BBC Northern Ireland's digital initiative
Nov 1, 2010 12:00 PM, By Lewis Kirkaldie and Anthea Kirk
Journalists now have hands-on control over their content, allowing stories to be distributed more quickly.
BBC Northern Ireland journalists work at a media hub used for ingest of all media types.
In the heart of Belfast, County Antrim, sits Broadcasting House, home to BBC Northern Ireland (BBC NI), the primary public service broadcaster providing television, radio, online and interactive television content to the Northern Ireland region. BBC NI is part of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and one of three such national regions, along with BBC Scotland and BBC Wales.
BBC NI broadcasts two television channels from Broadcasting House, BBC One Northern Ireland and BBC Two Northern Ireland. The channels are mostly identical to the national BBC One and BBC Two broadcast from London, with the addition of regional programming and local announcers. The main signal is distributed from London to Belfast via dedicated lines where live continuity is managed by a team of regional announcers who double up as playout directors, inserting local programs and content.
With a history of social and political turmoil, the accessibility of regional news and current affairs has always been paramount to the people of Northern Ireland. The BBC Northern Ireland regional news service, “BBC Newsline,” provides lunchtime, evening and late-night bulletins. It offers several political programs, such as “Spotlight” and “Let's Talk,” as well as local arts programs and weekend chat shows. The Belfast facility produces a total of 11 daily regional news programs and covers any special events in the region.
In addition to local programming focusing solely on a Northern Irish audience, the facility also features a large production unit that generates content broadcast on the BBC's channels across the UK. This includes documentaries, drama and comedy programs, as well as other original content. In addition to the more traditional television and radio programs, the broadcaster also has an increasing presence on the Web.
A need for change
While the news team at BBC Northern Ireland has a reputation for cutting-edge journalism and original programming, it had been relying on aging technology. The newsroom was working on obsolete equipment that was past its serviceable lifetime, and the old tape-to-tape workflows required more effort and expensive equipment than modern software-based technology required.
The journalist’s workstation can be used to add commentary to a story.
Problems and shortcomings in the pre-existing production workflow were becoming increasingly apparent, unsustainable and expensive. The lack of a centralized media archive led to missing tapes and data, delays in digitization particularly for multicamera shoots, problems with multiple tape formats, inconsistencies in logging, and media security issues. The inability to browse and search the archive often led to a duplication of acquisition and research. Production bottlenecks arose frequently, especially as producers and journalists competed for time in a limited number of craft edit suites.
Additionally, the broadcaster faced delivery requirements that were increasingly multimedia and multiplatform. It also had a growing need to provide news content to bbc.co.uk ahead of, or simultaneously with, its multiplatform television output. Such requirements were difficult to fulfill through the existing linear workflow. Producers found the production of content for online distribution particularly troublesome and awkward.
BBC NI also faced a generalized need to reduce costs while maintaining or extending the quality and quantity of its production output.
The solution
BBC NI elected to resolve its dilemma by transitioning to a file-based production environment with a centralized digital asset management system, based on Cinegy Workflow. The software offered an ideal solution to the multiple issues the broadcaster faced. It is an open platform system consisting of a suite of tools, applications and open APIs encompassing the complete broadcast production chain from ingest through to playout modules. Principal components installed at the facility include Ingest, for real-time, uncompressed HD-SDI encoding; Media Archive, a server-based, centralized digital asset management system; and the Media Desktop NLE, deployed on client workstations for managing ingest, logging, browsing, editing and other operations. The installation also includes Convert for automated transcoding to enable integration with existing Avid and Apple Final Cut Pro systems.
The solution was selected for its ability to provide the following:
Flexibility and scalability, allowing adaptation to productions of varying size, scope and delivery requirements;
Improvement in production efficiency while reducing costs and without dictating a particular workflow;
Integration with existing processes and technology, thus easing migration while enabling the possibility for third-party components to be updated and replaced as time and budget allow;
A pathway for future growth in terms of size and functionality, and to meet evolving content delivery needs;
Seamless integration with BBC on an enterprisewide basis; and
A solution that supports open standards and formats.
All applications are designed to run on nonproprietary hardware, a key factor in the speed of the implementation, which was less than six months.
Ingest
Each of the 16 ingest stations has positions for one or two operators. In order to meet the needs of a busy newsroom environment, logging requirements at ingest are relatively minimal: program name, date, subject, genre, director, etc., which can be amended or added to during subsequent stages of production. Ingest stations are also capable of recording back to tape, to fulfill needs for such purposes as transcriptions and music composition. The ingest machines can generate video in multiple formats concurrently to satisfy complex delivery requirements as well as for use in the distributed work environment where users have varying format and resolution needs.
A linear editing system was retained so that news footage, arriving too late to go through the normal ingest process, could be edited in a conventional manner and immediately prepared for air. That system, however, will be phased out over the next year when a file-based camera acquisition system is put in place.
Archive
Media Archive facilitates a collaborative workflow for both newsroom and production activities by providing real-time access to ingested media to client workstations. As there is no local storage of media assets, users logging into any client station are presented with the same work environment. Changes made by one user can be viewed by other users in real time. Similarly, changes made to metadata are immediately propagated to other clients.
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