The leading entertainment network for Belgium’s French-speaking community, RTL Belgium, has implemented a new fully integrated tapeless HD production infrastructure supported by Xedio, the modular application suite from EVS.
The benefits of the new approach are said to include sharper images and further enhanced production workflows between RTL’s news and in-house programmes.
Xedio I/O systems allow RTL’s news production team to ingest live feeds from various press agencies in MPEG-2 Long GOP. ENG material captured on the field with new Sony SxS camcorders based on XDCAM HD422 codec and media files from local bureaux is imported to a central online storage in Brussels using Xedio Importer. All files are simultaneously generated in high and low resolution, either by the Sony cameras or by the Xedio system, and are instantly available for journalists in Brussels and the local bureaux to begin editing.
The new edit-in-place features of EVS’ timeline editor, Xedio CleanEdit, help field journalists to deliver up-to-the-minute news reports. A simple link-up between a Xedio CleanEdit laptop and a Sony solid-state camcorder enables journalists to review, select and cut recorded content on a timeline without media duplication. Once completed, a consolidated file can be wire transferred or physically imported to the central storage.
That central storage is provide by Xedio’s XStoreSAN system, which can store up to 50 TB of high resolution media content and 36 TB in low resolution. The storage system integrates with an internally-developed search module based on a custom thesaurus and advanced text indexing, which allows journalists to browse and select content quickly and efficiently. The references of the selected material can then be pushed without any delay to a Xedio CleanEdit workstation for timeline news editing. Playout operations are managed with Xedio I/O players.
In another aspect of the upgrade effort, all in-house programmes – including news magazines, live sports shows and the weather – are now recorded in HD using EVS XT2+ live production servers.
Ultimately all media content, whether it is produced for RTL’s news or other programmes, is immediately available to all operators at any stage of the production.
Thierry Piette, technical & IT director at RTL Belgium, commented: “The interconnectedness between RTL’s news and studio operations has been our goal from the start, and is the result of a long-term collaboration with EVS that began in 2004 and produced a fully integrated system that maximises media interchange.”
