Category New studio technology
— non-broadcast Submitted by The Systems Group Design team
Tribune Broadcasting:
Ira Goldstone, VP/chief
technology offi cer; Cissy Baker, Washington
bureau chief; Jack
Devedjian, facilities mgr.;Don Rooney, proj. mgr./eng.; Chris Novack, dir.
of eng.; Derek Danilko,associate eng.
The Systems Group:
Scott Griffin, VP of eng.;Carl Van Dusen, proj.
mgr.; James Tome, proj.eng.; Christian Freeman, integration supervisor;
Matt Marino, lead
technician
Technology at work Evertz
MVP monitoring
7700 and 500 series
modular cards
Grass Valley
Encore routing control
Venus SDI and port routers
M-Series servers
DNP production suite
Leitch DPS-575 and X-75 syncs
Mackie 24-8 bus mixers
Quintech L-band routing
Raritan Paragon KVM
matrix
Sony DFS-700 switchers
Tektronix WVR
rasterizers
The Tribune media center consolidates and maximizes production
In fall of 2005, Tribune consolidated its Washington, D.C., publishing and broadcast bureaus into a single facility on the seventh fl oor of the historic Woodward & Lothrop Building. The Tribune media center houses bureaus for Tribune Broadcasting and Tribune newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and Newsday. The Systems Group (TSG) designed and integrated Tribune Broadcasting’s TV news bureau into the media center.
TSG was charged with updating the bureau to a digital infrastructure, integrating key pieces of legacy analog equipment, providing extensive satellite downlink and uplink capabilities and improving workfl ow through server-based nonlinear editing and playback. A key consideration in equipment selection and system design was operational simplicity for the staff.
The Grass Valley DNP platform was chosen for its integration of desktop editing, ENPS interface, and server-based recording and playout with M-Series servers. An SD-SDI facility router using embedded audio ties the new digital systems to islands of analog equipment converted with Evertz modular cards.
Two operationally identical control rooms include Sony DFS-700 switchers and Mackie 24-8 bus mixers to allow the bureau to provide two simultaneous feeds to its more than two dozen sister stations across the country. An Evertz MVP system provides control room operators with fl exible video monitoring of feeds with 40 video inputs driving three large DLP screens. A Raritan Paragon KVM matrix (for 16 users and 64 computers) connects operators in control rooms, the news desk, and to resources in the equipment room.
Vincor installed four steerable satellite dishes ranging in size from 3.6m to 4.9m on the rooftop. The 4.9m dish is used daily for uplinks to Tribune stations, including from Boston, New Orleans and Sacramento, CA. CompuSat software by Image Engineering controls primary and backup devices in the uplink chain, as well as satellite receivers and Quintech L-band routing for downlink signals. Incoming feeds from satellite, microwave, fi ber and WAN are converted and synchronized by Leitch DPS-575 and X-75 frame synchronizers.
To support the bureau’s publishing and broadcast newsrooms, the local cable television feed is supplemented with 30 channels of in-house material, including national satellite news and feeds from the House and Senate chambers. This augmented cable channel line-up is distributed to each desk in the media center.
Tribune’s new facility makes optimum use of the updated digital infrastructure and ensures the smoothest possible workfl ow.
