The news production tech provider nxtedition is reporting that it supplied a complete newsroom system to Collective Newsroom, an independent news producer based in New Delhi, India.

The deployment in a new facility delivers high quality journalism to digital, audio and television, in multiple languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu as well as English, the companies reported.

Collective Newsroom was founded by four senior BBC journalists based in India, with the aim of creating high-quality impartial news services in seven languages. It also provides all the news content for the BBC services in India, its largest international market. The company now embraces more than 250 journalists across the country.

“We want to create a newsroom operation that is future-proof and flexible, as well as providing all the collaboration we need between our journalists, editors and producers,” said Atul Garg, head of technology at Collective Newsroom. “We saw in nxtedition the functionality we really need, including realtime data and graphics integration, as well as integrated workflows wherever our journalists are working.”

The deployment is a hybrid cloud implementation that is completely scalable, allowing it to respond to rapidly changing news agendas, nxtedition said.

Designed from the ground up to be a story-focused news production platform, nxtedition provides simple and intuitive access to sophisticated workflows, enhancing collaboration and using automation to give the journalists the time and tools to create content.

“We chose nxtedition over other vendors because its all-in-one integrated platform supports both digital and TV production,” Garg said. “Its powerful functionality and ease of use makes it fast to adopt, and its architecture makes it future-proof, whatever the challenges the market brings to us in future. That is what really sets it apart in the competitive broadcast automation space.

“We have the best journalistic talent in India, but we have to stay competitive in the ever-evolving media landscape,” he added. “nxtedition ensures our production capabilities remain top-notch across all platforms.”

For more information on the nxtedition microservices-based production platform and its capabilities, see nxtedition.com.

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.—Bitcentral this week announced it has deepened its partnership with OCTOPUS Newsroom by making the company’s Octopus 11 newsroom computer system available to Bitcentral customers.

Octopus 11 enables users to be more productive thanks to a revamped user interface, native device support for PC, Mac OS, iOS and Android and advanced newsgathering, planning and collaboration tools, Bitcentral said.

Launched earlier this year, Octopus 11 facilitates editorial collaboration among team members at every stage of the production process, it said.

This includes publishing content beyond traditional audiences to the web and social media, giving users a platform to contribute to stories as they develop. By being fully compatible with Bitcentral’s Core News products, Octopus 11 offers modern news technology solutions that will enable Bitcentral’s customers to manage the entire lifecycle of live and pre-recorded content, it said.

The latest Octopus release works as an on-premise NRCS or in the cloud for remote production. It enables station newsrooms with the flexibility to collaborate, produce rundowns, create scripts, share videos and post to social media in one system.

The seamless process of Octopus 11 enables Bitcentral customers to adapt to new workflows, empowering them to produce, direct and host entire shows and newscasts remotely, the company said.

More information is available on the Bitcentral website.

SAN FRANCISCO—Newsrooms of all types may be wise to remember that more and more, consumers are running the show.

That may explain why today’s newsroom technology—be it a traditional broadcast or all-digital or a hybrid of the two—is evolving from single-silo technology operations into connected, software-centric systems that house multiple solutions in a streamlined platform.

The older model no longer works in today’s media environment. That version, in which a newsroom system managed a straightforward broadcast program, has evolved into one with a journalist creating a 10-second video tweet, an editor simultaneously building a 30-second segment to run on a proprietary app, followed by the news team organizing a complex 30-minute news segment with pre-packaged material flecked with curated social media feeds.

INSTANT ACCESS

Content creators are already aware of how their news philosophies have to realign based on shifting customer behaviors. The newest version of some solutions are keeping that reality in mind by integrating existing news and media asset management platforms with new components that address how people consume news today.

For example, a new web interface in the Avid MediaCentral platform allows reporters in the field who shoot their own video to tie into a system—say, either regional or in the cloud—to search for and find more media assets. That gives journalists access to user-generated content and offers the editorial team access to a map with incoming media feeds, said Ray Thompson, Avid director of broadcast and media solutions.

