KOIN-TV, the CBS affiliate serving the Portland, OR, metropolitan area, has streamlined the production of its local news with the installation of a full complement of Grass Valley live news production technologies. The highly rated station recently added K2 media server and shared storage technology to help record and deliver its news and syndicated content.
KOIN's new eight-channel media server is comprised of a K2 SAN and two K2 Summit production clients. Attached to the K2 SAN are their Sony Vegas HD edit systems allowing editors to share clips and work on projects simultaneously within a highly collaborative environment. The previously installed Grass Valley Ignite automated production system will be used to control a new four-channel standalone HD K2 Summit media server to play out the scheduled lineup of local news packages on a daily basis.
Because KOIN journalists shoot with Sony XDCAM (MPEG-2) camcorders, the station is deploying 300 hours of storage at XDCAM 25 resolution, along with Grass Valley AppCenter Pro software to control the server channel operations, and a Grass Valley BaseCamp Express content management software to add and manage files and metadata, as required, in tandem with a low-resolution proxy encoder. The solution offers a drag-and-drop media manager and full archive support.
In order to keep the systems up and running 24/7, KOIN has also entered into a four-year service-level agreement (SLA) to have Grass Valley engineering and product specialist expertise available whenever it's needed.