Omneon, Inc. announced that Lithuania’s national broadcaster, Lietuvos Nacionalinis Radijas ir Televizija (LRT), has selected its Spectrum media server system as the foundation of a project that has moved the broadcaster to an efficient, end-to-end, tapeless workflow.



In addition to supporting playout on LRT’s three broadcast channels, the Spectrum system provides ingest functionality for LRT’s comprehensive digital archive of Lithuania’s culturally significant media assets, which include television programming dating back to the early 1950s and irreplaceable film footage even older. Low-resolution browse copies of the entire archive, estimated to comprise about 35,000 hours, will be available to the public via the Web.

The Spectrum system was installed by systems integrator TVC, headquartered in Siauliai, Lithuania, and because of the cultural significance, the project has received partial funding from the European Union.
 
“We sought a reliable and robust means both to secure our country’s film and television heritage for future generations and also to make it available now,” said Vytautas Marozas, technical director at LRT. “The Omneon Spectrum was chosen because of its proven reliability and because of its support of MXF OP1a MPEG-2. It was clearly the best choice for file management and for the ability to transfer to and from archive storage and NLE storage.”

The Spectrum system at LRT encodes and stores video in MXF OP1a MPEG-2 4:2:2 at 50 Mbps. Under direction of SGT automation, files are transferred to and from archive storage in a data tape library with disk-based cache storage, and made available to Apple Final Cut Pro workstations for editing. The Spectrum system is also used for automated playout of LRT’s three broadcast channels, which offer general interest programming to a population of more than 3.5 million people.

“LRT’s innovative and ambitious project will secure a significant element of the country’s heritage as well as enable a more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective operation to benefit today’s viewers,” said Geoff Stedman, Omneon senior vice president for products and markets. “The Spectrum system’s adaptability for multiple applications, its rock-solid reliability, and its ability to interface with a variety of systems make it uniquely suitable to support such a project.”