“[Content creators] are trying to enable mobile workflows—be a broadcast truck in a tablet, if you will—so they can get closer to the story while doing so at a lower cost,” Thompson said. “With basically just a tablet tied back into a centralized system, MediaCentral can leverage media to produce that run down.”

Attention in news has now squarely turned to mobile. “It’s not just millennials that are more reliant on mobile devices,” Thompson said. “Social media now plays such a huge role in how news is produced.”

As eyeballs move away from traditional TV and move toward an app or Facebook or Twitter, those advertisers are following, he said. So news organizations need tools to drive viewers back to their social media and Websites.

Broadcasters now actively competing with social media; it’s absolutely critical news technologies better help cover the story and get news out faster,” he said.

Solutions like MultiPath from Bitcentral follows that same “produce once, publish many” philosophy by targeting a social media and OTT audience. Integrating with Bitcentral news production tools, the system offers a structured interface that guides a user to select and manage multiple publishing output events after the media has been created. The system also offers an Integrated Authoring Pane that allows an editor to see a consolidate views of the content as its published across different platforms.

The company’s flagship news system, Core News, includes asset management tools and immediate access to video content as it arrives to enable proxy footage editing even during ingest.

THINK LIKE A STARTUP

Today’s newsroom software solutions are also allowing content creators to think like a lithe, quick-adapting startup.

“If you wanted to do a true digital workflow with just mobile devices, you can do that,” Thompson said. “We see a lot of startup-type news organizations as well as traditional broadcasters developing a digital group. As they start to grow that audience—which is giving them a great opportunity to reach new revenue—it also allows them to form a direct relationship [with viewers].

The software systems powering these newly revamped editorial rundowns are giving content creators the ability to build a bespoke solution to fit the environment they’re thriving in, according to Arnaud Elnecave, vice president of marketing for Dalet Digital Media Systems.

Based on the stories the newsroom is scheduling and the stories you are trying to build, today’s newsroom systems can aggregate material and suggest what is relevant for the topic. “Based on an assignment, a set of tags can be used as you start building the content,” he said of the Dalet Unified News Operations solution. “You are scripting, editing, building the story [and the system] is able to extract key phrases and forward searches in your inventory.”

The company’s newsroom software solution was designed to be a single enterprise platform with a list of modules that allow journalists, editors and producers to collaboratively plan, create and deliver news. It addresses media asset management for gathering, distributing and delivery; newsroom features for planning, scheduling and assignments; and studio automation.

In that same vein, the company has also introduced “Dalet OnePlay” that leverages MAM and NRCS capabilities automating the control of devices.

“The value is that while you’re conducting your show, you can broker secondary events—such as controlling devices in the studio and triggering automated posts,” Elnecave said. “OTT is a growing trend [so] now it’s not only about putting assets together for on demand stories but it’s also about how you connect with the audience via real-time orchestration within the stream.”

Aveco is addressing newsroom efficiencies through automation and integration. “The most prominent trends in news production revolve around story-production efficiency and increasing the quality of on-air presentations,” said Jim O’Brien, president of Aveco.

Aveco’s Astra Studio includes automation for breaking news, built-in media asset management to quickly find clips, integrated equipment-pool management to share resources efficiently, and integration with production equipment such as switchers, camera robotics and graphics.

For live on-air news automation, the sophistication of production has grown beyond what is practical to verbally cue, O’Brien said. Using live-assist automation allows reliable high-end looks, and accomplishes them efficiently. “With more station groups sharing resources, the impact of this superior design steadily increases in importance,” he said.

When it comes to security, Aveco runs on the operating system QNX, which has an excellent track record when it comes to protecting from virus, O’Brien said. “To have a so-far perfectly safe control core is growing in importance as IT vulnerabilities exponentially expand, from more extensive live field IP infrastructure, multi-site networking connections, increased audience engagement and more online interaction,” he said. “Broadcasters are top hacker targets.”

