mediahouse, the facilities arm of TWI, the UK’s largest independent supplier of sports programming, is installing a Quantel generationQ system for the production of its SNTV (Sports News Television) service, and TWI’s sport, documentary and entertainment programming. SNTV, the world’s leading sports video news video agency, is a joint venture between TWI and the Associated Press (AP) which counts CNN and TVNZ amongst its many clients. It operates in a particularly challenging production environment, producing six bulletins a day organised to meet broadcasters‘ crucial production deadlines.
TWI’s output includes regular highlights packages from live sporting events, weekly and monthly documentary and news magazines such as Trans World Sport, and high production value ‘specials’ such as The Wimbledon Official Film and The Second World War in Colour. TWI also has an extensive archive that needs to be readily available for on-air use.
mediahouse is re-locating its existing post-production facilities in Hammersmith to a purpose built studio centre on the Hogarth Business Park, Chiswick. Systems integrator TSL is masterminding the entire re-location project.
The mediahouse system is centred on a Quantel sQServer, configured with 8 ports and 100 hours of MPEG2 25 Mbit storage. Most of the SNTV journalists are already capable video editors, and the entire production team will have access to all material held on the server via 6 Quantel QCut journalist editing packages and 4 QView browse applications. The QEdit Pro workstations will be used for TWI and third party effects-led craft editing. The sQServer is also being equipped with Quantel’s ISA (Integrated Server Automation) to cover future expansion of the server storage, and to enable the incorporation of browse quality material alongside the MPEG2 on the server. Playout automation will be via pharos communications automation using a CORBA interface to the sQServer (announced at IBC), with backup provided by a Quantel sQEffects playout panel.
