programme Bank, and it will be followed by other production departments by the end of the year.

This implementation of OPUS provides streamlined integration of the many new and existing technologies that make up the NRK system, as well as metadata handling with OPUS Event Logging and Transfer Manager. Operators can add custom-indexed metadata to provide powerful searching in OPUS PinPoint using synonym, phonetic and proximity search criteria, while OPUS Transfer Manager automates the transfer of hi-res and low-res browse versions of the material, together with all keyframes and metadata, in a single transfer operation.

NRK editors can browse available material in the OPUS system and make shot selections of key events before transferring them into Final Cut Pro for editing and eventual transfer to the playout servers or archive system.

OPUS implements a number of automated workflows in the Programme Bank system, including automatic transfer of material to NRK's subtitling department and the subsequent viewing of low-res browse versions with subtitles.

"NRK set out to create a world-beating production and asset management system in Programme Bank", said Hroar Pettersen, head of technology at NRK. "The OPUS technology provides a crucial element in our architecture, and with the OPUS SmartClient we have the potential for almost limitless flexibility in access to our assets".