Vermont Public Television has installed an Omneon Spectrum media server system at the heart of its operations as local and national PBS programming moves to HD. VPT broadcasts four channels: PBS in HD, PBS World (SD), PBS Create (SD) and a local SD channel.
PBS soon will deliver programs to its affiliates in HD only. The Spectrum system's internal up/down/crossconversion capability allows VPT to treat each stored asset in the same manner, whether from PBS, acquired locally and ingested into the server or transferred from the broadcaster's Final Cut Pro editing systems.
Staff members at VPT use the Omneon TrackTool to insert AFD information into clips. Built-in closed-captioning tools give VPT the option to perform captioning of local programming offline rather than during real-time playback and ingest.
VPT maintains a large volume of archived material, with 10,000 hours on tape and some footage dating back to the 1960s. The station plans to integrate its Crispin automation system and Omneon Spectrum server system with a Crispin archive system to archive new programs and, on an as-needed basis, convert old programs to file-based assets for nearline storage or long-term storage on Blu-ray.
For more information, visit www.omneon.com.
