Published: TV Technology magazine Issue: 9 February 98 CBS Telenoticias Goes 'Near-Tapeless' by Joe Fedele MIAMI Gravitating toward "near-tapeless" operation, CBS Telenoticias, a multilanguage television news network, has completely renovated its facility to the digital domain. Debuting in December 1994 as a Spanish-language international network, Telenoticias feeds three Spanish language cable networks and one Portuguese cable station every day. The brain hild of Mike Bock, director of operations and engineering, the change from a Betacam SP videotape-based Sony Library Management System (LMS) to digital tape, non-linear editing and a disk-based server was "challenging," to say the least. AT TELENOTICIAS' HEART At the heart of the new digital system are two ASC Audio Video Corp. VR-300 Fibre Channel video server systems. The Spanish network's server consists of six VR-300 I/Os, complete with a dedicated Fibre Channel drive system. The Portuguese network uses four VR-300 I/Os in a similar manner. The systems are made up of fifty 9 GB Fibre Channel RAID storage drives and twenty 9 GB RAID drives, respectively. This provides Bock and his technical team with a storage capacity of 33 hours for the two 12- channel Spanish networks at "Betacam-quality" (24 Mbps). The Portuguese network is outfitted with an eight-channel system with only 15 hours of storage. The 10 VR-300 I/Os are connected to an ASC RaidSoft software-based RAID storage array through a fiber hub. The entire ASC system is connected via Fibre Channel to make file transfers lightening fast and has been configured to provide six independent output channels. "The ASC VR300s give us a great deal of flexibility and plenty of room to grow if we want to," Bock said. And although the system has been "very reliable," Bock said the main program channels are re- corded on a continuous loop by a Tektronix Profile disk recorder that acts as a replay of the last hour of programming during emergencies. DRIVING THE NEWS At the Telenoticias facility, a NewsMaker Systems StarDrive news automation system currently hosts 93 Electronic Newsroom workstations and provides the interface to 33 pieces of equipment, including the 20-channel VR300 server system, 11 Avid NewsCutters and one Media Composer 8000. These non-linear editors are connected to the ASC sever through a Leitch 32 x 32 analog router. The StarDrive automation system then dynamically assigns the router output to an unused port in the ASC server for storage. "Our NewsMaker system had effectively managed the newsroom's production operations," Bock said. "[Having] additional feeds created a far more complex operation, but the transition to Star- Drive was achieved with the least amount of disruption to the ongoing news operations." As part of its conversion to digital, Telenoticias also upgraded its analog Betacam SP tape format to Sony Betacam SX. Footage shot in the field is transferred into the Avid editors from a Sony DNW-50 SX player via a Serial Digital Interface (SDI). The Portuguese network handles editing differently as its footage is cut on Sony Betacam SX hy- brid disk/tape recorder/players. The network also employs 11 DNW-A220 portable laptop field edi- tors in its news bureaus worldwide. FULL ACCESS The attributes of the NewsMaker system allows all the non-linear edit systems, linear Betacam SX edit systems, master control and other production areas to have access to all the Fibre Channel stor- age in the facility. Master control operations are automatically performed by two Saturn switchers that are fed by a BTS 16 x 128 Venus router. A 32 x 32 BTS serial digital router transfers all graphical elements through an SDI link. All traffic functions are downloaded from the CBS/Westinghouse system by the StarDrive automation system and used to run the playlist without human intervention. The Newsmaker system also keys the Chyron character generators as programming is fed on the air. This unique feature allows the airing of fully fonted programming while maintaining "clean" video for archiving. (Archival footage is transferred to Betacam SX tape.) This important innovation allows the Portuguese and Spanish networks to share video without having to mask and then re-font footage for air. Any programming that is shared can then be easily re-edited by laying down the new audio tracks. The video servers output four network feeds of their domestic and international cable news chan- nels worldwide. These feeds are then MPEG-encoded by a Scientific-Atlanta PowerVu compression system and sent to the Telenoticias affiliates via satellite. The remaining outputs of the system are used to provide house monitoring and a local feed for a half-hour newscast produced for individual clients. Although the greater part of the Telenoticias system was designed as a digital system, there are parts that remain analog composite. Because Telenoticias' existing control rooms, the Venus router and the Leitch router were all analog, several compromises had to be made in the design. "We are digital where it makes sense," noted Bock. "If you're designing a system from scratch, SDI all around is the way to go. But we were converting from an analog plant and the cost to con- vert everything was simply not in our budget."