News Technology & Live Sport
author a story suitable for broadcast, and to the original media to avoid duplication or methods of turning news stories around and
conform it back to the original media content. miss matches through alteration. These repurposing material to address the needs of
Essentially news organisations needed faster, features, together with the incorporation of a different audiences and channels. iNews soon
more streamlined processes, and indeed more recognisable frame accurate time stamp adopted the technology and were deploying
collaborative and parallel methods of working, (Timecode) allowed IPV to develop an encode large scale systems around the world,
and most importantly, they needed to deliver engine that could take a live feed, in parallel to eventually being acquired by Avid and
cost savings. the broadcast recording, and instantly providing a compelling product called Media
Due to the significant costs and limited compress it and deliver it up to a standard IT Browse. This set a trend of bringing news
scalability of broadcast server ports, journalists network to a community of users. In fact these stories to air within minutes of the story
were faced with the limitations of accessing developments allowed the streamlining of news breaking, allowing the running order to be
media content to create a news story and production to such an extent that journalists, fluid and dynamic while the main headlines
therefore were totally reliant on the wire and a editors, producers and news directors can now were going out. This radically changed the
restricted funnel (edit suite) to the content. The share and access video, scripts and rundowns way in which news organisations break a news
typical process was that a newsflash graphic simultaneously on an unprecedented scale. story and be first to air.
would make it to air while the content was The process required tight integration with However the consequences were more far-
acquired and limited stories crafted in existing tools and broadcast servers. IPV reaching than the technology alone. Now teams
readiness for a scheduled news bulletin. The therefore made its browse solution an API- of journalists could work in tandem and create
turnaround time was at least a few hours based suite of tools that could be quickly and editorial contribution in parallel while the story
before the prepared news package could be effectively embedded into broader overarching was still unfolding. This trend also gave rise to
aired. news-based applications. changing practices as the pace of this
IPV realised that if journalists could IPV was familiar with the complexities of revolution quickened, causing people to re-
actually work with the content as it was immediate access to growing files and demands think how best to contribute to raw footage.
arriving at their desktop, they could be more of Video on Demand (VoD) with individual Reporting became multi-faceted, streamlining
productive and ultimately be faster to air with client server relationships to multiple desktop so the initial story could be embellished from a
more up to the minute valuable news content. users requiring instantaneous responses for live 3-5 second headline through to an in depth
It was impracticable to achieve this with high- data from the same source media. Therefore analysis with multiple view points.
resolution assets. However with a data reduced IPV was able to build in this capability at the The trend in this area in particular is the
(compressed) version, journalists could view very foundation of its browse technology. It is significant growth in multiple news stories and
this content on the fly and simulate the this advantage that even today, with the the insatiable appetite to keep viewers
capabilities of a craft editing system, to allow company’s recently introduced Curator system, watching even through longer, more detailed
them to prepare the text, video and audio for provides for the best-in-class product for it reporting. The way this is achieved today is by
the story at their desktop. immediacy of access, transport controls and allowing many parallel stories to be viewed
So IPV went on to develop the technology scalability. and commented on from the desktop,
that allowed an exact (frame accurate) copy of combining the output into an endless ticker
the original to be made - and make it New trends in the market tape feed along the footer of the main news
age 28.
immediately accessible to multiple users channel. In fact this is almost a return to the
without having to wait for the inbound feed to In the late 1990s ITN was an early adopter old days of ticker tape but overlaid on the core
complete or numerous VHS tapes to be dubbed. and successfully deployed Inspiration, an reporting broadcast, often powered by the
Furthermore frame accurate exact copies Omnibus and Quantel product utilising IPV’s immediacy of access from multiple parallel
needed to be managed and precisely correlated technology, and in so doing revolutionised the browse streams.
Continued on P
IBE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008 25
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