MORE CONTROL

Newsroom technology is also putting more control into journalists’ hands. “Sometimes the commute times are too long back to the newsroom or [you’re using content] from sources that are not your reporters—say if you’re using social media as a source of content,” Elnecave said. “The workforce in the field wants a more fluid experience. So newsgathering is evolving.

“We are building a digital experience so you remove the borders of the newsrooms that people in the field are working in as they collaborate,” he added.

For example, Euronews, based in Lyon, France, installed a Dalet solution last year to revamp its news channel solution for multiple audiences in multiple languages. Previously, the media company relied on a more traditional broadcast approach to provide a single channel of news programming with language voiceovers dubbed in 12 different languages over the same media.

Now it uses a Dalet newsroom and media management system to tailor programming in those 12 languages to adapt local stories for local audiences. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time a story develops, the company said, journalists can access video, graphics and script on matching topics media on the Dalet OneCut media editor timeline.

“Because we have been able to synchronize, we’ve been able to free up resources,” said Duncan Hooper, digital editor in chief of Euronews when the technology was first installed. “That’s allowed us to increase by about 20 percent the amount of content that we can produce but with the same staff numbers.”

Dalet, a leading provider of solutions and services for broadcasters and content professionals, today announced the introduction of Dalet Content Discovery, a new module of the Dalet Galaxy five Workflow Orchestration and MAM platform that leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to build smart content recommendations for editorial and creative teams. First brought to market as part of the Dalet Unified News Operations solution, Dalet Discovery Board presents to journalists intelligent and contextual suggestions, providing greater content visibility and utilization across the newsroom.

Dalet Content Discovery leverages automatic content tagging, topic extraction and key phrase searches, orchestrating a combination of Auto Indexing and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology. “Dalet Content Discovery aims to aid and enhance newsroom research efforts, surfacing what’s relevant for a given topic and storyline from the pool of exponentially increasing sources and inventory of content,” Kevin Savina, director of product strategy, Dalet. “The first of a new generation of powerful assistants for journalism, Dalet Content Discovery combines the power of AI and ML technology with the advanced data model, the orchestration capability and a new AI integration framework of the Dalet Galaxy platform in order to not only tag and index, but also align, relate and suggest content in a contextual and meaningful way.”

Reducing the time-consuming process of manually searching for news story assets, Dalet Content Discovery intelligently sources and serves content, providing editorial resources relevant material including clips, videos, stories, pitches, wires and multimedia content as the journalist develops their story. The expanded detail enriches the news narrative with new insights and angles.

“The augmented media workflow starts automatically in the background with Dalet Galaxy orchestrating several types of cognitive services. Scripts and media assets are automatically enriched, generating tags that the platform then uses for smart contextual recommendations to the users, as well as for automated data-driven processes.” Savina continues, “The journalist launches Dalet Content Discovery Board, which displays suggested content that matches his/her assignments orworkin progress. The suggestions automatically refresh when new relevant assets are entered into the system. Presented suggestions can include production assets, archived assets, studio guests, assets in use for other news stories as well as other similar topic stories that may be scheduled or have already been broadcasted.”

The intuitively designed Discovery Board gives journalists a snapshot of similar news stories that are in motion. This naturally invites journalists to collaborate with their colleagues on similar story topics. Savina comments, “Collaboration across departments is a common challenge especially among large, multisite news organizations. With Dalet Content Discovery, journalists covering similar story beats, whether it be for TV, online or even radio, can easily connect on topicsthat require collaboration while still keeping controlled access to sensitive stories.” The visual snapshot of newsroom activity on any given topic also lets news directors easily view various story angles across different departments, allowing them to better balance the overall news lineup.

NAB 2018 attendees can see Dalet Content Discovery in action on booth SL8010.

