Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 26, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The major North American sports broadcasters ESPN in Connecticut and Sportsnet in Canada transmit sports news and reports around the clock in HD (720p/60), using Quantel’s sQ Enterprise-HD and Newsbox-HD broadcast systems.
In Europe, several broadcasters had opted for sQ-HD system solutions in recent months, including Spain’s Televisión Española (TVE), the French digital specialty channel NRJ Paris, which went on air that spring with a 24-hour infotainment service, and Canal+ in Poland, which successfully uses the system for sports production in HD.
German broadcasters were planning to begin HD transmission in 2010, but might have to operate simulcasts for several years. Parallel playout in SD and HD must therefore be ensured. Quantel’s sQ Enterprise and Newsbox solutions handle HD and SD simulcasting fully automatically.
Today’s broadcasters need HD-capable, tapeless production systems that can be used for SD and HD in parallel. Especially in fast-paced news production, the primary concern is that all file formats can be ingested without problems, since images and content from mobile networks or Internet streams are also used. With a Quantel sQ system, any content from mobile-phone material to HD resolution can be ingested or played out in real time at any desired resolution.
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Multicasting with Mission
Automated content ingest and playout is supported by the Mission media asset management solution, which enables unlimited multicasting in SD, HD, web, or mobile formats. Content in news production must be capable of being fed automatically into every distribution channel without additional work. The routes to the Internet and mobile devices have become especially important because news searches are increasingly shifting there.
V4 Supports the New Formats
At NAB in April of that year, Quantel introduced its newly developed V4 software. V4 made Quantel’s broadcast systems even more productive and supported the new AVC-I compression process across all Quantel systems.
Only half as much storage space was required to work with the higher-quality DVCPRO HD format.
Thanks to Quantel’s Essence Driver technology, material from Panasonic P2 cards could also be played directly onto the timeline and edited there without localizing the material in the Quantel system. A similar workflow for XDCAM HD was scheduled to become possible by the end of 2008. V4 also supported the AAF metadata format, enabling compatibility with Apple’s Final Cut Pro editing system.
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