OPEN TV, New Broadcast Facility, Greece

Who is OPEN TV

OPEN TV is a national free-to-air private TV Channel licensed to transmit its program across Greece.

The channel is part of DIMERA Group who is investing in various sectors including hotels, port of Salonica, tobacco factory, PAOK football club and Media.

In 2017, DIMERA Group purchased a Newspaper (ETHNOS) and the shares of Epsilon TV which in November 2018 was re-branded as OPEN TV.

Project Description 2018

In 2018, Dimera Group decided to invest to a new broadcast facility for their TV Channel operation, in the area of Paiania, Greece.

The new complex includes 3 different buildings:

• The Main Building 1 includes 2 Main TV Studios and a small 3rd one to assist smaller production requirements, controlled by 2 control rooms. The CAR as well as the Master Control and Continuity Areas are also located in this building.
• The Production Building 2 is hosting all the production departments and 9 editing systems for TV productions.
• The News Building 3 is where all journalists (including the journalists of the newspaper ETHNOS) and where the News Studio and its control room are located.

Telmaco was awarded the following turn-key parts of the project:

• HD TV Studio Equipment including 16 x Cameras, 3 x Vision Mixers, 3 x Audio Mixers
• A complete tapeless Production, Ingest, Playout and Digital Archive System
• The upgrade and migration of the existing HD continuity
• Intercom System for complete TV station
• 90 x LCD screens for VideoWall with Controller

HD TV Studio infrastructure

The core part of the installation included the following parts

• 16 x Broadcast HD Cameras
• Tripods and Pedestals
• Intercom System
• 3 x Studio Control Rooms
• 3 x Audio Mixing Areas with Audio Router

16 x Broadcast HD Cameras

OPEN TV has selected Grass Valley LDX-82 HD TV cameras, for their proven quality, breaking images, and flexibility to add HDR and 1080P functionality via license upgrade.

The cameras come together with Fujinon HA series 18x7.6 and 14x4.5 lenses.

A mixture of Vinten Vision 250 Tripods and Pedestals have been selected.

The cabling of the Cameras has been completed using Fiber Cables and by using appropriate wall boxes & patch panels the customer can move cameras between studios whenever there is additional requirements in any of the 3 Studios.

Intercom

A Clearcom Eclipse HX Omega Intercom System with 32x 4 Wire/Panel Ports and 64x IP Ports is managing the communication of all technical areas.

Studio Control Rooms

Grass Valley Kahuna Vision Mixers are the heart of the Production of each Control Room.

Each Control Room is equipped with a Kahuna 9600, 2 M/E, 60 1080p/HD/SDI I/Ps & 64 1080p/HD/SDI O/Ps multi format  production switcher with MAKE M/E FUNCTION that can deliver a total of 8 X M/Es by splitting the 2 Full M/E’s, and rearranging the resources -eKeys, super Keys, utility buses ,etc– according to production needs.

Eight (8) channels in total of Avid Airspeed 5500 servers are available in the 3 studios for the playout of clips produced for the shows.

The playout servers are controlled by iNews Command playout automation system. It is fully integrated with the iNews NRCS system and can automatically read the rundown created in iNews.

Audio Control Rooms

LAWO mc236 Audio Mixers are the heart of the Audio Production in each Audio Control Room.

For intelligent resource mapping and additional reliability, the 3 x LAWO surfaces are interconnected via a LAWO Nova 73 HD router which handles the main I/O section in both digital and analog domain, plus the interface with the corresponding stageboxes.

Production, Ingest, Playout and Archive System

The system installed was based on Avid Media Central Platform technology including:

• Shared Storage with Production Asset Management
• 12-channel Ingest with Scheduling
• File-Based Ingest and Transcode System
• Web-Based Clients for Browsing and NRCS Preparation
• Video Editing Suites for News, Trailers and Documentaries
• 8-channel Studio Playout with Studio Automation
• Digital Archive Tape Library controlled by HSM system
  
  

Shared Storage with Production Asset Management

The core of the system was Avid NEXIS central shared storage with 2 x 120ΤΒ chassis. The networking of the system is based on Cisco Ethernet switches with copper and optical connectivity. Material is managed by the Avid Interplay Production Asset Management System in clustered architecture.

Ingest Automation

The SDI ingest of all materials is managed centrally from the Glookast Scheduler. It controls 12 SD/HD channels from 3 x Glookast Gloobox 4CH ingest servers. The ingest operators can schedule all recordings either from Live Satellite and MW Links, or from VTR’s using RS-422 control.

In addition, file ingest is achieved from a Telestream Vantage System. Vantage can also transcode and re-wrap files that come from different file formats to ensure compatibility.

All ingest materials are automatically transferred to NEXIS and update the Interplay PAM database. In addition they can be transferred to the Morpheus Continuity Playout Automation System. While ingesting, the Interplay PAM allows the journalists and the editors to have access on the material literally a few seconds after ingest has started and even if the ingest continues.

Newsroom and Journalist Browsing
The Newsroom was designed using iNews newsroom automation. iNews manages the planning of the Sports Production shows of the complete day and can communicate the rundown to the rest of the system. Journalists use the Avid Interplay Central web based software to view, log and edit all of the materials prior to editing. Journalist can start viewing or editing their stories only a few seconds after the start of the ingest.

Editing

The finishing of all items is carried out by Avid Media Composer Editing with NewsCutter Option. The editor can open the iNews NRCS tool and link the video story to be created with the news rundown. He can also view the material prepared by the journalist in Interplay Assist which is instantly available. When finished, the editor can use the “Send to Playout” menu command to send it to the news studio for playout.

Studio Playout

OPEN TV has 3 Studios in their building and 8 channels of Airspeed 5500 server are available for playout in all studios.

The playout servers are controlled by iNews Command playout automation system. It is fully integrated with the iNews NRCS system and can automatically read the rundown created in iNews. Using Avid’s integrated solution it can automatically detect the story from the Video ID and can color-indicate the user when a story is ready for playout.

Digital Archive

All material can be archived to a Spectra Logic Stack Digital Robotic Tape Library with 3 x LTO8 drives, controlled by SGL Flashnet Archive Management System.

SGL Flashnet integrates with both Avid Interplay Production System and Morpheus Continuity Automation Systems. So both editors (or journalists) from the Avid Media Composer UI and Master Control operators can send material to archive or can request material to be restored.

SGL Flashnet has its own WEB GUI that allows users to search for material and admin tools.

Continuity

For final Program Playout of either long or short duration (movies, recorded shows, promos, commercials etc) OPEN TV employs two GV’s ICE systems in a limited main - backup configuration, under the control of GV’s Morpheus automation system, During the migration phase, Telmaco redesigned and rewired the whole infrastructure, based on a newly proposed and installed GV Masterpiece Master Control Switcher, which enhances significantly the capabilities of the system and offers extra resiliency . In addition, it performed the expansion of the automation system to include redundancy.