NDR’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern regional broadcasting centre in Schwerin has converted its television production to digital technology. As part of the “Network Light” project, both the broadcasting centre and the studios in Rostock, Greifswald and Neubrandenburg now work with Avid Media Composer. NDR uses a Thomson Grass Valley playout solution for server output. The official launch yesterday evening followed a one-month test phase in production. The entire conversion took around a year.
“We are now able to produce segments for several programmes, including DAS!, Nordmagazin and Tagesschau, in parallel in our editing suites without losing time copying material,” said Gerd Schneider, director of NDR’s regional broadcasting centre. Before the conversion, tape machines were used, some of which still came from the former DFF inventory. The Media Composer systems are now connected to a server with a capacity of 8 x 146 GB, storing up to 60 hours of material.
The name “Network Light” indicates that production has not been completely digitized: acquisition is still tape-based, as is archiving. NDR said it was following the development of tapeless storage media such as Panasonic’s P2 card and corresponding camcorders with interest, but a changeover was not planned for the time being because its existing cameras were still relatively new. A digital archiving solution was initially rejected because of its complexity.
The new networked production environment was developed jointly with NDR’s regional broadcasting centres in Kiel and Hanover. It serves as a model and, following the launch in Schwerin, is also intended to be adopted by the other broadcasting centres.
