Editshare technology ensures Zeppelin TV does not lose any detail in the production of 'Big Brother' in Spain

To manage and channel the huge amount of images, Aicox Soluciones and Techex have implemented a complete Editshare solution with centralized storage, integrated Media Asset Management (MAM) and workflow in a multi-channel ingestion environment.

The technical challenges that the production of Big Brother They have found the best ally in Editshare, made up of Aicox Solutions and distributed by Techex Ibérica.

Big Brother y VIP Big Brother They have become a phenomenon and an institution in Spain, where more than 22 seasons have already been made and presented on Telecinco. All seasons of Big Brother They have been produced in Madrid by the Zeppelin TV production company of EndemolShine Iberia. Big Brother has just finished its 17th season and has the fifth season of VIP Big Brother, making it the longest version of the franchise Big Brother.

In line with the concept that George Orwell captured in his work 1984, Big Brother Spain It brings together individuals from various walks of life and isolates them in a fully furnished facility where their every movement and opinion is tracked 24 hours a day, seven days a week and always live. As with most reality shows, there are bickering, villains, drama, and weekly eliminations until a grand prize is awarded to the last woman or man left, meaning the only competitor still living in the house.

Each season of Big Brother Spain It is filmed over a period of approximately 90 days, with daily summary programs and several galas on live television; in addition to content disseminated through the network. To capture all the action and adventures, more than 70 cameras Panasonic They are placed throughout the house, recording the contestants 24 hours a day.

José Luis Gacal, technical director of Zeppelin TV, highlights that this production faces "a large amount of images, and everything has to be recorded and processed to make the daily videos and, of course, for the live gala programs. The large volume of content, combined with the intense rhythm of the daily videos, means that we must have several people watching and developing the story at all times. Our staff works simultaneously on multiple projects throughout the day to review the content, create a story and produce a program that no one wants to miss."

In addition to broadcasting different video content every day, Zeppelin TV is also responsible for ensuring that the production is disseminated through the web. Gacal explains that "this type of production system forces us to manage several types of products on a daily basis: daily videos, weekly galas, promotional cuts, trailers, and web transmission. It is a process that must be fast and fluid and requires a solid and proven platform that allows collaborative and highly available workflows. In addition to the infrastructure and equipment to deal with all these requirements, having technological partners who understand our business and are capable of responding to certain situations with solvency and speed is "In this sense, both Aicox and Techex have provided me with flexibility and peace of mind."

A mountain of content

To meet their needs, Zeppelin TV had developed its own, tailor-made platform. However, this platform already demanded adaptation to the new specifications and required an enormous and expensive amount of resources. As Zeppelin TV's volume and workload increased, the expense of maintaining it and keeping it up to date with the latest technologies outweighed the benefits. In 2014, the Zeppelin TV technical team began looking for a replacement with a prestigious brand that offered the features and functions required to undertake productions with high production rates and demanding workloads. In 2016 they finally found it in a complete EditShare solution supplied by Aicox Soluciones and Techex Iberia.

To harness the mountain of content and support such a uniquely creative workflow, Aicox Soluciones and Techex implemented a complete Editshare solution with centralized storage, integrated Media Asset Management (MAM) and workflow that enables multi-channel ingestion, all within an Edithsare-certified Arista 10G Ethernet network.

"EditShare is a company known by the EndemolShine Group that has extensive experience with productions such as Big Brother. This gave us confidence that they could offer the services we needed, backed by a strong commitment to this industry," highlights José Luis Gacal.

Edition

The core of this new, super-efficient setup includes 6-8 editing suites Avid, 4 stations for production and 4 stations for logging/coordination, in addition to other consultation equipment. The system allows more positions to be added during production if it requires it. All stations connected to a huge 384 TB highly available EditShare XStream EFS storage system (2 metadata controllers), with Flow Media Asset Management and 2 Geevs servers with 4 SD/HD recording channels each, all perfectly integrated.

"Every program feed, editing station and content laptop is connected to EditShare. It is the first point of contact for almost everyone involved in creating Big Brother content," adds José Luis. EditShare serves the staff of all four productions as the primary content repository, providing advanced media production and sharing capabilities.

Relevant content details, such as metadata and custom scene tagging, are captured and logged with Flow Logger, and stored on the EditShare XStream EFS server. This ensures that the team working on any of the four video productions has shared access, in real time, to all content stored on a central storage platform and in a format that is very easily searchable, through Flow's search tools.

Zeppelin TV's Avid editors can simultaneously work on program development and collaborate on the same story, thanks in large part to the advanced project sharing features of EditShare XStream EFS. Rules built into the system ensure that no content is accidentally overwritten or deleted when shared between workgroups, Gacal reviews. "Our editors often work as a team on multiple productions. Three to six editors collaborate on the development of each story. Fundamental to this type of creative process is EditShare's shared storage project feature, which allows you to shape and track the evolution of the plot and the sharing of media. This way, you work in a single, friction-free environment, in which content and ideas are shared, from ingestion to delivery."

Cataloging

The inclusion of Flow's Media Asset Management gives the Zeppelin TV team a level of control to manage the enormous amount of media, beyond the editing station. Producers and coordinators can log into central storage, search and retrieve media, script concepts, and share new ideas for the show with editing staff.

“Flow solves some pain points for us,” says José Luis, “as its logging capabilities, especially templates, help us standardize image indexing, making it much easier and faster for our writers and editors to organize and work with the content they need.”

Zeppelin TV's loggers work 24/7 on incoming content and, thanks to Flow templates, quickly choose the video segment relevant to the development of the story. In the next step, we have those in charge of validating and supervising each of the cataloged videos. They also use Flow to access and note which video will be used and where.

Coordinators then use Flow's production tools to quickly build proxy-based sequences so Avid editors can finalize them, saving a tremendous amount of time in the editing room. “Flow was also incredibly helpful to the coordinators in terms of searching and processing the recordings for the various video content of Big Brother. They no longer need to sit with the editor to review images. Everyone can access and navigate, mark the content they want as part of the story and share with editors in real time. This way you can advance processes and be more efficient." Soon, the Zeppelin TV team will use Flow Automation to re-import archived sequences, eliminating the need for transcoding and manual creation of new files. The process will further improve overall production productivity.

EditShare's reliability has proven to be as important as its content management capabilities. "When working on 'live television and reality shows,' there is no second take. It is a 24-hour production schedule and a flawless operation. We have to capture every moment without losing any detail," says José Luis. XStream EFS is designed to handle large media volumes, extremely high data rates, and the complexity of high-speed environments. Leverage key technologies like SwiftRead to mitigate resource contention, ensuring Zeppelin TV's production runs smoothly and is 100% available. This reliability was demonstrated when the system was upgraded from 3 to 6 storage nodes, an expansion that was crucial to doubling storage capacity and avoiding having to delete content, and which was done during days of intense production work and achieving zero downtime. The reliability of EditShare's workflow and platform has ensured that Zeppelin TV has never missed a deadline or missed a moment of the action.