Server vendor Omneon has announced that French network Direct8 will deploy four of its Spectrum media server systems at multiple facilities to support tapeless content production, ingest, backup, and playout. Direct8 anticipates immediate time, money, and space savings, while increasing reliability and file-based access to content, reports Adrian Pennington.
Direct8 will deploy the four servers at four broadcast operations. The first will provide storage and content access at two production centres, while the second provides storage and playout at a third production centre. Another Spectrum will be deployed for ingest of third-party content such as news and for interfacing to a robotic tape archive. Direct8 will use the fourth as a backup for operational redundancy.
“The Spectrum gives us an incrementally scalable platform for our growing operation, which also helps to make it such a cost-effective investment,” declared Cedric Drapeau, technical director of Direct8. “We rely heavily on live production, so we need robust functionality and responsiveness. The Spectrum makes our content available wherever and whenever we need it.”
Drapeau continued: “Increasingly, interactivity and responsiveness have become very important in satisfying our commitment to live programming and news, which are the foundation of the Direct8 network. Our current architecture could not accommodate our tapeless strategy, and so we selected the Omneon Spectrum as it provides the most advanced broadcast technology and allows us to satisfy a wide range of production and playout needs on a single server platform.”
At Direct8, the Spectrum systems, under the control of a Ninsight Spark Automation system, will rationalise workflows that had been based on tape storage and outdated standalone media servers. The systems are also intended to facilitate Direct8’s transition to HD production and transmission. In addition, because the Spectrum system is built on an open architecture, it will allow Direct8 to optimise its content investment by enabling easy repurposing for new services.
