News and sports crews from Danish Broadcasting (DR) are putting their “digital TV station in a box” through a grueling test. The Danish broadcaster is sending 26 ENG teams into the field to acquire stories and footage from the Olympics in the DVCPro format and ingesting it into an all-digital workstation environment where it can be edited and graphics can be added for playback to air.
DR is using its digital field production gear at the International Broadcast Center in Athens to supply video, radio and Web material to its domestic audience. The core of the system includes a compact SGI Origin 300 server, two SGI Media Servers for broadcast systems, and one SGI InfiniteStorage TP 9300S 6TB SATA storage drive. With that setup, DR will be able to store 200 to 400 hours of DVCPro25 and DVCPro50 footage.
ENG teams will use 30 PCs running Easy Cut software for low resolution, pre-editing. DR sent a Pinnacle Systems' Liquid blue and Liquid purple editing system to Athens for final editing.
DR has connected its Athens IBC facility to Copenhagen via a DS3 fiber solution to transmit video feeds, three audio channels for radio and eight audio TV commentary circuits from the venues. An Ethernet connection networks all of its base systems, and since DR is now working in the digital environment, it will be able to transfer some of the less time-sensitive video and audio material from Athens as file transfers (FTPs) to Copenhagen.
