Greater flexibility and speed in RTVE news with Avid

With Avid Technology as a technological partner, the Spanish Radio Television Corporation, the largest multimedia group in Spain and a benchmark for information in Spanish throughout the world, is carrying out extensive, highly reliable digitization of its news programs, in a tape-free environment, and capable of improving the production flow and professional experience.

The Spanish Radio Television Corporation (RTVE), the largest multimedia group in Spain and a benchmark for information in Spanish throughout the world, has undertaken an ambitious project to digitize its news programs with the aim of implementing a file-based workflow capable of increasing flexibility, speed, productivity and quality in its numerous information spaces.

At the same time, RTVE is carrying out the interconnection of its production centers spread throughout all the Autonomous Communities in order to gradually articulate the access of all its professionals to its documentary collections (the corporation has the largest audiovisual archive in Spain) and to the “fresh” material with which they work with news, programs or fiction, ensuring total accessibility of the media.

With seven television channels and six radio channels, information is one of the main pillars of the group. Both Canal 24 Horas (24/7 news) and the sports channel Teledeporte and its numerous information spaces, among which its News News programs stand out, uninterrupted leaders for more than three years, needed a system capable of managing an increasingly greater volume of information with the possibility of delocalized access to the material.

After studying possible solutions, the Corporation began a gradual technological change in 2006, with Avid as a technological partner, to carry out highly reliable digitalization capable of improving production flow and professional experience.

It is noteworthy that, in a risky and pioneering bet, RTVE began its digitalization in the heart of the network, in Torrespaña. From this production and broadcast center, where thousands of hours of information are produced annually, Televisión Española abandons the video tape in its daily life and enters fully into a world of files.

Revolution in workflow

Among the numerous challenges to which Avid has responded, the implementation of functionalities in various environments and locations, with remote access, and the sharing and transfer of media stands out.

After the digitalization of the Torrespaña nodal center, RTVE has already launched projects with a similar scheme in its centers in Mérida, Las Palmas and Sant Cugat del Vallés (Barcelona).

Among the solutions provided by Avid in this project, the Avid ISIS 7000 shared storage solution and the Avid Interplay PAM content management system (which includes ingestion, archiving, encoding, transcoding and transfer, among other processes) stand out.

As a tool for creating audiovisual stories capable of combining the different elements of writing, both at the text, video and audio level, RTVE opted for Avid iNews Instinct.

In this new environment, Avid Interplay Assist allows professionals working against the clock to add locators, comments, annotations and personalized alerts that allow you to find the clips you need and the most essential information at all times. To collaborate on the project, editing and production assistants, producers, screenwriters, post-production supervisors, directors, graphic artists and other team members simply network their desktop and laptop computers to work in a common environment.

Although for RTVE the fundamental editing tool is iNews Instinct, the Avid NewsCutter software gives them great flexibility to supervise the submissions made to broadcast.

In the acquisition and reproduction of all the material, with connection to the work group, the speed, capacity, administration and flexibility of the entire process entrusted in the case of TVE to the Avid Airspeed MS plays a very important role.

In the case of the territorial centers, TVE has also chosen to manage the news playout with Avid iNews Command, a solution that allows dynamic interoperation with the schedules of pieces and the playlists for broadcast.

To get an idea of how ambitious the project is, it is enough to point out that the number of positions that have access to online material, in the center of Torrespaña alone, reaches more than 300 simultaneous access licenses.

All this technology allows any professional to access the universe of images from their position, with advanced access and editing tools, in an area of interconnected centers both in contribution and transport. Once this level is completed, the next step towards which Televisión Española is moving is to share all these synergies with Radio Nacional de España and interactive media.

Access to content

The infrastructure that RTVE is implementing will allow professionals to access content on four levels.

A first level allows journalists to edit the most recent images at their own workplace, leaving the content available to the rest of the organization, avoiding the usual bottlenecks throughout the workflow.

A second level will make it possible to access all locally stored content from any production center. The third level will establish connectivity of the centers with the online media that may be available in Torrespaña. Finally, an access protocol is being established for the historical collection which, once the digitization process is completed, will be made up of approximately one million hours (currently around 250,000 hours).

At this time, it is being proposed that the historical collection be consulted by all professionals in the organization, with simple office tools. From there, according to access and privilege protocols, they will be available to make the cuts that each professional requires to their production system. The documentary collection has been planned independently of the production system, connecting the Avid ISIS 7000 with the corresponding access gateways.

In the case of the Mérida, Las Palmas and Barcelona centers, the entire workflow has been planned so as not to leave the production environment, being able to archive and recover with the specific Avid format, avoiding transcoding so that searches and selection are closer to the user.

