Engineering Excellence Awards
Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM
WINNER:
NBA Entertainment
Category
Post & network production facilities
Submitted by
SGI
NBA Entertainment
Winner of post & network production facilities
NBA Entertainment's (NBAE) all-digital, centralized media production and asset management facility in Secaucus, NJ, has been fully functional for more than a year. The SGI-integrated workflow has allowed the NBAE to capture, catalog and store every play as it happens in real time. The SAN, based on an SGI InfiniteStorage CXFS shared filesystem, provides real-time storage for high-res online editing systems while handling low-res proxy and cue management using NBA-written applications. During daily broadcast production, the NBAE ingested more than 45,000 assets into the system over the last year, storing about 30,000 hours of content, or a little more than 1.5 petabytes of data. Those assets are a combination of all of last season's live NBA games and field material, plus historic content.
The volume of asset ingest is significantly more than SGI or NBAE anticipated in the initial system design, which was conceived as having at least two years of built-in growth capacity. The NBAE originally planned to take up to seven years to get the entire archive, dating back to 1946, into digital format. In order to take better advantage of the workflow improvements, the NBAE has accelerated its library conversion. Doubling the size of the media management system, where material is ingested into the SGI storage using Snell & Wilcox iCR encoders, will allow for as many as 100,000 assets to be ingested annually.
To meet this directive, a second 3000-slot StorageTek SL 8500 robot system is being added, which will take the NBAE's total nearline capacity to 6000 LTO data tapes and significantly improve workflow by moving data into the system quicker and retrieving data more rapidly. The Fibre Channel fabric is expanding from 128 ports to 192 ports, and the system is migrating from SGI's legacy technology to three SGI Altix 450 systems, each with 16 Intel Itanium 2 processors and 16GB RAM per processor, running Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.
RUNNER-UP:
Category
Post & network production facilities
Submitted by
Communications Engineering Inc.
Library of Congress
In Culpeper, VA, the Library of Congress' new Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) houses the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of films, TV programs, radio broadcasts and sound recordings. It contains underground storage for this entire collection — 5.7 million items — on 90mi of shelving, along with extensive modern facilities for the acquisition, digitization, cataloging and preservation of all audiovisual formats.
The Library of Congress began planning for the NAVCC about 10 years ago. One of the primary goals was the digital duplication and storage of all the items that would be kept at the campus. The Library of Congress hired Communications Engineering Inc. (CEI) to handle the installation and integration of all the equipment. CEI began working on the project in August 2006.
WINNER:
30 Rock
Category
IPTV and mobile technology
Submitted by
NBC Universal
30 Rock
Winner of IPTV and mobile technology
NBC Universal receives more than 100 remote feeds to its headquarters in New York City. In the past, these signals were distributed via an analog closed circuit Cat 5 system used for monitoring purposes by the news and sports production staff. This Cat 5 system was available only in key production areas, and every channel of the 850MHz plant was occupied.
Recently MSNBC moved to 30 Rock with an additional 50 new remote feeds that needed to be monitored throughout the facility. Adding to the existing analog system was out of the question. A digital cable (QAM) technology was considered; however, this would require a new digital cable-ready TV or set-top box for every user, a logistical and financial challenge. An IPTV approach operating on the corporate LAN allows all users equal access to content using existing PCs, regardless of the location in the facility.
The system was designed for 200 SD channels, with plans to add more SD and HD channels in the near future. Because bandwidth was a critical factor of the design, H.264 (MPEG-4) compression was chosen. Operating each service at about 1.7Mb/s yields sufficient quality for monitoring purposes yet occupies a reasonably streamlined profile in the GigE backbone.
Careful planning of our network infrastructure was required. The IPTV traffic shares the same facilities and pipeline as the rest of our corporate data, including e-mail, Web browsing, archiving and various other production tools. We could not afford to disturb any of these. A large task was ensuring that every switch and router was enabled for multicast (IGMP) traffic. We are fortunate that backbone was previously upgraded to GigE so bandwidth to each switch was not considered an obstacle.
The benefit of multicasting is that bandwidth is not occupied on a local network segment unless a request for a service is made by a user. No matter how many users on a segment request the same service, that service doesn't require any more bandwidth than the initial request.
RUNNER-UP:
Category
IPTV and mobile technology
Submitted by
Ross Video
Greene HD Productions
Greene HD Productions in Arlington, TX, decided after building a prototype from a 1998 converted coach to build a luxury HDTV production mobile from scratch, starting with a Prevost XLII 45ft mobile. Teaming up with Marathon Coach, its design goal provided comfort for VIPs and the work crew by offering a good working/living environment, which saved time. This was achieved by offering as many as 12 HD cameras, two advanced edit stations, in-motion editing, tapeless recording environment, stadium seating in the production room, an audio mixing cabin, fiber-based HD-SDI cable, a producer's lounge, a full galley/full bath, and sleeping quarters for up to four people. This not only saves on transportation and hotel costs, but allows the crew to work on the next event while in motion as the mobile is fully functional. The coach features Ross Video's Synergy 1.5 multidefinition digital switcher.
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