LAS VEGAS—There are many different types of equipment used for news production, everything from cameras to satellite dishes to media management systems. One of the interesting evolutions in the industry is how gear that was developed for ENG applications in particular, is now used for a variety of media creation and management tasks.

This is due at least in part to Moore’s Law, the rule that doubles the complexity of electronic components every two years or so. In the television industry, this means that devices get additional features and capabilities regularly—as the price of the gear either stays the same or slowly reduces. Equipment that could only be afforded by well-paid news organizations is now available to a much bigger range of content creators, at very friendly prices.

This has led to an explosion of products and capabilities, and it gets used for programming from reality shows to sports to films. ENG is not just for ENG anymore.

Here is a brief look at what is new for news production teams at the 2022 NAB Show at press time: 

Ingest & Editing
Bitcentral will spotlight its Precis news production system that streamlines ingest and editing. Precis is scalable to grow with an organization, and works with a range of editing software, ENG cameras and newsroom computer systems.

Grass Valley will feature its GV STRATUS production and content management system. Grass Valley’s AMPP Connected STRATUS solution now allows users to have access to content across multiple sites and teams by federating the content in the cloud. AMPP also gives journalists access to a full-featured web-based editor that can be accessed from anywhere on any computer and works with proxies for fast response.

Dalet will highlight its new Pyramid newsroom system, a cloud-agnostic solution that supports multiple cloud providers, and can run in virtualized environments that support remote productions.

“Dalet Pyramid enables news storytellers to incorporate diverse content from any source into the virtual newsroom, including remote camera/ENG contributions and backpack integration,” said Raoul Cospen, director of business development (EMEA and APAC) for Dalet.

IP-Based Production
Aviwest will showcase its new PRO460 4K UHD 5G/4G transmitter, designed for remote and at-home video production. The PRO460 supports 4K UHD and multicamera workflows for up to four high-resolution, fully frame-synced feeds.

“The Aviwest PRO460 addresses many of the challenges that broadcasters face in ENG and for live-event remote production,” said Ronan Poullaouec, chief technology officer and co-founder of Aviwest.

Dejero will feature its new EnGo 265 mobile transmitter with built-in GateWay mode. The two-in-one mobile transmitter and internet gateway delivers reliable wireless connectivity with the new GateWay mode offering wireless broadband internet connectivity in the field. An improved bandwidth blending algorithm enhances all latency setting and delivers glass-to-glass latency as low as 0.5 seconds over bonded cellular connections, the company said.

LiveU will show new and existing products in its large booth, which features a live stage for fireside chats, panels and workflow demonstrations with other cloud production providers including Blackbird, Grass Valley, Grabyo, highlighting the ongoing removal of traditional and restrictive infrastructure. The company will highlight its contribution and distribution solutions that include the multicamera LU800 5G production-level field unit. LiveU will also demo its Air Control solution to get remote guests and live feeds into the system and on the air.

Also new is Cloud Connect, which simplifies live productions, reduces costs, and delivers a faster time-to-air by leveraging LiveU’s automated cloud workflows. 

TVU Networks will showcase a suite of cloud-based applications for remote production and new 5G-enabled transmitters and routers. Most of TVU’s technology is 5G-enabled and has been so for years. This includes the TVU One mobile transmitter, TVU Rack Router, and TVU MLink transmitter. 

TVU’s cloud-native pay-as-you-go TVU Channel playout platform, introduced in late October, supports hundreds of thousands of viewers. Designed for one of the world’s largest broadcasters, TVU Channel enables a user to schedule live and VOD programming from a web browser.

Education Sessions
Off from the exhibit floor, several conferences will consider current and future trends and advances in newsgathering.

On Sunday afternoon, April 24, in the CMIP Presentation Theater, Josh Keller from the Video Call Center will answer the question, “Are IP-Remotes Causing Headaches?” During the session, he’ll discuss ways to reduce latency, dropouts and improve the overall quality of IP remote delivery, an issue that has been top of mind for news stations that have had to increase their reliance on IP remotes for the past two years.

At “Advanced News Acquisition Workflows” on Tuesday morning, April 26, Ernie Ensign, senior director of news technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group, will look at how the use of metadata can help improve news workflows from the newsroom computer system to cameras in the field. 

Tuesday afternoon, during “Breaking News Barriers: 175 Years of Innovation in Factual Reporting,” representatives from the Associated Press will discuss its evolution from the days of communicating via horseback to today’s digital media technologies.

News teams will also want to check out “ATSC 3.0 as a Use Case for Public Safety Communications: Development Milestones,” on Sunday morning in the West Hall. This session will focus on how the use of advanced emergency alerting systems in NextGen TV will help broadcasters improve their reporting and public safety commitments. 

With plenty of competition and constant product improvement, news production systems at NAB Show 2022 promise new features, excellent performance and the agility to get your content where it needs to go—when it needs to get there.

For more information on the 2022 NAB Show, visit nabshow.com/2022

Content Sponsored by Grass Valley

The ubiquity of mobile devices and the rise of social media have had a big impact on consumer viewing habits—and we are seeing this trickle down into news consumption. More and more viewers are going to social media and the web to find their news content as opposed to television.

This trend is backed up by a study by the Pew Research Center in Q3 2017, which found that 43 percent of Americans said they often get their news via websites, apps and social media, compared to 50 percent who often get news via television (down from 57 percent in 2016).

