SKAI Sports Production and Archive System

Who is SKAI Media Group?

SKAI Group is one of the most successful Media Groups in Greece. It operates one national free-to-air TV Channel SKAI TV, 3 Radio Stations (Skai 100.3, Red FM 96.3, Medodia FM 99.2), one news portal (www.skai.gr), and SKAI publishing. The family also owns one of the most historical Greek Newspapers, Kathimerini.

SKAI TV started broadcasting in 2006 and has a general entertainment program that includes morning shows, news, talk shows, documentaries and TV series.

SKAI’s philosophy is the offering of High Quality Program and objective news update with emphasis on providing its viewers multifaceted knowledge, open information, free exchange of views and quality entertainment.

Project Description 2014

In 2014, SKAI signed a new contract with OTE, the National Telecom Operator in Greece, for broadcast & production services of 10 HD Pay TV-Channels for OTE TV’s triple-play platform.

In June 2014, Telmaco was awarded the turnkey project to design all the infrastructure of the new system, supply equipment, integrate 3^rd party equipment, wire, install, commission, design the workflow and train operators.

The system includes:

• 10-channel Continuity System
• 18-channel Ingest System
• Sports Production & Archive System
• Scheduling System   
• Signal Distribution Area (Master Control)

Overall System

Telmaco designed a flexible tapeless system for sports production and continuity playout.

It has based the Continuity System on the Grass Valley iTX playout system and the Production System on the Avid Media Central Platform. SKAI is thus able to record multiple live sports events, edit and voiceover them, create highlights, create sports analysis TV shows, replay them and archive them.

The scheduling of all TV Channels was selected to be done by PROVYS TV Office.

Integrations

The software integration of the various systems components was carried out by Telmaco. Telmaco, in collaboration with Avid, MOG, Provys, SGL and Grass Valley, completed the following integrations:

• Integration of the MOG ingest servers with Provys. The operators create the scheduling of all ingests for each day, which is imported to the Ingest Control software of SKAI.
• Integration of MOG with Avid and iTX. Each recording from the MOG is send simultaneously both in op1a wrapper in iTx HP NOL storage, and in opAtom wrapper in Avid ISIS and check-in in Interplay.
• Integration of Provys with iTX. The scheduled playlist for each channel is automatically imported in iTX. At the same time, any changes made in iTX are automatically updating the schedule in Provys.
• Integration of ORAD graphics playout with iTX and Provys. The scheduling operators schedule Secondary Channel Branding events created in ORAD which are triggered from iTX during playlist playout.
• Integration of SGL Flashnet Archive Management software with Avid & iTX. In this way production can archive/restore material based on sequences & projects, while iTX operators can archive/restore programs for playout.
• Integration of ENPS newsroom with Avid Media Central platform. Editors open ENPS from their NRCS tool within the editing environment. The selected story for Sports News takes the Video ID from ENPS automatically during creation. When sent to Studio for Playout, iNews Command receives the Rundown from ENPS via MOS, and automatically detects the stories that are ready.

Continuity System

iTX is a modern architecture for an IT-based playout system. The system installed consists of a mirrored database and application servers, 10 mirrored playout servers, 2 ingest servers, 10 clients and large 50TB NOL storage.

Any operator has the flexibility to control from 1 channel by itself to all channels together. A Miranda touch-screen Master Control panel is installed for every channel.

The continuity system was designed with the following signal flow:

Continuity Signal Flow Diagram

Scheduling and Rights Management

The Provys TV office system has been installed to manage all parts related with the programming of the 10 TV Programs. The system registers all program assets, manages their TV rights and re-runs, assists in Program planning, makes the macro and micro scheduling, including the scheduling of ingests.

Sports Production and Archive System

The Sports Production system was designed based on an Avid Interplay PAM solution. 192TB of Avid ISIS storage offers 1500 hrs of XDcamHD material on-line. Avid Interplay Production Asset Management is used in order to easily manage all material, and assist in all parts of the production. Avid Media Composer are the news editors and Avid Airspeed 5500 the Studio Playout server. Telmaco had to integrate the Avid production system with SKAI’s current equipment: Sony XDCAM VTRs and ENPS newsroom.

Journalists are using Interplay Central web interface to view material, select highlights, edit sequences, and send to playout. Both Journalists and Editors can start viewing material a few seconds after ingest is initiated.

Journalists are preparing the News Rundown in their ENPS NRCS system. Finished stories are sent for playout in the Studio Playout Servers. The Newsroom Playout Control System iNews Command automatically detects the finished sequences and updates the rundown. The missing items are clearly indicated so that Playout operator can respond if file is missing.

Any sequence or Master clip can be sent to archive. SGL Flashnet is controlling a Spectra Logic T50e LTO6 archive which can hold up to 50 x tapes. Restore can be triggered from any Interplay client.

System Philosophy

Τhe infrastructure of the complete installation was designed and installed in HD format. All equipment (router, glue, on-air switcher, etc) is High Definition HD 3G ready.

The system was designed analytically in order to give to SKAI all possible flexibility in terms of connectivity, redundancy operations and future expansion. SKAI is capable to connect almost any source to multiple destinations within the station with various points of control.

Miranda/Grass Valley has been Telmaco’s main partner for all infrastructure equipment including Kaleido Multiviewers, NVision router, and Miranda Densite glue products.