Edit-while-recording from Omneon server files

The Customer

Extra TV is an American entertainment television news program, with a fresh and unique approach to breaking entertainment news, celebrity interviews and the headline making stories that America is talking about. With correspondents and producers around the globe, the show offers a half-hour edition every weekday and an original hour-long weekend instalment. Seen in more than 95% of the country, “Extra” airs on major market affiliates, including the key NBC Television Owned-and-Operated Stations. “Extra” is produced by Telepictures Productions and distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution.

The Challenge

On a day-to-day scenario Extra TV needs to face every news program challenge: publish content as fast as possible, by minimizing the time from capture, to editing and distribution. The network was upgraded into a file-based HD workflow, which includes an automation system that controls several recording channels and handles the recording metadata; an Omneon Spectrum system, to record XDCAM HD 422 at 50Mbps in MXF OP1a; an Avid Unity ISIS for storage and Avid Interplay system as a Media Asset Management. This production workflow had a major issue to solve, regarding the ingest of growing XDCAM HD 422 50Mbps MXF files with metadata exported by a third-party automation system. Without the growing file ingest, it would mean that Extra would have to wait for the recording to finish to be able to initiate an ingest operation, and even after that, wait for the ingest to finish before they are actually able to work with the recorded material.

The Solution

Edit-while-recording from Omneon server files

Using mxfSPEEDRAIL F1000 file-based system, Extra TV is able to handle growing file ingest and simultaneous transfers. The Omneon Spectrum system generates a MXF OP1a XDCAM HD 422 50Mbps file that is ingested by mxfSPEEDRAIL F1000 VS model as OPAtom files into the Avid Unity ISIS, while the recording is still in progress. Besides growing file ingest, the mxfSPEEDRAIL F1000 VS also allows editing while the video server is still recording, saving time and money to the network, while increasing production performance. To allow the flowing of metadata information, the automation system, that is managing all Omneon Spectrum channels, also writes a very simple XML file with metadata, such as the tape name, which is then used by mxfSPEEDRAIL F1000 VS to automatically check-in assets into Avid Interplay, with the appropriate ISO name in the Avid field “Tape Name”, and allow the editors to edit while the content is still being recorded.