When Linear Meets Social

As the transition beyond linear takes place, the pressure is on news broadcasters to respond. In addition to addressing their existing market, they must also meet the needs of younger viewers who prefer to access content via a range of platforms from on-demand to social media. Broadcasters are faced with the problem that they cannot choose between linear and digital output—they have to deliver both. Added to this, in breaking news situations, live (linear) news is still the preferred medium for the majority of viewers—regardless of demographic—so linear is far from dead (the same is true with sports).

The big challenge is that the majority of news broadcasters have workflows that were not designed for social media; they were designed for presenting the news in a linear fashion. Additionally, many of these workflows cannot be easily adapted to the changing news consumption habits of viewers.

It is not enough for broadcasters to deliver content via a range of platforms—just pushing stories to reach those platforms' members; they also need to manage that content accordingly. Usually, this means adding complexity to their workflows, with additional silos for different applications. There are newsrooms where you can see anywhere from 15 to 30 different applications in use to manage output to online and social platforms.

The added complexity these additional applications bring is more than a little counterintuitive to the fast pace of a newsroom environment. Content often has to be separately uploaded to different platforms, to different Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts, and then managed. All of this costs time and impacts the efficiency with which a newsroom operates.

Creating Efficient Social Media Integration

What broadcasters need is to be able to seamlessly integrate social media management into their daily media management cycle, taking the number of applications needed to achieve this down to just one. By simplifying their workflows, each station is able to push the stories that are right for its viewers out in a variety of ways.

This is what Grass Valley helps them do with new solutions within the GV STRATUS production and content management system. As well as supporting linear content output, it now delivers powerful social media management capabilities.

Users can now post, track and delete any asset with a single click. Producers can pre-determine who can post content and within what parameters, while a new rules engine allows them to automate content delivery and management for social media and CMS. Content can easily be tracked and then deleted from all platforms when appropriate. Broadcasters can also use the new capabilities to maximize the value of popular content—for example, by automatically re-posting to other social media accounts without having to individually log in to multiple accounts or running the story as the lead item on the website.

With seamless integration and management of social and digital content output, broadcasters can keep delivering news in the linear manner that traditional audiences favor, but can also attract and engage younger viewers. By ensuring multiple engagements with their brand across a range of platforms they can build better relationships with consumers who access content digitally.

Less (Complexity) Is Always More

Reducing complexity has benefits far beyond allowing broadcasters to reach new audiences. Grass Valley has been re-tooling and re-designing solutions like our Ignite news production automation solution to address complexity within newsroom workflows. Ignite can now be paired with the compact Kula production switcher for smaller web-based and mobile production control rooms, which can be used to generate on-demand live weather and news updates/inserts.

Allowing reporters in the field to edit content anywhere with an internet connection using a laptop, phone or tablet saves valuable time and allows stories to be turned around more rapidly. Thanks to the additional integration of editing and post-production tools such as Rio, EDIUS and Go! they can do just that. Using the Ignite ASP, journalists can also do live inserts from anywhere using a tablet-based UI.

What Grass Valley is doing is giving our newsroom applications a greater degree of flexibility and scalability so that they can be deployed for large newsroom operations, but also smaller online and web-based control rooms.

The combined portfolio of Grass Valley and SAM solutions, together with significant investment from Belden, gives broadcast professionals the broadest selection of tools and technologies in the industry. By delivering real world solutions that reduce complexity, regardless of where content is being delivered, we are enabling our news customers to conquer today's news marketplace while giving them the flexibility to respond to future demands.

—Chuck Garfield, Director News Products, Grass Valley

To learn more about Grass Valley's news solutions, visit www.grassvalley.com.

This content is sponsored by Grass Valley.

MONTREAL—TV5 Québec Canada has installed the GV STRATUS Playout system, which provides the station with a disaster recovery site for its playout and transmission operations. The functionality of the system was tested back in August.

To test the GV STRATUS Playout, TV5 ran a wide-scale disaster simulation. They evacuated the building for several hours to test the recovery site, a rented office space with computers that had nothing installed. The GV STRATUS Playout was able to get the site online, fitting with TV5’s parallel transmission paths to its primary playout chains, ensuring continuous playout of TV5 and Unis. The GV STRATUS Playout can also be controlled with a standard web browser, providing access to revenue-generating components shortly after leaving the building.

“GV STRATUS Playout tools are cloud-enabled, they can operate in a variety of environments and can be tailored for each user’s job, increasing efficiencies and collaboration,” said Steve Stubelt, vice president of sales, North America, Grass Valley.

TV5 Québec Canada bought a number of other Grass Valley products, including the Densité IRD, K2 Summit TX and K2 SOLO.

MONTREAL—Designed to meet the needs of news professionals with smaller budgets, Grass Valley has announced the release of GV STRATRUS News Bundles. The News Bundles are available in two sets, the News Bundle Express and the News Bundle Pro.

GV STRATUS is a modular video production and content management toolset that embraces content ingest, editing, distribution and archive and retrieval management. All these are integrated with newsroom computer systems via the MOS protocol. Users can mix and move assets across multiple sites, and perform full editing in the field with EDIUS XS, which will be standard with both News Bundles.

The News Bundle Express is a 2x bidirectional I/O, with 600 GB storage, while the News Bundle Pro is a 4x bidirectional I/O, with 7.2 TB storage. Each package supports up to 20 users.

Grass Valley is a provider of end-to-end TV production and content distribution workflows headquartered in Montreal.