Avid and Data Media share the latest Spanish broadcast projects

The Ginkgo rooftop in Madrid was the setting in which the latest event of Avid y Data Average. In it, RTVE, Middle Castile-La Mancha, Channel On y Best Digital They have unveiled their latest projects.

Gonzalo del Val, sales manager of Avid in Iberia, has introduced the event with a video in which it has been possible to see different areas in which Avid operates: broadcast production, theaters, post-production rooms, sporting events... "The objective is to regain contact with all of you with presentations of real projects that we are doing, have done, or will do," de Val remarked, before anticipating the moment of transition that the company is facing: "The evolution of the Media Central platform has caused a desire to start working in the cloud and in hybrid environments."

Other avenues that Avid will continue to explore in the future will be generation of alliances with different partners from the audiovisual world; improving solutions end-to-end; the empowerment of collaborative workflows; the expansion of the SaaS offer, or the improvement of speed and efficiency in user processes. All this, with the final objective of improving the offer for its clients. De Val also confirmed that Avid will finally be present at IBC with an important display: stand, spaces for executive meetings, product demos and different events organized by partners.

They also participated in the presentation of the event Tom Evetts, VP of Sales for Media at Avid, who has announced that Avid plans to continue holding this type of events over the coming weeks: “For us as a company it is very important to have this connection with you.” finely, David Hammer, Avid's general sales manager for southern Europe, thanked the organization of the event and the Data Media team “for making this event possible.”

RTVE unifies Prado del Rey, Torrespaña and Canary Islands production

Jesus Garcia, director of the technical area of TVE, has been in charge of presenting the intervention of his colleague Samuel Jiménez, a member of the engineering team, who has been in charge of moving the project to the public attending the Avid event.

The project to renew the RTVE editorial system emerged in 2018 with the intention of integrate existing production systems to reduce the number of digital newsrooms: Prado del Rey news writing, Prado del Rey program post-production, Torrespaña program post-production, Las Palmas production and Tenerife production. The objective was to carry out a single platform: “This philosophy means savings in concepts such as unifying work flows, resources, allowing people to specialize and being able to update systems in parallel.”

The project posed challenges such as unification of five independent newsrooms, unique administration and content management, creating communications between distant headquarters (with the latency challenges that it implies) and a step unpublished on RTVE: the mixture of program and information production systems. The project, born in 2018, required 16 months of implementation. The final solution would end up based on Avid MediaCentral, a large virtualized platform centralized in Prado: 300 concurrent users (450 potentials: 300 MCCUX/150mc), file ingestion (36 simultaneous); SDI intake (52 simultaneous) and service for 7 studios. The project, between awards (which would end up being for Data Media and Telefónica) and a pandemic involved, finally came to fruition. completed in summer 2021.

The solution chosen was a dedicated and ring network structure which allows a some redundancy, “since, if some of the links with the core, you could go the other way." In the same way, a dark fiber between Prado del Rey and Torrespaña, so that “all users are understood as part of the same network.”

The challenge of RTVE Canarias

The Canary Islands, in the words of Jiménez, was the most complex, since they needed to have the ability to edit, but there was a problem of high latency. To solve this issue, it was decided to install local storage Nexis in Tenerife and Las Palmas, which means that all the intakes in this area remain double stored. Furthermore, so that they could manage this media, a service called Avid Editorial Management, “a mini MediaCentral that allows you to browse the media in a more pleasant way.”

Looking to the future, Jesus Garcia confirmed that RTVE is currently immersed in the news editorial update. The next step will be to apply a similar interconnection model in the rest of the territorial centers of the Corporation.

Middle Castilla La Mancha and the remote

Jesus Sanchez Villalba, technical director of Middle Castile La Mancha, focused his intervention on explaining how the Avid system integrated into television was able to adapt to the new circumstances derived from the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the time the pandemic arrived, Sánchez Villalba's team decided to establish two types of users: the one who would work with UX Media Central and the one that I would directly edit in alta. Until then, most users edited directly on high, but with the decentralization and relocation “Many users” began preparing stories directly from the Avid solution. To enable this workflow, Sánchez decided to implement with the help of Data Average a software HP in order to implement secure connections to the Avid UX and the client MAM by Tedial.

Looking to the future, Castilla-La Mancha Media plans to continue relying on the avid systems. Your next step is to change your encoding to AVC-Intra100, which will imply a change in your storage processes, which will predictably go from LTO8 a LTO9. On the other hand, Sánchez plans to be able to interconnect and unify all the systems of each delegation to be able to work on a single system and not from small semi-independent islands, which is its current model.

Canal Sur bets on cloud models

David Martinez, technical director of Data Average, was responsible for detailing the ambitious plan of Channel On, which will launch at the end of the year and will represent a paradigm shift at the state level.

Until now, Canal Sur's approach was to use seven Avid radial systems. Back in 2006, small interconnected systems were implemented, not a unified system: 8 MAM and PAM, and everything in SD. 15 years later, Canal Sur's needs went through improve the system to implement remote work in all its offices; provide access to PAM and MAM in a unified way: improve the immediacy of publication on social networks and the web; improve content ingestion from anywhere; implement HD throughout the chain (AVC-Intra 100); centralize the service model, and get lightweight editorial editors, a very important point that can be done through a web interface.

Once these requirements were tendered, the award went to the project presented by Media and Telephone Data. The solution that has been decided to implement, and here comes the main novelty, is the creation of a “private cloud”: “The core of the system is taken from the Telefónica CPD in San Bernardo. The only system that Canal Sur has in its facilities are servers; the rest remains outside their facilities,” says Martínez.

This interesting approach is possible thanks to solutions such as the system PAM Avid Media Central Cloud UX; el MAM Tedial Evolution, integrated into MediaCentral; Maestro for graphics; or the transfer portal FileCatalyst. This approach translates into data as the ability to 300 simultaneous users, 870TB raw storage, 10 PT of LTO9 storage, 58 SDI ingest channels, 88 playout channels y 14 graphic channels to provide service to all studios.

Audio for cinema with Best Digital

Victor del Castillo, technical director of Best Digital, closed the presentation of projects moving away from the scope of broadcast production to stop at the audio applied to film productions.

After reviewing the history of the study, Del Castillo wanted to highlight the features, versatility and ease of use of your current audio table: the S6 de Avid. The system, beyond being able to manage hundreds of tracks and control several Pro Tools In parallel, it brings great benefits to your daily production as for the adaptability capacity. As Del Castillo has rightly highlighted, the changes in the film industry, characterized by the reduction of production times and the presence of freelancers to finish different pieces, has made it essential have tables with a very simple learning curve.

Finally, beyond highlighting the capacity of the table to carry out surround sound mixes, including Dolby Atmos, the technical director of Best Digital has highlighted the advantages of maintenance contract that offers this solution: “If there is any type of breakdown, in just 24 hours they can change any module on the table.”