HD newsrooms
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, BY PHIL CIANCI
The new WETA HD video control room for “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” features a Sony MVS8000A switcher, expanded Thomson Grass Valley HD routers and a Barco multiple rear-projection display wall.
As countries in Europe and Asia plan new HD services, experience can be gained from experience in the United States. There, the availability of HD programming has continually increased since the first national HD broadcasts in the fall of 1998. Beginning with WRAL-TV in 2000, growing numbers of local broadcasters are producing nightly HD news programs. Nationally, Voom offers a dedicated channel, HDNews, 24/7, and CNN has also gone HD. NBC Nightly News began its national HD broadcast in March 2007.
However, production of news programming and the upgrading of newsrooms to HD capabilities have been somewhat late arrivals to the transition to DTV. Recent industry counts from the United States report less than 10 percent of the more than 1500 terrestrial broadcasters are producing their news in HD. A similar pattern is emerging in Europe with initial HD services being sports and movie channels.
In order to remain competitive, broadcasters that have not done so are finding that they have no choice but to produce their daily news programs in HD. This is especially true for local broadcasters because news operations make considerable contributions to a broadcaster's bottom line. If another station in the DMA has gone HD, there is no choice but to follow suit.
Two paths
Once a commitment has been made, two migration paths to an HD newsroom are possible. The first is an upgrade of an existing facility; the other is a green-field design and installation. Each has its pros and cons. The choice is dependent on how much (if any) of the existing infrastructure is HD-ready.
Upgrades require staying on the air and necessitate scheduling equipment installation and commissioning around production and broadcast schedules. Because newsrooms never sleep, this is not an easy problem to solve. However, if the facility has converted to digital and installed HD-capable distribution equipment, ingest and playout servers, some of the existing infrastructure can be used, resulting in less of a financial outlay.
On the other hand, a green-field design offers the advantage of being free from the constraints of daily production, and equipment can be installed and commissioned on an uninterrupted, realistic project timeline. However, new equipment must be procured and, therefore, the undertaking will cost more than an upgrade of an existing facility.
WETA-TV, the Public Broadcast Station (PBS) located just outside Washington, D.C., has just completed an HD upgrade. WETA was one of the first stations in the United States to broadcast in HD in 1999 and, in 2006, was the first to broadcast simultaneous HD and three SD channels on a 24/7 basis.
The upgrade, a significant milestone for PBS, enables the HD production of “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” and serves as a representative example of what equipment is necessary regardless of which upgrade path is taken.
The project included a new HD video control room; a new digital audio control room with 5.1 surround sound; six new HD studio cameras; three upgraded HD edit suites; an expanded video storage system; four HD field camera systems; two HD studio decks; video servers, storage and archive equipment; expanded HD routers; a rear projection multi-image display wall; and QC/QA workstations.
This is a long equipment list and represents a considerable financial investment. There is only one opportunity to get it right. An HD upgrade is a tricky undertaking. Much of the equipment is evolving; new features are offered frequently by manufacturers.
A serious challenge in any upgrade may be getting all the diverse equipment to work properly and communicate as a system. Let's face it: An in-house engineering staff, particularly at a local station, has probably never designed from scratch or converted an HD infrastructure. Development of functional system block diagrams by in-house staff, who are intimately familiar with the newsroom workflow, is about as far as an in-house engineering department may feel comfortable to venture.
Beyond this point lies the great unknown; the devil is most certainly in the details of an HD infrastructure. This is when the use of a knowledgeable system design and integration company will prove invaluable. Unforeseen problems can be avoided, or resolved before they ever appear. In a complex undertaking, there is no substitute for experience.
Consider the source
The WETA studio includes six new Sony HDC1000LW HD studio cameras with Fujinon lenses.
News operations face a particularly difficult aesthetic challenge compared to dramatic programming and studio programming. Excruciatingly true for HD is the unavoidable fact that program quality is dependent on the source. Set design, lighting and make-up must stand up to the viewer scrutiny allowed by HD resolution. Fortunately, most stations are meeting the challenge, and talent actually looks better than ever before when make-up is properly applied for HD. HD-friendly sets are routinely designed by theatrical design and lighting integrators.
HD ENG contribution feeds over Broadcast Auxiliary Services or via commercial carriers are emerging technologies. Why take chances? Content delivery service providers can get HD feeds in from the field and out to affiliates reliably.
A major challenge with HD news production is the fact that source content may be in a plethora of audio and video formats, all of which must be properly format-converted, transcoded or transrated for production and distribution. Video can arrive in 1080i, 720p, 480i, NTSC, IMX, P2, HDCAM, HDV and many other formats, while audio can be analog, digital, mono, stereo, 5.1 or others. It cannot be assumed that all feeds will be in a 16:9 aspect ratio. User-generated content from citizen-journalists makes matters worse. Whatever the source formats, they will have to be converted to the house production standard.
Intelligent leveraging of the inherent characteristics of source material may be possible. For example, consider windowing an SD source rather than upconverting to full screen HD or using a stereo source as left and right channels and supplementing the center and surround audio.
Historical footage
News segments often use historical footage in legacy formats. This poses a serious challenge when converting to HD news production. Money spent on equipment needed to convert legacy material for HD broadcasts may be more expensive than the depreciated value of the device.
It may be significantly more cost-effective to digitize and ingest content that has a high probability of use prior to its being needed for a segment. Or should equipment be kept on hand and operational for ad-hoc conversion as needed for a breaking story? An experienced systems integrator has probably faced these questions before and can discuss the merits of each approach based on your production workflows.
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