DR builds digital facility with SGI

Danish Broadcasting has chosen SGI equipment and systems integration services for the second phase of its all-digital workflow newsroom facility.

The project, valued at $6.5 million, has an estimated completion date of December 2003. It will be based on the SGI Media Server for broadcast system and designed by SGI, the Sports and News Production System (SNPS).

For DR personnel in 11 different news and sports departments including television, radio and online operations, the move to a file-based digital system will change current workflows-resulting in more-effective and more-efficient production methods.

The first newscasts produced on the SGI system are slated for broadcast in May 2003.

DR plans to implement an all-digital workflow for all TV production departments and the TV-Byen, Århus and Christiansborg locations by 2005. The company operates two nationwide television channels and three nationwide radio stations. It also owns and operates several local television and radio stations.

For phase 2, SGI will design archival and Web interface functionality into the SNPS system. The project includes the design of the overall digital architecture, integration of the required multivendor technologies, a variety of professional services, project management and project-specific software development.

Hardware requirements for the second phase of the project include eight SGI Media Servers for broadcast systems; a 24-processor SGI Origin 3000 series server; a 12-processor SGI Origin 300 server; two SGI TP9400 storage systems with 3.4TB of storage, and SGI Data Migration Facility (DMF) software for moving data from disk- to-tape that will serve as the foundation for archiving material.

SGI will also integrate an automation system from vizrt; desktop editing functionality such as voice-over capability, transcoding software including keyframe extraction, and scheduled ingest automation software from Ardendo; a StorageTek L5500 tape library; 24 Pinnacle Liquid purple and Pinnacle Liquid blue nonlinear editing systems; and a transcoding cluster consisting of 12 dual-processor Linux operating system servers.

For more information visit www.sgi.com.

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