New control room, studio take ‘NewsHour’ into HDTV
Dec 28, 2007 8:09 AM
The monitoring for this project has been a challenge throughout the facility. When WETA performed the digital upgrade of the router for budget reasons, it had to leave a lot of the analog test stations in place. So the waveform monitors, vectorscopes and evaluation monitors were still predominantly analog based. That obviously wasn’t going to cut it for the HD piece, so one of the earlier phases of the project was the conversion of many of the key test stations within the facility to HD capability.
HD Technology Update: What is the technology setup in the studio?
Joe Strobel: The studio features six new Sony HDC-1000L cameras with Fujinon HA27X6.5ESM lenses. There also is a new Sony HDCX310 grid-mounted compact HD camera providing an overall studio shot. The HDC-1000s were transitioned to air prior to the official launch of the HD control room to help keep things sane.
The cameras were half of the piece. The other piece was designing an entirely new on-air look for “NewsHour.” The sets needed to be reformatted to support the HD aspect ratio.
WETA built all new sets for the show. One of the sets includes a large on-screen monitor. For what has been a fairly straightforward production, this has been a sea change for its on-air look. The comments that I’ve heard about the on-air look are very positive.
In addition to tailoring the set, the graphics package had to change, too. It’s a total new look for this production. For the graphics, the station went to the Harris character generators and still stores. This proved to be a little bit of a change as most of the people in this plant are accustomed to Chyron.
The Inscriber is a bit of a different model for an on-air graphics person. At WETA it is used primarily for lower thirds and for playout of pre-built graphics that the “NewsHour” graphics department creates using a myriad of software packages.
When you walk into the control room, the equipment that gets the graphics on-air are the two separate Harris Inscribers that have been dedicated for this use.
HD Technology Update: Speaking of walking into the control room, what production switcher is being used?
Joe Strobel: The Sony MVS-8000A. The decision to use it was not a management decision, but a decision by the entire group. The station looked at the Sony and the Grass Valley switchers many years ago. Also the Sony/PBS HD Production Pilot Project offered WETA an aggressive pricing package. So this helped seal the deal, so to speak.
Sony has been very aggressive in trying to make sure the operators are comfortable and proficient in driving the MVS-8000A.
HD Technology Update: Going back to monitoring for a moment, are you using a multi-image display processor for program and preview monitoring?
Joe Strobel: Yes, it’s a three-cube front access Barco wall with 70in cubes, and the engine behind that is the Miranda Kaleido-X. Miranda was very helpful in coming in and helping us commission the Kaleido-X. The company wanted to make it look as good as possible and make sure the screen layouts were optimized. Miranda was a great help in accomplishing that.
HD Technology Update: What sort of surprises did you run into along the way?
Joe Strobel: It’s funny, I can’t think of any disastrous surprises. But we did run into a lot of physical surprises. As I noted, this was an old building. The original footprint that was laid out with the architect for the control room used every square inch. Anything that would require us to deviate from this in any way would cause a great deal of stress.
During demolition the crew found that there was a very large roof drain pipe that was going right through where the TD would be seated in the control room. That caused a bit of a challenge. There were a lot of discussions with the architectural team that WETA brought in for this project. We established how much clearance was needed and they were able to reroute the pipe along with insulating it acoustically so we would not experience the gushing sound of running water during a thunderstorm. That was the first surprise.
The next was everyone knew we needed an isolated HVAC system for this room. The problem was the ducting. The mechanical team thought they would be able to cheat the ducting through an office above, but when they got finished invading that office with the duct, it turned into something like an office you’d see on a sitcom that’s given to someone who isn’t very well liked. It was unfortunate, but you get through that.
Obviously, the acoustics for the separate audio control room were very stringent. A lot of work was done in the architectural design to isolate and achieve the desired NC rating for that room. As we expected, the custom windows had an extremely long lead time. Unfortunately the timeline of the windows almost stopped us from getting this room fully ready for air in time.
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