NEW YORK – Network News Service (NNS), a company formed by ABC, CBS and FOX News, delivers breaking news video, audio and metadata files to over 400 affiliate stations across the U.S. To accomplish this enormous task, NNS relies on SSL’s Gravity News Production System that interfaces with the existing news room control system to streamline the editing and automatically distributes media files to the networks. The “Miracle on the Hudson” coverage was greatly enhanced by Gravity through the timely editing and distribution of breaking news footage. 
“We needed to put in place a state-of-the-art system that would allow for both editing of media and quick distribution of finished materials,” says Bob Barrera, managing editor of Network News Service, and currently the interim general manager. “Our work with Gravity has been tremendously successful. For the Miracle on the Hudson event, Gravity provided us with the capability to rapidly move some early aerial shots of the scene and provided us with a quick turnaround of cut material. Gravity has a strong, capable, editing system, which, for our purposes, was what we needed. We accomplished nearly 20 different cuts as well as providing raw material in the opening minutes of the story. The type of capability Gravity offers will be instrumental in all coverage of major breaking news across the country for us in the future.”
The Gravity system at NNS consists of 21 file format agile encoders and 19 user stations that can be used as either media asset management stations or editing stations. Additionally, NNS has nine regional news bureaus across the U.S. connected into the Gravity system, allowing each to view material on the New York based server in real time and add metadata or do complete edits via the Internet.
“Gravity is a file and stream based system and is currently providing these files and streams directly to CBS Newspath, with ABC News One and Fox News,” says Arnold Scher, project manager for the MediaWan division of Solid State Logic. “NNS’s partner networks no longer need to use baseband video connections. Gravity allows the users to edit a breaking story while the system is ingesting files. So before the capture of an event is even finished, materials can be pushed out to the networks in a matter of minutes keeping the heart pounding pace of breaking news fresh.”
Says Phil Sexton, Gravity quality control test engineer for SSL at NNS, about the Miracle on the Hudson event, “Gravity performed flawlessly. Video was hitting the encoders left and right, crash records were being banged out everywhere and Gravity encoded the myriad of incoming streams making the material instantly available for editing. The Gravity Package Production Tool (PPT) editors then worked their magic. Stories about the crash landing and rescue were being successfully published at a rate where NNS could consider themselves the fast lane of broadcast news coverage. The network partners had access to videos quicker than they had with their traditional system of getting video to air. Gravity was simply amazing.”
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