ITN has reached an outline agreement with Avid to provide a new media management system for ITN’s news and programme production departments: this will replace a Quantel production system installed in 1999, writes Fergal Ringrose.
The Avid system will enable all newsroom staff to process and edit from the desktop and will be capable of storing more content than ITN’s current digital system, which is now over seven years old. ITN will use a combination of hardware and software products from Avid including Unity ISIS storage, Interplay media asset management (launched at NAB) and NewsCutters for desktop and craft editing throughout ITV News and Channel 4 News.
ITN will also build a new high definition Avid system in ITN Factual and Visual Voodoo, its programme production units, to replace older Avid equipment. The new set-up will feature four Media Composers connected together by a Unity, allowing all edit suites to be connected with each other.
Keith Cass, director of Technology at ITN said, “ITN chose the new Avid system after having carefully assessed that this technology could scale both technically and functionally to meet the requirements of ITN across all areas of our businesses. We have also been immensely impressed with the use of Avid in ITV Regional News operations and look forward to integrating our Avid system with their own operations.”
ITN plans to roll out the new Avid system in the newsrooms over the next 12 months with Channel 4 News expected to complete the transfer to Avid in the early part of 2007. Over the next 2-3 years ITN expects to extend the roll out of the new system to include its multimedia and image library departments, ITN On and ITN Source.
