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Southeastern Louisiana University Transitions to File-Based
Workflow with Video Technics' Apella Servers
June 26, 2008
Source: Video Technics
Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond,
Louisiana transitioned its Emmy-winning cable television channel
to a file-based workflow on-air this week.
The Southeastern Channel produces over 600 hours of original
programming each year, and airs over 100 hours of original
programming weekly as part of its 24/7 schedule. The state-of-the-art
production facility provides training and hands-on experience
for television students at the university, many of whom go
on to commercial assignments after graduation, as well as
providing local news, education, sports, and fine arts programming
to the community at large. For the transition to digital production
from their existing tape-based workflow, the Southeastern
Channel installed two Apella™ LCS media servers with
two bidirectional channels each for ingest and playout, a
VT Database server, 1.5TB of network attached storage, and
a VT CG Server with Chyron Lyric for character generation.
The installation includes a VT News Edit Plug-In for Final
Cut Pro®, VT Scheduler™ for automated script-based
ingest and playout, and a VT HotFolder™ for seamless
ingest of QuickTime files. VT Proxy Editor™ and VT Director™
are shipped standard on the Apella LCS media servers.
According to Rick Settoon, General Manager, "The Video
Technics solution gives us greater flexibility in the scheduling
and playback process, enabling us to have fewer re-runs. The
change will increase our efficiency in logistics and traffic
as we move toward a tapeless environment, and we can already
see an improvement in the quality of our footage on the Apella.
I'm impressed with the ease and speed of operation with which
we can move content from the editing workstation to on-air
playback.
The new graphics will also improve branding for the channel
and enable us to provide timely announcements, such as emergency
weather bulletins, for our viewing audience. One reason we
chose Video Technics is because we get to deal directly with
the manufacturer rather than going through a third party –
and we have already seen the benefits of that in the fast
support, training, and personal service we have received to
date."
Operations Manager Stephen Zaffuto remarks, "Video Technics
was the only vendor we looked at which had integrated all
on-air functions into its own system – all the others
had to bring in third-party software, hardware, or both, which
has created complications for us in the past. We liked that
it is scalable both in terms of future storage capacity and
in the ability to expand our workflow to HD production. Previously,
we spent a lot of time managing our storage capacity by manually
deleting and moving content. Now with the new storage capacity,
combined with VT's import and export tools, we can keep more
content accessible nearline, and easily bring it online whenever
we need it."
The Southeastern Channel uses Final Cut Pro for craft editing
and content generation, exports the content via the VT HotFolder
and then automates 24/7 playout on the Apella LCS with VT
Scheduler.
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