Rome, Italy - 4th December 2009
LA7 moves to the tapeless workflow with MANTRICS Workflow Manager
Almost one year ago, LA7, one of the largest broadcast companies in Italy, decided to move its Play Out centre from Milan to Rome, where most of its production is based, in order to enhance the broadcasting co-ordination and quality of its four channels. To carry out the plan, the company decided to install a Tapeless Playout System, managed by a suite of applications, such as IBMS (Pilat), Morpheus (Snell), MANTRICS Workflow Manager and DIVA (Front Porch).
The previous Playout system used by the company was still based on tapes. That kind of workflow had too many steps and replications, requiring too long for each stage of work.
For this reason, the company was looking for a tapeless workflow in which different operators from different editorial units may be free to act, easily accessing the content, and using the content in new creative ways.
To maximise the benefits of this new tapeless workflow across the production chain, Play Out was rationalized and automated, by inserting in the system MANTRICS Workflow Manager, offering fluid and automated operational benefits.
In the new solution, the programme schedule is drawn up using Pilat Media IBMS, the traffic software. Pilat produces playlists that are imported by Morpheus Snell, the broadcasting automation software. Content is stored within Omneon Spectrum Video Servers, Front Porch DIVA Archive or in a Flexicart. If the content is not there, because it was not ingested, an operator will create and ingest it.
Once the individual content is created, it is submitted to Quality Control to ensure conformance to the required standard. Morpheus then communicates to MANTRICS that the ingestion has been done through an XML format.
MANTRICS reads the XML file and immediately starts to create a reference copy in Windows Media Player Format. The reference copies become visible in the MANTRICS Catalogue, on the broadcaster's intranet and they are open to who has the required permission, according to the company's policy.
The system allows access for up to 20 contemporary users from different editorial units in charge of the programs that are on air on the four channels.
At this stage MANTRICS is used to identify the content that will compose a Promo. By using MANTRICS Editing Tools, the operators can create projects that can then be exported to editing systems such as Final Cut. The operators will use the created EDL's to make a cut editing of the Promo. Thanks to MANTRICS, the project will be evaluated, approved or modified all by the authorised production supervisor. The cut editing such as the approval process can be de-localized due to the totally web based MANTRICS infrastructure. This allows the users to manage the workflow from every part of the world.
Once the Promo is ready for Craft Editing, MANTRICS supports automatic moving of the High Quality content to Final Cut, in order to start Partial Restoring. During this stage, the content's segments described in the EDL are imported in the craft editor.
To enable any changes during the editing stage, MANTRICS maintains view of a five second head and tail. The final version of the Promo is exported from Final Cut and ingested into MANTRICS.
The Promo file is converted by MANTRICS into a compatible format for Omneon and the given metadata is associated to the file in a way that Morpheus can recognize it and include it in the prearranged Pilat playlist. The user can quickly modify the metadata because MANTRICS ingests the information that is inside the file, and gives the chance to choose personalized virtual keyboards. At this point the contents are ready to be used on air.
The steps done by the broadcast company to automate its workflow will allow the operators to delegate mechanical and repetitive actions that reduce the human productivity to give space to creativity, enhance performance and reduce the error margins.
About
MANTRICS S.R.L.
MANTRICS designs solutions suitable for large corporations as well
as for small agile and dynamic companies. The experience and the skills
of its development team, active in this market from more than 20 years,
translate into a software infrastructure capable of large potential
for future developments. Thanks to the competence of its team, today
MANTRICS represents the ideal partner to face the industrial and technological
challenges of the coming years.
For
additional information about MANTRICS, visit www.mantrics.com.
Contacts
MANTRICS
Digital Video S.r.L.
Via Cosimo Tornabuoni, 21 - 00166 - Rome(Italy)
Tel (+39) 06.61.29.641
Fax (+39) 06.61.29.64.99
Email: marketing@mantrics.com
Download
04-12-2009 Press Release - LA7 moves to the tapeless workflow with MANTRICS Workflow Manager (PDF)
01-08-2009 Press Release - MANTRICS WORKFLOW MANAGER DEBUTS AT IBC 2009 (PDF)