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MillimeterRoom for Improvements
Mar 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Trevor Boyer
At NY1 News, New York City's 24-hour Time Warner Cable news station, reporters shoot their own video.
Despite its spartan use of resources, the station was getting a bit cramped at its 42
During the move would be the only feasible time to make such a change, and moving would require two separate systems. “It is impossible to turn off our facility and move it to a new location without affecting our viewership,” says Jeffrey Polikoff, NY1's director of operations and engineering. “Therefore two facilities needed to be in operation.”
Time Warner Cable brings NY1 News to about 2 million subscribers. The station has been on the air since 1992.
Over the past decade, NY1 News has migrated from Hi8 to Betacam and finally to DVCPRO, which the station has been shooting since the format's infancy in 1995. For news automation, it originally relied on Sony LMS.
Its sunny new space in the Chelsea Market is more than twice as large as the old one. The extra square footage — 55,000 vs. 25,000 in the old space — affords the station “the digital nonlinear facility that we always wanted,” says Steve Paulus, senior vice president and general manager of NY1 News.
The new newsroom is centered around servers that store digitized footage that's made available on any desktop. NY1 News created a new position, media editor, whose job is to log tapes as they're brought in from the field. Average ingest time is 10 to 30 minutes.
Attached to the files as metadata are copy and assignment notes. The facility's 6TB of storage accommodates about 600 hours of DVCPRO footage.
Vortex News Journalist workstations from Pinnacle Systems give reporters and producers increased control over their material. “Editing has really been a thrill for people,” says Paulus. Several VortexNews Editor suites provide VTR control for stories that use archive footage, most of which is still on ¾in. tape. These suites are also used for voiceover work and character generation. Targa 3000 boards power the 24 total workstations.
The Vortex-News Journalist Workstations even give journalists access to graphics templates, so producers and editors don't need to rely on a graphics person to put the finishing touches on a story. NY1 relies on the Vertigo Xmedia automation system that incorporates DekoCast graphics.
Finished stories do not require creating a new file within the server; rather, they appear as EDLs that call up portions of different files as they're fed to the OmniBus station automation system, which controls the Vortex servers, the editors, the graphics builder, and the playout manager. The Associated Press' Electronic News Production System links the newsroom computer systems and the production equipment via the open MOS protocol.
The setup made for a very calm control room on a recent morning.
Trevor Boyer is associate editor for Video Systems.
For More Information
Pinnacle Systems
Mountain View, Calif.
650-526-1600
www.pinnaclesys.com
