Category Station automation Submitted by Sundance Digital Design teamBelo: Craig Harper, exec.
dir. of tech.; Reed Wilson, tech. mgr.
Beck Associates: Bill McKenna, dir. of eng.
Sundance Digital:
Robert C. Johnson,
president; Eric
Harrington, dir. of eng.; Niambi Atamah, mgr. of
training and customer
communications
Grass Valley: Sam Peterson, mgr. technical sales
KGW-TV: Eric Dausman,
dir. of eng.; Tim Kerr, asst.
chief eng.; Josy Ansley, op. mgr. Technology at work
Grass Valley
K2 servers
M2100 SD MC switcher
M2100 HD MC switcher
Trinix 128 x 128 router
Encore controller
Sundance Digital
IntelliSat satellite
antenna scheduler
Titan Air station
Titan list processor
Titan sync processor
SQL server
Prep Stations
DataMover
SIDON controllers
Telestream Flip Factory
Videotek Legalizer
Wohler AMP1-S8 audio monitors
KGW-TV updates automation and servers, preparing the station for future growth
When the automation and servers are eight years old, no longer supported by the manufacturer, and the servers lack the storage capacity for a growing facility, it’s time to explore new options. This was the case for KGW-TV, a Belo station in Portland, OR.
The station determined that Sundance Digital Titan automation offered the best technology and operational flexibility, along with solid support and a favorable pricing structure. The decision on a replacement video server, however, was up-in-the-air until Grass Valley approached KGW with the opportunity to be the fi rst facility to install its new K2 series — an advanced IT-based media server and client system designed specifically to share and reuse digital media assets.
The new Titan and K2s went on -air smoothly in January 2006, with only the typical speed bumps associated with training everyone on new gear and user interfaces. Since then, the system has been extremely reliable. Titan automation and K2 servers currently support five different program streams: KGW’s analog and HD channels, NBC’s Weather Plus channel with commercial insertions, interstitials for the Portland Zone of Northwest Cable News (Belo’s 24 Hour cable news channel) and cut-ins for CNN Headline News.
KGW’s program streams are managed through Titan’s Air Control interface and are specifically designed to give master control operators an information-rich GUI for multichannel, server-based playlist supervision. The main screen features a horizontal timeline overview of all active channels, as well as a separate area for playlist-specific details.
Secondary FlexEvent actions are displayed adjacent to each element to help visualize when their triggers will occur. Playlists have individual security rights, enabling authorized users at any Air Control station — either locally or remotely — to select, view, manage and control any channel from any list processor visible within Titan’s network domain. KGW’s automation system also includes a facility-specific traffic interface to OSI, the group’s preferred vendor. All software was preinstalled on 4RU, enterprise-grade Pentiumbased Windows workstations with mirrored hard drives and redundant, hot-swappable power supplies for greater reliability. Redundancy was further enhanced using Sundance TitanSync with auto-failover capability and a fault-tolerant external SQL data server.
KGW plans to expand on-air services in the future, and its present Titan configuration can readily accommodate more channels. Titan can manage a number of list processors and playlists in high channel count environments. When the time comes, the system will be easy to upgrade with additional K2 server capacity and Titan automation components.
