TV Bandeirantes Streamlines News Production and Program Playout With Omneon

Omneon Inc. announced that TV Bandeirantes, one of Brazil’s foremost national broadcasters, has deployed Omneon MediaGrid and Spectrum systems at its São Paulo headquarters to support an all-HD news production workflow and to streamline playout of commercials and long-form programming. Systems integrator Brasvideo partnered with the broadcaster to design and specify the new Omneon systems as part of a facility update that enables TV Bandeirantes to accommodate continued growth in national distribution.


Navios brasileiro e francês resgatam 17 corpos de vítimas do voo 447 (Source: TV Bandeirantes)

"The open Omneon platform allowed us to design the best workflow for our requirements, offering tight integration with the MAM and automation applications of our choice," said Rubens Fernando Ortiz, technical director of TV Bandeirantes. "We can easily expand our Omneon systems as we grow, allowing us to invest in only what we need today."

TV Bandeirantes has more than 20 owned and operated local stations and 102 affiliates throughout Brazil. The broadcaster offers a wide variety of channels, including a 24-hour HD news channel and cable and satellite channels with extensive sports programming. As an organization TV Bandeirantes embraces technological innovation, and its facility remodel provided an opportunity to implement two new cutting-edge systems for production and playout.

The first system, built on a platform that incorporates the Omneon MediaGrid active storage system and Spectrum media servers, supports TV Bandeirantes’ all-HD news production workflow. Forty-six HD video sources are encoded to DVCPRO HD by a Vizrt Viz Video Engine and, using an Ardendo media asset management (MAM) system, transferred via FTP to an 82-TB Omneon MediaGrid active storage system.

DVCPRO HD clips from Panasonic P2 cameras also are transferred to the MediaGrid system via FTP, and content from all sources is made available to more than 30 Apple Final Cut Pro editors for edit-in-place on the Omneon MediaGrid system. Finished segments are moved by Ardendo MAM from the Omneon storage system to an 11-channel Spectrum HD media server for playout under the control of Pebble Beach automation.

The second system at TV Bandeirantes, known as the ‘exhibition server,’ is used primarily for playout of commercials and long-form programming. This SD/HD Spectrum server operates under the control of Harris automation and features six channels of ingest, 18 channels of playout, and 5 TB of storage. TV Bandeirantes relies on Spectrum 4100 series MediaPorts with integrated up- and down-conversion to manage mixed SD and HD MPEG material efficiently on the same system.

Ardendo MAM gives TV Bandeirantes the ability to transcode clips residing on the news production MediaGrid system from DVCPRO HD to MPEG-2 Long GOP and then transfer them to the exhibition server for playout. Several Final Cut Pro editors are connected to the server for edit-in-place operation to produce program promotion packages. A six-channel backup server is synchronized to the exhibition server using Pebble Beach automation to ensure redundancy.

"TV Bandeirantes needed a platform that could easily accommodate their current and future needs for content production and distribution," said Geoff Stedman, senior vice president of products and markets for Omneon. "The combination of the MediaGrid system and the Spectrum server provides exactly what they need to support their production requirements while reducing cost and complexity."