Learn More About Dalet Content Discovery

Click here to visit the Dalet Content Discovery page.

Attend Dalet Pulse

Join 250+ media and technology executives at Dalet Pulse to discover latest innovations from Dalet and technology partners. Dalet Pulse will take place on April 8th at the SLS Hotel in Las Vegas. To register, please click here.

Schedule a Private Press Briefing with Dalet at NAB 2018

Members of the NAB registered press are invited to request a private press briefing with Dalet at NAB 2018. For more information, please contact Alex Molina at alex@zazilmediagroup.com.

About Dalet Digital Media Systems

Dalet solutions and services enable media organizations to create, manage and distribute content faster and more efficiently, fully maximizing the value of assets. Dalet products are built on three distinct platforms that, when combined, form versatile business solutions that power end-to-end workflows for news, sports, program preparation, production, archive and radio. Individually, Dalet platforms and products offer targeted applications with key capabilities to address critical media workflow functions such as ingest, QC, edit, transcode and multiplatform distribution.

The foundation for Dalet productivity-enhancing workflow solutions, Dalet Galaxy is the enterprise Media Asset Management (MAM) & Orchestration platform that unifies the content chain by managing assets, metadata, workflows and processes across multiple and diverse production and distribution systems. Specially tailored for news and media workflows, this unique technology platform helps broadcasters and media professionals increase productivity while providing operational and business visibility.

Dalet AmberFin is the high-quality, scalable transcoding platform with fully integrated ingest, mastering, QC and review functionalities, enabling facilities to make great pictures in a scalable, reliable and interoperable way. Addressing the demanding needs of studio production, multi-camera ingest, sports logging and highlights production, the innovative Dalet Brio video server platform combines density and cost-effectiveness with high reliability. Adopted by leading broadcasters, Dalet Cube is a suite of applications to create, manage and deliver graphics in a newsroom scenario.

Dalet supports customers from the initial planning stages to well beyond project execution. Our global presence includes 17 offices strategically located throughout Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, North America and South America, and a network of more than 60 professional partners serving 87 countries worldwide. This collective experience and knowledge enables our customers to realize potential increases in productivity, efficiency and value of their assets.

The comprehensive Dalet Care program ensures deployments remain up and running with 24/7 support 365 days a year.

Dalet systems are used around the world by many thousands of individual users at hundreds of TV and Radio content producers, including public broadcasters (ABS-CBN, BBC, CBC, DR, FMM, France TV, RAI, RFI, Russia Today, RT Malaysia, VOA), commercial networks and operators (Canal+, FOX, eTV, MBC Dubai, MediaCorp, Mediaset, Orange, Time Warner Cable, Warner Bros, Sirius XM Radio), and government organizations (Canadian House of Commons, Australian Parliament and UK Parliament).

Dalet is traded on the NYSE-EURONEXT stock exchange (Eurolist C): ISIN: FR0011026749, Bloomberg DLT:FP, Reuters: DALE.PA.

Dalet® is a registered trademark of Dalet Digital Media Systems. All other products and trademarks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

SAN FRANCISCO—It’s a theme that has swept through the content creation marketplace and into the broadcast newsroom again and again: change begets more change. After all, a broadcast newsroom no longer solely defines itself by its three newscasts a day; today’s broadcasters must reach a fickle set of eyeballs that jump from TV to mobile device to Web—often simultaneously while multitasking in the same room—and they must continue to do it faster and smarter than the competition.

Newsroom automation technology has taken note of this new reality. And the benchmark of today’s smart newsroom facility is one that meets these new requirements head-on. Today, two key features top the must-have list: a sophisticated means of wrangling multiplatform delivery and mastering social media; and technology that better links the quick-paced news process with traditional production tools.

SECONDARY NOW A PRIORITY
The newcomer and rising star in this story is, of course, distributing to those secondary channels.

