Telesur Internacional installs a modern news production system based on VSN technology

The ambitious project will have an innovative VSN solutions platform in its production environment, with 16 ingest channels, 15 MAM licenses, 15 VSNIPTransfer licenses and 48TB of storage integrated with Avid News Cutter and iNews.

The Venezuelan Telesur Internacional has launched an innovative news production system based on VSNExplorer content management technology and the VSNSpider platform. VSN for the management and automation of workflows. This will provide the system with speed, ease of use and integration with social networks and streaming and VOD platforms.

The solution provided contemplates integration with the iNews news writing platform that the network already has, with licenses for 15 journalists, 5 Avid NewsCutter editors, and a 48TB centralized storage for production, which houses the raw and edited content in a transparent way for the environment. Avid.

An automated process is also included for the digitization of news agency content based on VSNAutorec Director, which controls 2 VSNAutorec Capturer+ servers with two channels each for a total of four channels, which record per baseband in OPAtom format. This subsequently enables native integration with NewsCutter editors, making this one of the industry's most powerful integrations with Avid editing environments. An additional 12Ch of ingest from other news networks based on 6 VSNBroadrec servers with two channels each were also included.

An important challenge to solve was managing the numerous correspondents that Telesur has around the world. To this end, the client was provided with an IP-accelerated content contribution server, VSNIPTransfer, with 15 floating contribution licenses, so that notes in native format can be sent in an accelerated manner to the production headquarters, both in Quito and Caracas, from anywhere in the world with Internet access.

The platform also includes 2 dedicated VSNWorker Transcoder servers for transcoding and normalization of formats from different sources, based on a Harmonic Promedia Carbon platform, which are managed intelligently and transparently for the user by VSNSpider.

Mario Díaz, sales manager for Latin America, has highlighted that "VSN from its beginnings made itself known with a system open to the industry, at a time when closed and proprietary systems were the fashion, and finally time proved us right and the market followed our steps. Thanks to this, for many years we have accumulated important know-how to today be able to truly guarantee integration with other platforms. In this particular case, with Avid proprietary editors and formats with which we are fully compatible from start to finish in all our platform.”

For his part, Eduardo Moreno, Telesur's technological advisor for this project, argued that for them the speed of work and ease of use was the key to choosing the winning company, so, after studying in detail the architecture proposed by VSN and knowing in detail other installations carried out by this company in similar environments that work successfully, they made the final decision.

Pablo Romero, technical manager of Telesur in Caracas, added that they emphasized the features of the product, its integration with the Avid editing system natively and its installed references. “We spoke with customers who have it, we made inquiries about the level of support and after-sales response, and we received good recommendations from other media users themselves,” added the executive.