Revolution in La 7: the nine renovations that outline the future of television in Murcia
Olga Arribas, technical director of The 7, addresses the new stage of public television in the region of Murcia, revealing the nine technological renewals that will mark the future of television.
10 months. That is the minimum period that has been given CBM, awarded the management of The 7, to undertake a ambitious technological and philosophical remodeling project of the regional television of Murcia. The subsidiary of Sequoia Group has ahead a period of five years to continue consolidating the chain as a regional technological reference.
Your television management work will be complemented with a transversal transformation of the company. To a complete civil work that will transform interior and exterior spaces of the headquarters of Molina de Segura, joins a renewal of a significant number of technological elements that will help the medium to continue offering public service work to its audience, tune in through the digital terrestrial television, or see them through their streaming web.
Olga Arribas, technological architect of La 7, reviews the axes of the metamorphosis of television, which point to a more medium accessible, efficient, versatile, digital and of course technological.
1. A renewed news plate
One of the axes of La 7's programming is its information services, which provide the Murcian public with the main news from the region and the entire national territory. To provide a new staging closer to the trends that are accompanying the rest of Spanish television, it has been decided to renew the scenery by structuring its new proposal around a 17.5 meter curved screen Alfalite, suppliers and installers of LEDs. The system is complemented by a media manager sucker that dialogues directly with the production control to feed this large support with content.
The screen has been in operation for weeks and the result is completely satisfactory, as highlighted Arribas: “They are giving fantastic results.”
2. Virtual set to create unprecedented spaces
Historically, La 7 has had a virtual set with a chroma floor and three walls. However, this system was underutilized in favor of other sets that depended on the real image.
Now, Murcian television has decided to implement a system Pixotope to articulate the staging of these virtual worlds and some new cameras PTZ with capabilities of tracking. In this way, the company will be able to take advantage of all the possibilities offered by the sets virtuales and be able to extend its use to different formats. To feed this “green canvas” with content, La 7 has expanded its plantilla de grafistas, who have begun to design spaces with specific software such as the rendering system Say Maya Autodesk.
This set is currently used regularly with an interview format called among women and the event program Code 112, although it is expected that they will be added new formats imminently. In fact, Arribas does not rule out its coordinated use in informative spaces, since the set can be interconnected with its production control.
3. Information system prepared for a digital approach
One of the main protagonists of the transversal technological transformation that La 7 is going through is the renewal of your system Avid drafting of informative. The obsolescence of the previous system, and the urgent need to continue delving into its possibilities of interaction with social platforms, were the reasons that pushed the team led by Arribas to undertake this implementation.
New versions of systems such as MediaComposer o MediaCentral They provide television with new ways of working, as well as the possibility of taking the production of its content to the cloud if necessary. Similarly, the solution accepts implementation with the module x.news, which allows an integration in social networks y online video platforms: “This system is fundamental since it accompanies our strategy for our news editorial to evolve into a 100% digital editorial,” says Arribas.
Avid systems span the five branches of La 7 in the Region of Murcia. In this way, television can work in real time to prepare and finalize the content that can be seen in the region's news programs or on its social media.
At the same time, Arribas confirms that the Avid system has been implemented following a model SaaS, a system that in his opinion is very convenient for televisions that “have less continuity over time,” and that, in his case, is equally convenient, since it covers the five years of concession of the management of public television in the region of Murcia.
4. MOJO: mobile phones arrive to add to the broadcasts
Outside of your unit DSNG, backpacks 4K Teradek in property, and the use and rental of the broadcast backpacks from firms like LiveU o Dejero, La 7 has opted for mobility connections using phones mobiles. Specifically, television has deployed 35 teams of MOJO (Mobile Journalism) composed of branded mobile phones Samsung, stabilizers, microphone, tripods, a small torch y accessories.
Arribas considers that this movement, which is increasingly widespread among television editorial teams and producers, does not seek to replace to the transmission backpacks by those mobile phones. On the contrary, these teams will allow La 7 “to have more options and a greater number of people prepared to offer coverage in some exceptional situation.” Among these events, Arribas lists a election day, a very notable quote or even a response to a catastrophe like a flood: "It has already happened to us that, because of the floods, a journalist could not get to the delegation and he sent us a report recorded with his cell phone from his house that he perfectly matched. (...) That's what it's about: giving the editors one more tool so that they can make their total or their on site”.
Editors who record pieces using this mobile-based system will be able to contribute to the piece using a self-developed application called “The 7 Citizen Reporter” or through a dedicated server. Kiloview D300 which serves as puente IS to transmit the audiovisual content al execution control.
