Client News

Malmö, Sweden, 9 September 2020: Production automation specialists nxtedition recently installed, commissioned, trained and handed over a four-studio newsroom system for Stockholm-based Expressen TV. Because of the restrictions imposed by COVID-19, nxtedition was forced to achieve all this remotely, yet still got the new system on-air, on-time and on-budget.

nxtedition’s newsroom system is built on a suite of microservices to create a virtualised architecture, running on COTS hardware. For Expressen TV, the system was initially built at nxtedition’s headquarters in Malmö, more than 600km away. The kit was shipped to Stockholm where Expressen’s partners installed it in place.

Ordinarily, teams would be sent from nxtedition to test and commission a new installation and train the staff. But the microservices architecture means that the system is inherently ready for remote access and operation, so all these activities were carried out from the homes of each nxtedition team member. Deployments and configurations were performed remotely, and all the training was done using Google Hangouts, with the trainer logging into the Expressen installation remotely via VPN.

Journalists, editors, producers and engineers rapidly gained familiarisation with nxtedition's intuitive operation. This allowed for a phased cutover to the new technology and also to effectively meet the full on-air date of 2nd June 2020. Even with Sweden’s relatively light touch isolation policy, this was still a remarkable achievement while maintaining safety of both teams through remote working practices and social distancing.

“I am really impressed that we could make this transition so easily and fast,” said Robin Jansson, head of technology for Expressen TV. “Our window of opportunity to switch the entire broadcast system was very slim, but the design and structure of nxtedition makes complex and time-consuming things much easier and convenient.”

For nxtedition, Roger Persson, head of sales and marketing, added, “The world is changing, and not just because of COVID-19. Newsroom technology has to be flexible, capable of being accessed from anywhere, to deliver the fast and accurate facts first which audiences seek. Remote training was forced upon us by the pandemic, but it really brought home to the Expressen TV team just how simple it is to create scripts, modify rundowns, cue events and add live content from anywhere at any time. That agility was a key benefit when Expressen TV chose our suite of software and in today’s environment we can see it’s even more important than ever.”

Aldermaston, UK, 3 September 2020 - GB Labs, innovators of powerful and intelligent storage solutions for the media and entertainment industries, today announced that Side Street Post and VFX, Vancouver, supported by GDS Communications, has chosen GB Labs’ SPACE SSD NAS shared storage system to drive Side Street’s DaVinci Resolve Studio systems.

More than 300TB of GB Labs "SPACE SSD" shared storage solution, with its massive disc performance of 12GB/s now enables all of Side Street’s DaVinci Resolve Studio workstations to simultaneously playback 4K DPX streams at full resolution, with no network slow-down or dropped frames.

Side Street Post and VFX’s President, Gary Shaw, said, “Our legacy SAN storage system was no longer meeting our needs, and limited our ability to fully utilise Resolve in higher resolutions. We needed a solution that would enable all our colour correction suites to operate simultaneously at 4K resolution or higher and more efficiently.”

Gary’s view, shared by many, was that the current fibre channel storage systems could not affordably achieve the concurrent speeds needed, and the technical development of such systems is generally thought as having been eclipsed by ethernet solutions. For Side Street, NAS was the way to go.

Gary said, “Vancouver is a major market for episodic television and feature film production, a lot of it captured with high-end cameras that shoot at 4K, 6K or 8K, so a lot of raw camera footage arrives which in the grading process requires a very high data rate. Both technically and ethically, we don’t really want to downscale and work in HD. We want our clients to experience the true image quality especially on Dolby Vision projects.

"To deal with such high data rates and file sizes, you need a system that can handle them, and SPACE SSD from GB Labs provided both the bandwidth and file management capability that fits our needs."

SPACE SSD is the world's fastest and most scalable NAS platform, with performance up to 18GB/s and capacity up to 10PB. The Side Street system transfers data at 12GB/s and is linked to a 100GbE switch.

According to GB Labs CEO-CTO Dominic Harland, “Side Street Post is very forward-thinking and knew that a fibre channel system could not achieve what it needed. Speed was of the essence and they needed all colour workstations running at full capacity, simultaneously, in 4K, 6K, 8K and, eventually, beyond. SPACE SSD NAS copes with that easily, with plenty of headroom.”

