Ethiopian broadcaster ORTO recently switched from a 12-hour schedule to 24/7 broadcasting. Vibhuti Arora takes a look at what the project entailed Oromia Radio and Television Organisation (ORTO), the Adama-based official broadcaster of the Oromia Regional State Government in Ethiopia, recently switched from 12-hour to continuous 24-hour broadcasting. Having doubled the amount of available air-time, […]
Ethiopian broadcaster ORTO recently switched from a 12-hour schedule to 24/7 broadcasting. Vibhuti Arora takes a look at what the project entailed
Oromia Radio and Television Organisation (ORTO), the Adama-based official broadcaster of the Oromia Regional State Government in Ethiopia, recently switched from 12-hour to continuous 24-hour broadcasting. Having doubled the amount of available air-time, the broadcaster needed to significantly enhance its production capabilities. It required a tapeless SD/HD production and archive operation to streamline content creation and media management for its transition to a live 24/7 operation. The existing tape-based operation was to be replaced with a tapeless SD/HD production and archive operation.
ORTO awarded the contract to Avids reseller Telmaco SA to design and commission the entire project.
The key vendor, Avid, was chosen from an international tender, for offering solutions built on an open and tightly integrated media platform. The system was integrated with ORTOs existing facilities. The workflow is built around the ISIS 5000 shared media storage system, which offers real-time collaboration for accelerated editorial workflows.
The end user chose to go with Avids scalable solutions for a number of reasons, says Habtamu Dargie, Deputy Director General for Media Technology Development at ORTO.
It was important that we found a respected and innovative partner with an integrated, open, end-to-end solution to solve our current and future media management challenges. With Avid, we can share material between our journalists and editors, access it quickly during the ingest process, play out, and then archive and restore material as and when necessary.
Within a period of three months, the entire implementation was completed. After the factory acceptance of the solutions, the installation began at ORTOs facility early last year. All of the systems were installed at ORTOs main facility in Adama, Ethiopia. After the initial testing phase, the facility is now up and running.
The solutions
At the heart of this solution, which addresses ORTOs current and future challenges, is the Avid ISIS 5000 shared media storage system, with 2x 32TB chassis. Avid Interplay Production manages and coordinates the content creation, automates the workflow and links ORTOs journalists and editors across the production and editorial ecosystem so that projects can easily move in parallel and be completed faster.
The networking is based on Cisco 4950 Ethernet switches with copper and optical connectivity.
ORTOs key mandate was to establish a link between various points in the workflow, according to Drossos Kyriazis, General Director of Sales and Marketing, Telmaco.
As broadcasters are under relentless pressure to achieve operational efficiencies, connecting ORTOs creative media professionals with its journalists across a complex workflow environment was a key requirement of this project, he says.
The ingest of all materials is managed centrally from the Avid Interplay Capture system, which increases the speed and accuracy of media acquisition through advanced automated feed scheduling and control.
It controls eight Avid Airspeed Multi Stream SD/HD channels. The Interplay Capture operators can schedule all recordings either from live satellite and microwave links, or from VTRs using RS-422 control. Materials are automatically transferred to ISIS and update the Interplay Production database.
While ingesting, Interplay Production allows the journalists and the editors to have access to content seconds after the recording has started and without needing it to be completed. This access means that they can rapidly create and distribute content, ensuring there are no delays in getting it out to viewers, Kyriazis adds.
Cédric Caumont, Africa Sales Manager at Avid says that like many broadcasters today, ORTO was faced with the challenge to connect creative media professionals in distributed and complex workflow environments efficiently and collaboratively.
It also needed to respond to a broad range of content creation and distribution demands with a single integrated platform in order to handle its new 24-hour format. Avids media management and storage solutions will ultimately help ORTO rapidly create, access, and distribute content easily.
The newsroom
The newsroom was designed using the Avid iNEWS newsroom production system. Avid iNEWS manages the planning of the news production and can communicate the rundown to the rest of the system. Journalists use the Avid Interplay Assist desktop video tool to view, log and cut all of the materials prior to editing. The journalists can start viewing or editing their stories seconds after the start of ingest.
The finishing of all content is carried out on Avid NewsCutter Nitris DX broadcast news editing systems. The editor can open the iNews NRCS tool and link the video to the accompanying story in the news rundown. The editor can also view the material prepared by the journalist in Interplay Assist, which is available instantly. When finished, they can use the Send to Playout menu command to send it to the news studio for playout.
There are eight channels of twin Airspeed Multi Stream servers available for playout for both of ORTOs studios, as well as continuity. The editors can specify to send their finished stories to the appropriate Airspeed/Studio, which avoids the use of tape and speeds up the process. The playout servers are controlled by iNews Command news playout control, which is fully integrated with the iNews NRCS system and can automatically read the rundown created in Avid iNews. Using Avids integrated solution, iNews Command can automatically detect the story from the video ID and can colour-indicate the user when a story is ready for playout.
The archiving of all news material is done using a digital disk-based archive system. The content is stored on Disk Archive ALTO storage systems with a combined capacity of 450TB. The drives are switched off when not in use, which minimises the high cost of power required to fire-up equivalent RAID systems.
The archive is managed by SGLs FlashNET with Avid Interplay Production archive servers and is fully integrated with Avid Interplay. All material is sent to the archive from the Interplay window of the editor or the journalist. Similarly, the user can use the same tool to restore a clip from the archive for quick use in their production.
Avid DNxHD is the HD format, while DVCPro25/50 is the selected SD format.
The database is designed to cover ORTOs complete news, programme, trailer and promo production and archive needs. Custom metadata fields have also been added to allow easier searching within the storage. The solution has been implemented throughout ORTOs facility covering the ingest area, newsroom, editing area, programmes production, archive and studio control.
Telmaco and Avid Professional Services imparted on-site training following the commissioning of the project. This covered both technical and operational aspects of the overall system.
Telmacos Projects Implementation department completed the implementation with support from Avid, SGL and the DAC Professional Services team.