5. Own production systems for Twitch and YouTube
A very important part of La 7's digital strategy involves being present in the open online video platforms that allow the production of live events: “As a public media outlet, we had to delve into these aspects and give a new look to what we were doing.”
In this way, Murcian television has made an effort to hire specialist staff in managing the web world and social networks. For Arribas, it is essential to have professionals who know their visual language, the one that is slightly different from the one on television.
From the more purely technological side, La 7 is already producing formats for Twitch using the software vMix, which provides benefits such as the ability to define presets to facilitate the production of the only person in charge of the format, who will lead the conversation, play videos or manage video calls. As the technical director explains, “the only thing the technical support staff does is turn on the room and turn it off later.” In the case of making a direct via YouTube, the Murcian television technology team has opted for open software Note Studio, which is implemented in other televisions such as TV3.
6. Continuity that optimizes each process
The renewal of continuity was crucial for La 7. During recent years, television had used the system Vector3 with multiple servers with shared storage. However, this system installed in 2015 as part of a significant investment that the chain made that year had begun to pay off. compatibility problems with some hardware.
Pursuing having a updated system and have access to new features that will better adapt to their usual operation, Arribas and his team have opted for the system VSN, whose installation will be completed in the coming months. The solution will allow improvements in your workflow such as simultaneous playback and recording, a better graphics management, a deeper integration into traffic to improve the import of stairs or the automatic file download when they are required, eliminating the most common manual processes.
7. More and more transversal file
The archive, another axis of La 7's operations, has also been renewed in favor of the VSN. In this way, television leaves behind the Tedial system that had accompanied it since its beginning. As Arribas comments, “there were parts that had worked very well, but we already wanted to change the architecture.”
The decision to opt for VSN, beyond its transversality in Murcian television thanks to its choice as a continuity system, lies in the need to achieve a versatile and fast connection with the archive of the public entity of radio and television of Murcia, which is also managed by the VSN system: “We understood that opting for the same manufacturer was going to make this communication much easier for us.”
8. Accessibility… and HbbTV
HbbTV, beyond the famous red button which provides access to on-demand programming and extended playback features, offers a not-so-well-known blue button, intended to provide help with viewing and listening for those who need it. The implementation of this function is the great leap that The 7 Plan in terms of accessibility.
Through the blue HbbTV button, the Murcian network plans the possibility of implementing, among other new features, a window with sign language which may represent a greater space on the screen than it usually occupies, which currently does not usually satisfy either the viewers who need it, or the producers of the formats themselves.
In parallel, La 7 will continue to carry the subtitling to all its programming through an important human team that corrects the results of the automatic subtitling does it respoken for different pieces. In Arribas' opinion, artificial intelligence is still is not prepared to provide high-quality subtitling, either due to the speed with which people usually speak or due to the different accents that dot Murcian television programming. Likewise, the technical director plans that the subtitled in the streaming of your website be a reality very soon.
9. UHD con YouTube
Leaving behind the utopia of being able to broadcast via DTT content in UHD, a distant horizon conditioned by the Spanish television fleet or the capacities of the frequency bands, La 7 does consider that ultra high definition can be an important value for its future on different levels. For this reason, the chain is promoting the storage of content in UHD or the production of 4K formats such as A walk through, which can be seen on TDT in HD format and in YouTube a UHD.
Precisely, Google's online video platform is a very suitable tool for La 7 since it is capable of hosting all types of UHD content open to everyone. It is true that rumors are being heard of a limitation of 4K resolutions only for users premium de YouTube, which would lead Arribas and the Murcian chain to rethink the method to get that content to their viewers: "We'll see if it happens! What I do know is that we, as a public service, have to make access to our materials open and free."
on the horizon
Aside from these nine projects, and others that will and will continue to emerge as the days go by, Arribas does not lose sight of the evolution of the industry to provide the technological response that may need a television like La 7.
They fly over the horizon dozens of concepts, but the technical director of television rescues without hesitation the IP progress as the axis of the television of the future: "It seems that the market is going in that direction. It would be necessary to see what prices or what availability, but if the opportunity arises, perhaps a project of this type could be proposed for the next contract."
Arribas clings to evidence such as proliferation of hybrid routing or contribution options, which help operators continue using an infrastructure SDI until television is prepared to “take the leap”, or the proven solvency that has resulted in audio environments, although he acknowledges that the video is more complex: "We will see how it goes. If the technology is not ready in ten years, it will be in fifteen. I am very clear that, for these systems to work, they will have to have the necessary stability and be economically viable. (...) If this is achieved, the IP will allow us to improve all our processes and increase productivity."
A report by Sergio Julián Gómez
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