Univision Network constructed a new headquarters building with space to include facilities for KMEX and KFTR, the outlets for Univision and Telefutura in Los Angeles.
New Facilities Excellence Awards Winner
The site presented particular challenges, as it was located immediately adjacent to one of Los Angeles' prime freeways, but the new building was completed on time and KMEX went on-air as scheduled in the spring of 2002. BFA was chosen to manage the project and provided conceptual design services for the systems. AZCAR was selected for the detailed design and installation, which was completed in approximately four months from contract to commissioning. The facility is more than 25,000 square feet and required more than 8100 cables consuming more than 600,000 feet of wire.
The station incorporated a combination of existing analog and composite digital equipment from the previous KMEX facility, requiring thoughtful integration and design strategies. One new studio control room was included in the plan, and is equipped with a Thomson Grass Valley Kalypso video production center and Pinnacle Thunder and FXDeko for graphics, stills and clips. The control room is used to produce a Spanish-language newscast.
Two feeds are produced in master control, one using a conventional master control architecture, and the other using a Ross CDK 104 mixer keyer and Graham-Patten audio switcher to accomplish a simple and cost-effective master control for the Telefutura output from the facility.
The newsroom utilizes advanced workflow concepts. Avid supplied a major iNews installation, which is interfaced with an Avid Unity media network. Incoming feeds are ingested into the system, which includes four Avid NewsCutter nonlinear editing bays, as well as Media Composer and Digital Studio editing rooms for more complicated stories and other station programming. KMEX news also has additional edit facilities that use Final Cut Pro running on MAC G4 with a Firewire interface. Three linear tape-based editing suites complete the newsroom complement.
The facility has a very busy feeds record area for dubbing news feeds to tape and to Avid Unity through Pluto servers and an Avid Unity Control Air feeds record workstation. The area has six network feeds, 10 wild news receive paths, and four microwave paths.
Design Team
KMEX Univision Television Network:
Jim Smith, director of engineering
Chris Homer, chief engineer
John Brooks, project manager, BFA
AZCAR USA:
Dan Siewers, project manager
Michael Walter P. Eng, project engineer
Adam Stoddart, installation supervisor
Equipment List
NVision routing, 2562 video/AES, 642
AES, 128-port machine control
Thomson Grass Valley M2100 master control switcher
Pinnacle MediaStream 700 video servers
Thomson Grass Valley Kalypso video production switcher
Accom DVEous digital effects
Pinnacle Thunder disk recorder
Pinnacle FXDeko
Avid Unity media network
Avid NewsCutter, Media Composer, Digital Studio
Sony Betacam and Panasonic DVCPRO
VTRs
