The customer challenges
Over the past 20 years the client used a propriety production system which was designed for all forms of fast turnaround production, such as sports and news. The system stores and manages video material as individual frames, which explains the high speed of all workflows, especially publishing new edits for playout. A lot of working methods within the newsroom have been established based on the speed of this system. While the users see the need for a new production system for non-linear workflows, they insist on not losing the speed of editing and publishing new content for both playout and online.
The client is looking for a solution that allows them to process both live feeds and uploaded media quickly for their continuous news broadcasts. It's crucial that they can browse and edit growing files both in proxy and high resolution for many users at the same time. All their content must be accessible to everyone, no matter where they are with minimal media movement.
The search, browse and editing tools must be user-friendly and intuitive for their journalists, who often have limited time, while also meeting the editing needs specific to a news context.
The customer's news production philosophy
The client’s news production has no editorial deadline, as the team operates 24/7 to quickly respond to breaking news. The broadcast schedule can be adjusted at any time, even during live broadcasts, and extended if necessary. New material is immediately reviewed, processed, and integrated into the broadcast.
Hundreds of videos from various sources are collected in a shared pool, making them instantly accessible to everyone. Edited or newly created videos are also added back to the pool for immediate use.
This system allows all users to quickly access new material, easing the workload on the editorial team and enabling flexible workflows without delays from material transfers or format conversions.
Broadcast planning is done in the newsroom control system, which also integrates other elements like graphics and live feeds. The production MAM editing tool needs to be deeply integrated into the NRCS.
The solution that focuses on the user
The key challenges for fast turnaround news production workflows have always been file movements, format conversions and rendering times. These three factors make workflows slow and unpredictable in terms of execution time. The current production system solved both problems by storing and managing content as individual frames. This approach allowed them to publish new edits with almost zero delays as the frames were referenced just in different order through the management layer. The downside of this approach was that it was based on propriety hardware and it was very limited in terms of files formats and parallel accesses from multiple users. In addition, it was cumbersome to integrate 3rd party solutions, like Adobe Premiere Pro.
These limitations cannot be accepted anymore as the customer is looking for a fast, reliable and intuitive workflow to migrate not only their news production, but also other production formats independent from the users’ location and file formats.
“I always loved the idea of a production workflow where the user does not need to wait for the system to process files. File movements and rendering times are the number one reason why users are frustrated while they actually want to focus on their story telling and getting it to their audience. It’s frustrating when a story does not make it into a show just because rendering took too long.” - Karsten Schragmann, Head of Product Management VidiNet.
The team behind VidiNet has been building production MAMs for almost three decades. They know the challenges of fast-turnaround news and sports production inside and out. Many Vidispiners worked for broadcasters and production houses before joining the company. Inspired by the core architecture of the customers current system the VidiNet team designed a workflow that combined the idea of referencing frames in combination with an open architecture without the limitations of system scaling or file formats.
The “Sequence Magic” approach
The basic approach to solve the puzzle described above is to store sequences in VidiCore – VidiNet’s media repository – instead of files. The stored sequences in VidiCore can include references to files, multiple video- and audio tracks and effect information. VidiCores sequence format technically allows a 1:1 reproduction of an NLE timeline, e.g. from Adobe Premiere or VidiNet’s proxy editing solution VidiEditor
Storing sequences in a database is something other solutions can do, too. But it’s important to note that sequences in VidiCore are stored in a standardized format to make them exchangeable with 3rd party solutions, and the system analyzes sequences for genealogy and deletion management. That means that every sequence, independent of whether it has been created in Adobe Premiere Pro, VidiEditor or another editing solution, is transformed and harmonized.
The magic begins when it comes to managing, transferring and browsing sequences. A key user requirement was to access the sequences in the MAM or NRCS for review and approval workflows or add them to a rundown – just like a rendered file. The challenge was to find a way to playback sequences in VidiNet’s MAM user interface, MediaPortal, without rendering - just like in an NLE. This key feature is done in VidiNet’s
Web Render Engine the backbone of the VidiEditor proxy editing application. This component allows seamless playback of complex sequences incl. video and audio transitions, graphics and effects in a standard web browser in real time. By adding the Web Render Engine to VidiNet’s MediaPortal, our search and browse UI, it becomes the key tool for all journalists to review production sequences and using them with any workflow incl. playout.
When talking about linear playout it’s important to understand that VidiNet sequence can be used natively as a video object in an NRCS, the playout automation and the video server itself – just like a rendered file. VidiNet makes the sequences available as an item to the NRCS via traditional MOS gateways or APIs, which can be used inside of a rundown. Modern video servers can not only playback plain files, but they do also support dissolves, wipes, audio mixing or in other words: Everything you need to playback a sequence in real-time without rendering. And these features come into play for playback of VidiNet sequences.
The Conclusion
Vidispine can deliver a unique workflow for news and sports production which required proprietary hardware in the past and was limited to a small group of users. With the “sequence magic” approach customers get rid of the limitations without losing the key advantage: speed.
The users do not see any difference between a sequence between a sequence and a rendered file other than a sequence is lightning fast available for review or playout. Vidispine calls this workflow Renderless Revolution – feel free to join and get in touch with us for a demo.
