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WBOC-DTpresents HD news in the round

Dec 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Michael Grotticelli

In 2006, the task at hand for chief engineer Dan Panichella and his team at the independently owned WBOC-DT was daunting, although similar to what many engineers are faced with these days: upgrade an existing hybrid analog/digital plant to an all-digital infrastructure as cheaply as possible, and make sure it's future-proof and includes redundancy for reliable 24/7 operation. But it was not to be just any operation. The year before, the station contracted local architect Becker Morgan Group and set designer FX Group of Ocoee, FL, to create an 11,000sq-ft NewsPlex behind the existing station. The new facility would feature at its heart a 300-degree, carousel-like main desk, riser and lighting grid, the brainchild of FX creative director Bill Brown.

WBOC-DT’s NewsPlex anchor desk is mounted on top of a rotating stage that provides a new background for different segments of the newscast. Photos courtesy Andy Washnik/CORPRICOM.

Collaborating with WBOC news director John Dearing, FX senior designer Glenn Anderson developed the unique, news-in-the-round concept whereby the open newsroom, edit suites, production studio, control room and weather center all double as newscast backdrops. The new, open facility would also promote a collaborative work environment that was nonexistent in the old building.

To complicate things further for Panicella, about a third of the way into the SD digital migration project, he and his Draper Holdings Business Trust managers recognized that the cost for HD technology was only slightly more expensive. With the help of systems integrator The Systems Group, based in Hoboken, NJ, the CBS and FOX network-affiliated station began installing HD equipment in May 2008. On August 26, the Salisbury, MD-based station went on-air with its local newscasts in HD. WBOC-DT was the first in its market — and the first in the state of Maryland — to do so.

To house the new equipment, the station constructed a new 11,000sq-ft building, located adjacent to its existing broadcast facilities. Belden RG11 cabling provides tie lines between the old part of building and the new facilities to help move signals back and forth between master control and the new production facilities. Internally, there's also more than 10mi of RJ-11 HD coax cable.

The new building features a bustling newsroom, edit suites, a production studio and a control room, which are all situated in a wide open and camera-friendly design that allows multiple angles to be captured from throughout the set and newsroom environment. It also promotes a collaborative work atmosphere among the staff that was not present in the old building. Like the old building, the new plant produces local news content for WBOC, the CBS affiliate (channel 16) and the FOX 21 channel. Both are now broadcasting in HDTV.

A new foundation

Previously, the station used a collection of analog routers and tape-based DVCPRO edit systems and cameras, as well as other obsolete production equipment — with a few pieces of digital processing gear thrown in. The new building includes a Thomson Grass Valley Ignite system with robotic cameras, a rotating anchor desk/stage, two multichannel Omneon servers, dozens of Evertz modular boards and an Evertz MVP multiview software system for its monitor wall in the control room.

The station’s new master control suite is securely linked to the old part of the building with Belden RG11 cabling, which helps to move signals back and forth.

The control room also features two Panasonic tape decks that are controlled by the Ignite system. In the case of breaking news, the crew inserts a tape, and the footage is played directly out of the Ignite system to air. Upconversion is performed with an Evertz card linked to the output of the VTRs.

The station continues to use an existing analog Pro-Bel Eclipse router (112 × 96) and a smaller (64 × 64) Pro-Bel Freeway SDI router. As part of the upgrade, however, the Eclipse has been expanded and a new Pro-Bel Sirius 64 × 64 HD router installed to handle HD signals. Audio is mixed with a Klotz Digital audio board that's built into the Ignite integrated production system. There are also seven Apple Final Cut Pro HD edit suites to cut HD packages. The final result is an HD QuickTime file.

The new NewsPlex studio employs four Thomson Grass Valley Ignite robotic cameras. A manually operated JonyJib crane with a Hitachi HV-D5W HD camera atop its 12ft arm captures relationships between areas during bumper shots. Another Hitachi HD camera is mounted in the grid. The studio also features a Panasonic handheld camera on a tripod that's used to shoot around the studio.

Panichella said the station needed a building that would incorporate the newsroom and technical facilities in a common area. Before, these areas were separated by numerous walls and hallways. Content was previously played out from an SD Omneon server. Producers and reporters were often seen running down the hall toward the control room. Now there is a shared environment, where producers interact with anchors and the technical crew in ways they never did before.

In the field, the station maintains 15 ENG DVCPRO analog cameras. The resulting analog images are upconverted using Final Cut Pro software. When budgets permit, the tape-based cameras will be replaced with Sony XDCAM HD camcorders next year.

Cutting to the chase

News packages can be turned around in near real time. Images from the field are ingested directly into a local storage drive attached to a Final Cut Pro workstation for each editor. The station has established a file-based workflow whereby all of the editors work on dedicated storage arrays. They are not networked together yet; that will come next year in the form of an Apple Xsan system. Currently, they share content via a Final Cut server. SD images are upconverted within the Final Cut Pro software, where side panels are added to fill in the wide (16:9) aspect ratio of HD.

The WBOC newsroom, which features editors working on Apple Final Cut Pro HD workstations, is often seen during newscasts, with reporters presenting stories from their desks.

Finished files are transferred to three channels of Omneon MediaPort HD servers via the station's ENPS newsroom computer system, for playout. The Omneon server is used like three VTRs to store the various news clips. An existing Pro-Bel 320 master control switcher, which continues to be located in the old building, feeds the CBS and FOX affiliates. Syndicated programming will also continue to originate from the old building, where 30 incoming satellite feeds from Telesat are recorded with the help of a Sundance Digital automation system.

Live production in the NewsPlex is handled with the Ignite HD system via a virtual control panel. This panel allows directors to hot punch a video source when necessary. Some upconversion is also performed inside the Kayak switcher section of the Ignite system. Employees trained on the Ignite system for seven weeks and picked it up quickly. Since then, there have been few technical errors, and the station's six hours of daily newscasts looks cleaner than ever.

The glassed-in control room includes the Evertz MVP system and a monitor wall made up of three 50in Panasonic plasmas screens with multiple inputs. There are also more than 50 widescreen monitors of varying sizes throughout the new building. They display a wide variety of live images, from outdoor remote camera feeds to incoming program channels.