UNC-TV’s HD production facility includes multiple production control rooms

The University of North Carolina Center for Public Television (UNC-TV) contracted AZCAR for its DTV upgrade, including multiple production control rooms, transmission and studio facilities at its Research Triangle Park, NC, location.

The facility includes two Grass Valley 256 x 256 wideband digital routers, four 256 x 256 AES routers, a 128 x 128 timecode router and a 128 x 128 NVISION machine control router. AZCAR designed and installed two HD video production control rooms with Sony MVS switchers and accompanying multichannel (5.1 surround) audio production control rooms using Solid State Logic audio consoles. Each SSL C100 Digital Broadcast Console was equipped with 128 digital inputs/outputs.

Additional major components of UNCTV’s production capabilities include Sony HD studio camera systems, Chyron HyperX HD graphics and XClyps clip store and an RTS ADAM intercom. An advanced multichannel audio edit room uses Digidesign’s ICON control surface. The network also required multiple audio confi gurations with support for closed captions, SAP and ancillary data. The inter-format dubbing and production area used Sony HDW-M2000 VTRs and Leitch signal processing, format and ratio conversion equipment systems. Teleprompter and CG systems use a MOS interface to the ENPS newsroom system.

A major challenge for the upgrade was to transition legacy digital systems to the new facilities and to maintain all production and Network Operations Center (NOC) on-air operations without interruption. This project took more than nine months to complete. The company pre-built some major sub-systems in Pittsburgh and was on-site for almost six months. During this time, the network continued to operate without any loss of production or on-air time. The facility design required ultimate fl exibility. Either of the two video and two audio control rooms can access both studios and any combination of eight HD studio cameras.

UNC-TV’s NOC provides outgoing feed support for 1080i and four, or more, 480i SD services. These services are provided on a 24/7 basis to the statewide transmitter network, cable systems and Direct Broadcast Satellite systems (DBS). UNC-TV is North Carolina’s statewide digital public TV network and operates 11 NTSC transmitters, 11 ATSC transmitters and 23 NTSC translators.