France-based sports news channel L’Équipe 21 has deployed Dalet Sports Factory as the end-to-end news, studio production, broadcast and media asset management (MAM) system at the company’s new television facility. The broadcast centre has relocated to the headquarters building of parent company L’Équipe, the sports newspaper. Dalet Sports Factory provides the 24/7 channel with a complete newsroom computer system, desktop video production, sports-specific tools for slow-motion replay and highlight creation, as well as broadcast playout and multiplatform distribution. The underlying Dalet media asset management platform transparently tracks multimedia content and metadata throughout the content creation chain, preserving essential information and making it far easier to produce and distribute content to different platforms. The entire project, from order to on-air, was completed in just three months. “That includes building the infrastructure, installing the system, adapting the workflows and metadata schemes, training and going live. The Dalet system is quite comprehensive and provides the key operational components. So it was very cost-effective, and we were able to move very quickly, avoiding the headaches often associated with large integration projects,” says Philippe Espinet, director of operations, L’Équipe 21. “Because Dalet is an open, IT-based system, the few integrations were easy to implement. Our staff immersed themselves in the project along with the Dalet Professional Services team, who provided excellent support. Coaching was key; we trained 150 users in just five weeks. With Dalet’s fully integrated system, it’s very easy for our journalists as all the tools are right at their fingertips.” The technical infrastructure at L’Équipe 21 is IT-based and well integrated. Dalet Brio servers manage 24 video ingest channels in DVCPro 100 as well as playout for replays and commercials from master control, and A/B roll and carts playout from the production control room. Fibre connects the NetApp online production storage that delivers 4GB/s to the Brio servers that playout directly from the NAS. A separate Oracle Sun ZFS storage device automatically archives high-resolution video material. The Dalet MAM is integrated with the CTS Enterprise traffic system and a Vizrt graphics system. www.dalet.com
