ERTU, Egyptian Radio and Television Union, TV, News Operation
Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) is presently working on Phase II of a massive project to upgrade its 24-hour news operations to HD. The multi-million dollar project, which is jointly undertaken by Egypt-based systems integrators Systems Design and Cairo Communications Systems will see ERTU make its first foray into HD by building a brand new master control room (MCR), upgrading a studio that is used for its 24-hour Nile News Channel, and also overhauling its newsroom production system. The project is scheduled for completion in October 2010.
ERTU aims to be the top news provider in the Middle East and Africa. As part of this objective, the company is upgrading all of its broadcast systems from SD to HD, while also making provision for 3Gbps and fibre. Additionally, the broadcaster is standardising its workflows for more streamlined graphics creation.
Phase 1, which was completed earlier this year, saw ERTU build Studio 11 for its news bulletins. However, Studio 11 saw the deployment of SD equipment only.
Phase 2 will focus entirely on HD solutions. The brand new MCR will support HD. Likewise, Studio 5, which handles Nile News Channel will be fully refurbished and ready to handle the new format. This part of the project will also see an overhaul of the broadcaster’s newsroom production system, which supports ERTU’s entire news department.
ERTU will continue to use AP’s ENPS solution for its newsroom.
Phase II will also see the deployment of HD cameras, VTRs and switchers from Sony Professional Solutions; Lawo audio mixers; Aveco automation; and playout and transmission solutions from EVS.
A big chunk of this project, however, was supplied by Miranda Systems, which claims that it is now fully capable of providing entire blocks within a workflow.
“Miranda provided large parts of the workflow including two Nvision 3G routers, the master control solutions, multi-viewers, interfacing and processing equipment, on-air graphics systems for branding 2D and 3D graphics and the solutions to drive the inset video walls,” says Hany Bartella, general manager at Miranda Technologies, Middle East.
“External feeds are crucial for any news operation and they need to have the ability to handle multiple feeds in a variety of formats. Miranda is providing them with universal processors that can handle all the formats whether it is HD, SD or 3G.”
At the heart of Nile News Channel, therefore, is Miranda’s NVISION 8280 router, configured 198 x 198, to handle a mixture of 3Gbps, HD and SD signals. As it was crucial for ERTU to have a high level of system resilience, it opted for redundant controller cards, redundant power supplies and Miranda’s patented N+1 cross point redundancy technology. This provides a zero downtime capability, with a back-up system for the largest possible impact block in the router.
The router will be controlled by Miranda’s NVISION 9000 dual controller system, and a mixture of standard and customised control panels. It will also be integrated with three NV5100MC master control switchers for Nile News’ channel playout.
The project will also see ERTU deploy Miranda’s Vertigo Suite graphics automation.
“This will give Nile News a highly streamlined and cost-effective graphics automation system,” explains Bartella.
“The system combines asset management and work order management, as well as template authoring and population. It includes an After Effects plug-in graphics pre-rendering tool, and an Autopromo interstitial promo generation module for the most advanced on-air graphics. It also employs multiple Miranda graphics processors, including ten X-3D processors for 3D graphics and video walls, two Vertigo XG graphics processors for 2D graphics, and an Intuition XG graphics co-processor for operation alongside the master control switcher system,” he adds.
An important aspect of the new graphics solution is that Miranda’s news graphics system Xnews is tightly integrated with ERTU’s ENPS workstations. This ensures that any changes in the news rundown are reflected immediately in the graphics system.
Xnews has already been installed at ERTU’s new Studio 11. This solution simplifies last-minute changes to the run-down of the news bulletins by allowing journalists and producers to quickly create graphics within the newsroom itself, rather than using external designers. The system has also improved the consistency of the company’s graphics, and the quality of its branding, as a whole.
The new infrastructure at Nile News will comprise 34 Miranda Densité 2 frames that will house a variety of signal processing modules, allowing multiple signal formats to be mixed, matched and processed.
Playout and signal monitoring at Studio 5 and master control room will be performed using two Kaleido-X multi-viewers, each configured with 96 video inputs and eight multi-viewer outputs.
“These multi-viewers are tightly integrated with the MCR router, and will perform multi-room monitoring for video production, audio production and camera shading areas, with fully independent display layouts and control panels in each room. The monitoring displays, which present alarms for video loss, video black, audio silence and audio mono, can be instantly reconfigured for different productions with full flexibility over window positioning and sizing,” explains Bartella.
“Before ERTU saw the Kaleido-X, it was slightly reluctant to switch from a traditional monitor wall in view of the importance of the monitoring function. However, ERTU was prepared to install our multi-viewer solution because it has no single point of failure, and is packed with redundancy features including auto-recovery. ERTU is now confident that the new system will make operations significantly easier because of the powerful layout software.”
Along with the Nile News Studio 5 and MCR, ERTU is also upgrading its newsroom production department, which serves the entire ERTU news department. Here, ERTU will switch from its current Leitch newsroom production system to a Quantel solution. This part of the project includes a further NVISION 8280 router, configured 126 x 256 with 18 x 36 fibre I/Os and full redundancy options. With the fibre connectivity, ERTU is future proofing its infrastructure for 3Gbps.
ERTU’s newsroom production system will also use Miranda’s Densité modules for signal processing, including the XVP-3901 universal processor which performs the up/down/cross conversions, as well as the colour space and aspect ratio conversions necessary to maintain the chosen output format, regardless of the input format.
The manufacturer’s iControl monitoring system will be used to oversee all of these system elements, and will also provide in-depth monitoring of third-party equipment via SNMP, including servers and encoders. The monitoring system incorporates streaming video to monitor and control incoming and outgoing television feeds equipped with Densité signal processing cards.
The system presents the transmission path status, and the status of devices, using ERTU’s CAD schematics and wiring diagrammes of the infrastructure. This interface is displayed across multiple displays using a Kaleido-X multi-viewer. With this system, operators can zoom in from facility-level to device-level representations on the monitor wall GUI.
The manufacturer will provide ERTU staff with extensive training as part of the deal. It will also provide creative services support to help ERTU build news graphics templates before this phase of the project is completed.