In this scheme, the professionals of each program or news program choose how many hours they want to manage... In total, an equivalent of two years is saved in which each editorial team establishes what they want to save and with what metadata, leaving the material directly accessible to the production system.

According to José Anta, director of Technology and Audiovisual Production Systems, “although Torrespaña has its own high-resolution system, we intend for it to be separated from the documentary collection, thus having immediate access from the same user tool in production.”

Pere Vila, director of Planning and Technological Innovation, comments that "in the new production system for television, any professional in one of our centers will be able to work autonomously, connect with Torrespaña to access the images of the day or the documentary collections, and all this under a common contribution system for television, radio and interactive media. After the implementation of the new production systems, we are now advancing in the IP contribution by carrying out interconnection tests between Torrespaña and the Mérida center."

Change in business model

Regarding what this change has meant both in the business model and in the daily life of professionals, Vila has assured that "it is comparable to the difference between working with a typewriter or with a computer. We achieved a significant improvement in the quality of the finished product, achieving in the same period of time having more material, crystallizing in greater productivity."

For his part, José Anta adds that "in a company the size of RTVE, introducing an editorial system that accommodates absolutely all the information needs that Torrespaña covers has been a first-level challenge. After considering different options, we finally opted for someone who gave us a solution capable of handling such a huge volume of information and personnel involved in the information spaces, including Canal 24 Horas."

In this context, a key aspect has been the reliability and security of the system, “since being a public company, its news programs, audience leaders, are looked at closely in a non-stop environment 24/7,” says Anta.

Darío Sampedro, director of Digital Systems Exploitation, assures that "we are going to eliminate the bottlenecks that were generated in in-booth editing, and significantly increase productivity. There are many days when we leave with only 40-50% of the news finished."

Javier de la Oliva, deputy editor Telediario2, highlights that “journalists like to rush until the last minute, to tell the latest and now we have this advantage.”

San Cugat

Inaugurated in 1983 and with a surface area of around 50,000 m2, the TVE center in Sant Cugat del Vallés (Barcelona) is a key production center in the Corporation's structure. From there, numerous spaces are produced both for the Catalan circuit and for all of Spain with programs as popular as For everyone La2, Los Lunnies o Know and win. In addition, La2 and the Teledeporte sports channel are managed from here.

Drawing on the experience in Madrid, and later in Mérida and Las Palmas, Sant Cugat also made a big bet by going from analogue to digital although, in this case, against the clock due to the imminence, at the end of last year, of the Pope's visit and the holding of regional elections, Avid satisfactorily meeting all deadline expectations.

The Barcelona project, with Avid as a technological partner, was tackled in two phases: in the first, progress was made with news writing, with a development very similar to that carried out in Torrespaña. In the second phase, the Teledeporte channel was fully digitized. In this case, the entire infrastructure has been configured to work in high definition both at the input and output server levels.

Carles Balaguer, head of the Central Control Unit Catalonia and responsible for Project Coordination at TVE Sant Cugat, states that "being able to make cross queries and access the material stored in Madrid and vice versa undoubtedly enriches the information. The system has all the tools from ingestion, editing, archiving... working in a single environment."

From Sant Cugat, Teledeporte produces a daily half-hour news program of its own production from Monday to Sunday.

The human factor

Avid's Professional Services departments have supported TVE at all times, both in terms of user training, consulting and implementation of workflows adapted to their needs.

José Luis Romero, director of the digitalization project, maintains that "although the changes are harsh and technology gives peace of mind, the human process that means changing the way of working plays a specific role. This human factor of adaptation to change is key."

Javier de la Oliva admits that "we had many doubts and questions, but when we started using the digital system, we saw the great advantages it brings us by making all the images available to all professionals. Currently there can be 20 or 30 people working with the same raw material throughout the day... This shared warehouse allows us to work with a number of hours that would be impossible with the previous system."

Alberto Sierra, editor of Teledeporte, for his part, adds that "At first there were people who did not see themselves capable of working without an editor and today they would not be able to return to the editing room. In Sant Cugat they have almost gone from the Olivetti to the computer, and curiously, whoever did not know where the "on" button was was editing in a week."

Without a doubt, the most significant change experienced among RTVE professionals is the possibility of being able to edit, in addition to the integration that allows the information, from being ingested to archived, to be viewed and managed from any position.

To do this, the user must know at all times where to find the stocking they are looking for. “For this you have to be very rigorous, implementing workflows in which actions are limited, descriptors that mark the origin, standardizing the names of the clips... The truth is that the losses of information have been truly anecdotal,” says Carles Balaguer.

After the digitalization of the main production centers, TVE is now undertaking an ambitious interconnection project, without losing sight of new challenges such as high definition.