Belgian broadcaster Vlaamse Radio en Televisieomroep (VRT) has deployed Omneon Spectrum media servers as the backbone of a new tapeless workflow, providing a common platform for the company's TV, radio and Web productions.
Replacing the previous tape-based system, VRT's configuration includes 11 Spectrum servers delivering 51 channels for the Brussels-based public broadcaster's news and post-production operations.
To streamline the workflow across VRT's multivendor installation, Omneon met the broadcaster's requirements for custom features that included time code within the MXF wrapper and in the essence file, full MXF compliance according to EBU standards, tailmode FTP to allow easy file copy and transfer during ingest, and generic FTP for seamless interchange between the Omneon and Avid systems.
Installed and engineered by integrator Video Promotion, Omneon's distributor for Belgium and Luxemburg, VRT's multivendor system handles live feeds by simultaneous redundant ingest to the Omneon servers and to Avid Isis. Tapes are ingested directly to the Spectrum servers. Craft editors can edit and send the result to the central system or directly to the Omneon playout servers.
Once recording has begun, the file is transferred automatically to the central archive storage using tailmode FTP, and a proxy version is created for use in the MAM system. Users can edit on the proxy copies, conform a high-resolution file and send it directly to the Omneon playout servers or to the editing systems for craft editing.
VRT's news automation system detects the incoming files on the server, provides status feedback and controls the Spectrum servers for playout to air. Some Omneon channels are also used for teletext subtitling. For post-production, the Omneon Spectrums are used to ingest tapes to the central storage/archive before post-production editing on Avid. The servers are also used to transfer restored material from the archive to tape.
For more information, visit: www.omneon.com.