At its simplest, the goal is to link together each aspect of the story creation process and deliver it succinctly to multiple platforms. The iNEWS newsroom management system from Avid is one of those news content creation and distribution systems that—in addition to allowing broadcasters to create and deliver breaking news—has made distribution to secondary channels a key priority. Content within iNEWS can be accessed via the Avid MediaCentral | UX system, a cloud-based Web front-end that can be accessed in the field; MediaCentral then gives journalists access to production assets, metadata and iNEWS stories so they can manage rundowns and collaborate simultaneously (see sidebar).

This unification is key, the company said, so that finalized content can be delivered as an integrated package across the broad spectrum of TV, Web, mobile and social media channels. Using the Media | Distribute feature, stations can directly link production with distribution to secondary channels.

Others have placed social media integration front and center in the news production process. The Ross Inception News NRCS has placed a priority on this idea-centric setup, by allowing several members of a broadcast team to collaborate on content as a story evolves, allowing journalists to pull metadata, research materials and contacts into the system.

One of the key features of the system is the ability to create and publish content to a website or social media platform directly from the news environment. Inception allows production teams to collaborate with digital media and Web groups to simultaneously work on content that can then be distributed to these multiple platforms. Data sourced from the Inception platform allow users to drive social media playlists and on-air polling.

Bitcentral’s CORE:news provides a single interface for stations to handle video capture/encoding, editing, playout management, digital publishing and archiving of assets. The system is designed to simplify the process of bringing social media content into a production with the use of tickers, crawls and user-generated content during a broadcast. Using OverDrive QuickTurn, users can record, encode and automatically deliver content for social media and the Web directly from a broadcast.

“We [take] a story-centric approach, so at the same time the reporter is creating content for their linear broadcast, they can also be creating for Facebook, Twitter, etc., at the same time,” said Shawn Snider, director of Inception and Streamline products for Ross. “These social media stories can actually be added right into the production lineup and triggered for publication based on specific items in the show.”

The system also integrates with overarching automation, and production systems like the Ross OverDrive.

AUTOMATE AND MANAGE
But as valuable as it has been as a means of engaging viewers, social media is not what’s driving broadcast news. The other key feature stations must consider is how to automate and thoroughly manage the moving parts of the newsroom production process.

For most broadcasters, that means reevaluating the equipment in their backroom, and making slight changes. For others, a wholesale revamp might be in order.

That often starts with piecing together the control process. Solutions like the ASTRA Studio 3 from Aveco are designed to control all equipment in the production control room and studio, including graphics, camera robotics, video and audio mixer, video servers, lights and backdrop screens. The system touts itself as a multistudio production automation system that can control individual parts of the production process—much like a traditional automation system—but one that has is designed specifically with the newsroom in mind.

In addition to allowing broadcasters to create and deliver breaking news, Avid’s iNEWS newsroom management system has also made distribution to secondary channels a key priority. “Astra was designed with multistudio operations in mind, including local and remote production operations,” said Jim O’Brien, global senior vice president of sales for Aveco. “There is a full management component to the system that allows users in one push to move a rundown from one studio to another if shows run long or if special events require multiple studio coordination.”

Some of the biggest benefits of the system, according to O’Brien, are the ability to make last-minute changes, the ability to manage individual equipment within the newsroom workflow, and the flexibility to work with existing infrastructures and equipment.

For example, the system gives journalists the option to edit stories—even those that have already gone to air—by retooling content, graphics, video clips and texts in a newsroom computer system, and then sending those changes to Studio 3 and on to air.

Through templates and optional parameters within the ASTRA Studio 3, stories are transformed into control events that manage the broadcast equipment. Events are then grouped into shots and presented to the operator on a shotbox control panel, in a timeline view. This feature allows the director to let devices in the studio be controlled by automation, if he chooses.

Tightening that link between the control room and the newsroom is also a priority, one that was addressed by Grass Valley via solutions like the Ignite automated production system and the Stratus video production and content management system.