A major differentiator with all GB Labs storage systems is that they do not require the user to replace or dispose of their existing storage. Like many other GB Labs users, Side Street was able to make use of its existing SAN by incorporating GB Labs ECHO Bridge as a way of accessing SAN data, or moving files to it for near-line storage.

“It’s a case of using the old storage for secondary purposes, essentially cold storage, and empowering SPACE SSD for the heavy lifting,” added Shaw. “After a few minutes of on-site tweaks to configure the system to our preferences, we were up and running – at astonishing speed - without the slightest disruption to our operations.”

Cookham Dean, UK, 02 September 2020: Hitomi Broadcast, manufacturer of MatchBox, the industry’s premier audio video alignment toolbox, will demonstrate a broadcasting lineup using its MatchBox solutions with live feeds into the Hitomi virtual stand at BroadcastAsia 2020 which is running from 29th September to 1st October 2020.

Hitomi will be showcasing the benefits of the newest member of the MatchBox family of solutions, Glass, for live remote production. This sophisticated iOS app is designed for fast and precise remote lip-sync measurement. Used on location at the point of content capture, Glass takes its measurement from in front of the camera and through the microphones in the same way as the live action.

Back in the MCR or OB Truck, the signals generated by this app are quickly analysed by the MatchBox Analyser and any alignment issues can be rapidly corrected with great precision. Additional checks further down the chain can be run using test patterns generated by the MatchBox Generator. Not only can audio to video be aligned but also audio to audio and video to video. Where MatchBox measures zero difference, perfect timing has been achieved and the audience will hear what it sees.

Hitomi takes guesswork out of the equation, replacing subjective estimates with highly accurate, electronic test audio and video generators along with a state-of-the-art analyser. MatchBox enables the production team to measure when it’s wrong and know when it’s right.

With many international events being cancelled or replaced by online versions, BroadcastAsia 2020 stands out due to the all-new virtual reality experience used by the organisers to recreate the physical experience of visiting a tradeshow.

Hitomi Broadcast Director Russell Johnson said, “Whilst nothing beats face to face meetings for establishing new business connections and communicating with potential customers, the BCA virtual event offers an opportunity to do so at a time when physical meet-ups are not possible and we’re happy to take advantage of this to bring our broadcast solutions to the Asian film industry.”

Cookham Dean, UK, 24 August 2020: Hitomi Broadcast, manufacturer of MatchBox, the industry’s premier audio video alignment toolbox, has announced that the Germany-based ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, Europe’s leading satellite and cable broadcaster, operating television channels, digital VoD platforms and e-commerce brands, has purchased a MatchBox system comprising xFrame, MatchBox Generator and MatchBox Analyser 3G.

The MatchBox installation was supplied to ProSiebenSat.1 by Hitomi reseller, Vidi GmbH, based in Germany, via the manufacturer-independent international systems integrator, BFE Studio und Medien Systeme GmbH, as part of a solution-focused project to help streamline their live production workflows.

ProSiebenSat.1 combines leading entertainment brands with a successful production business and a rapidly growing retail portfolio under one roof, making it one of the most diversified media companies in Europe. The company offers the best entertainment - whenever, wherever and on any device. With its 15 free- and pay-TV channels, it reaches over 45 million TV households in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

MatchBox is a state-of-the-art toolkit that streamlines live broadcast synchronisation and is relied on by broadcasters worldwide to ensure the timing of live sports, news and events. A two part solution, the MatchBox Analyser tool looks and listens for the specific Hitomi video and audio signatures produced by the hardware MatchBox Generator. The measurement performed by the analyser is very fast - just a few seconds - and highly effective, vastly speeding up the process and ultimately helping to eliminate the headaches and frustrations of last-minute lip-sync issues.

Hitomi Broadcast Director Russell Johnson said, “What MatchBox ultimately means is that instead of having someone tapping a mic or clapping a board in front of a camera to take subjective readings from, you have a known, verified, highly precise test pattern that in turn enables you to measure and confirm the veracity of your links before you start sending video or audio signals down them.”

Complete with an intuitive identing feature, rapid measurement of lip sync, audio coherence, audio levels, phase inversions and video timing, MatchBox is also a 4K test pattern generator.