NBC Universal Domestic Television Distribution’s entertainment news-magazine “Access Hollywood” has made the transition to a fully tapeless end-to-end workflow with production tools from EVS.
The first step in streamlining the production was to allow all of the individual pieces for the show, created in Avid Media Composer, to be delivered via file transfers to the studio playout operation. Previously, the Avid editors would have to contact the playback operations on the phone, wait for their cue and make a real-time playout that was re-recorded onto tape. Today, the EVS integrated solution allows the Avid editors to be self-sufficient and simply click and send their finished sequences to the XT[2] servers in the playback area.
The next step was to move the linear edit for the show mastering into a nonlinear environment. The solution for the “Access Hollywood” production crew was the EVS IPEdit application, which features complete timeline-editing performance with no rendering process required for playout. All the recorded and transferred content on the XT[2] servers are at the fingertips of the IPEdit operator.
The ultimate stress test for the system came on the day of the death of Michael Jackson.
“We could never have produced the shows we did that week without the speed of the tapeless workflow,” said Chris Conte, Executive in Charge of Production for “Access Hollywood.” “We were constantly changing and updating stories throughout the day--We would not have made air with the kind of quality reporting our audience expects from us without EVS”.
Although the current production continues in SD, the entire EVS architecture is HD and ready for the switch over in September.