Sinclair to Standardize News On Avid MediaCentral

BURLINGTON, MASS. —Sinclair is taking cross-station workflow into the cloud by standardizing on Avid MediaCentral, the centerpiece of the Avid Everywhere cloud platform. The deployment will include all 64 of Sinclair’s local news stations and marks Avid’s largest contract in the company’s history.

Del ParksUnder the comprehensive 10-year agreement, Avid will deliver its newsroom production and content management solutions to Sinclair’s stations and replace legacy technology from other vendors in the process. Technology under the MediaCentral Platform includes Avid’s Artist Suite, Storage Suite and Media Suite solutions.

In announcing the deal, Sinclair pointed to one major pressure point for today’s media companies: operating efficiency. By standardizing its newsroom equipment on the Avid platform, Sinclair will keep its newsroom technology consistent, on the leading edge of the industry, and provide greater flexibility in responding to industry changes and new business opportunities, the company said.

“Having defined and more frequent technology upgrade cycles will enable us to keep our newsrooms current across the enterprise and allow us to respond to rapid changes like new digital distribution models in a more cost-effective way,” said Scott Livingston, vice president of News for the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Avid shares rose more than 17 percent when the deal was announced. John W. Frederick, executive vice president and chief financial and administrative officer for Avid, said the company expects the contract to have “a material positive impact on our bookings for the fourth quarter, and may lead to updated 2015 bookings guidance or pre-release in early January 2016.”

Susan Ashworth

That single point of control philosophy was also behind the recent collaboration between Grass Valley and Dejero, which announced an integration last month between Dejero’s LIVE+ Control monitoring and management tool with Grass Valley’s video production and content management system, Stratus. With the goal of breaking down the barriers between news field operations and the central newsroom, the collaboration will allow stations to use the embedded Dejero tool to access, manage and assign content from Dejero video-over-IP transmitters within a window of the Stratus system. This collaboration came after recognizing the increasing demand for timely on-site reporting and the shift in the way news is gathered today, said Mike Cronk, senior vice president of strategic marketing for Grass Valley. “The pressure to get relevant content to air faster is intense,” he said.

The integrated package gives users a centralized system with a simplified workflow for handling live and recorded content ingest. The result, the company said, is greater efficiency and time savings for breaking news coverage. Via the Dejero integration, users can record and stream content, record timelines, move and edit files, and control channel output recordings from within the Grass Valley video production and content management system. The resulting integration, the companies say, cuts a clearer path for broadcast-quality video to be transmitted from the field to the newsroom.

MULTIPLE PLATFORMS
Producing and distributing stories across multiple platforms is also a key feature of the Precis news production playout system and CORE:news interface from Bitcentral. CORE:news provides a single interface for stations to handle video capture/encoding, editing, playout management, digital publishing and archiving of assets. The system allows multiple users to work on developing stories and pull down finished assets from a Web-based browser.

Likewise, the Precis system can serve as a center hub for working with other newsroom computer systems, NLEs and control room automation systems to move content to and from a MOS-enabled production system or content delivery platform. Both systems are designed to facilitate the publication of SD- or HD-formatted content to Web, mobile and broadcast outlets.

“Precis allows field contributors to edit stories on location and move their stories seamlessly from the field through editing to the newsroom computer system and finally to air,” said Fred Fourcher, CEO of Bitcentral.

For those situations where advanced newsroom data management isn’t required, RUSHWORKS has stepped into the space with its VDESK Integrated PTZ Production System.

In a typical three-camera newsroom configuration, a single operator can manage both camera control and the show rundown. The system’s PRODUCER touchscreen interface includes a 3D representation of the news desk, with picture icons of the anchors; by using a preset, users can select a preset shot of an anchor.

Users can build a playlist with graphics and clips as well as sequentially select live graphics and clips for the rundown. Likewise, anchors can self-prompt using simple software outputting to monitors above or below each PTZ camera.