White Paper 155 File-based Production: Making It Work In Practice

September 2007 Stuart Cunningham, Philip de Nier

Abstract

Many organisations are moving from video tape based televisionproduction to file-based production. A number of difficulties ariseduring this migration including unexpected costs, workflowcomplications and lack of equipment interoperability. Such difficultiescan be solved in practice using novel applications of low-cost ITequipment, software tools and industry standards for file formats.

This paper describes a number of problems of file-based productionwhich arise in practice and demonstrates the techniques used to solvethem using real-world examples from BBC productions.

The application of commodity PCs to achieve flexible real-time softwareencoding in a multi-camera TV studio is shown. Software tools toovercome incompatibilities between different MXF implementations aredescribed. The design and format of MXF files for long term programmearchival on LTO-3 data tape is explained. We show how file-basedsystems can be interfaced to legacy broadcast equipment. Finally, theproblem of migrating from SD to HD production is shown to be mitigatedby the HD capable nature of many IT components.

This document was originally published in the Proceedings of theInternational Broadcasting Convention, September 2007.

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