NTV Plus Selects Grass Valley for 2014 Winter Olympics

Grass Valley will provide Russian satellite broadcaster NTV Plus with several of its innovative live production solutions to deliver multichannel sports production for the 2014 Winter Olympics to be held in Sochi, Russia, February 7-23, 2014.

GrassThese solutions include a K2 Summit production client with a K2 Storage Area Network (SAN), GV STRATUS nonlinear media production tools with EDIUS editing capabilities, and a K2 Dyno S Replay Controller. The Grass Valley-NTV Plus collaboration was completed via Grass Valley’s long term Russian partner OKNO TV, alongside System Integrator PTS to deliver smooth installation of the Grass Valley solutions.

NTV Plus selected Grass Valley solutions to serve as the hub for its integrated production, post, and as its distribution system. Not only does the system’s flexibility enable it to be reconfigurable after the Games, it can also integrate with NTV Plus’s existing Grass Valley solutions, making it the most cost-effective and resource-friendly choice by reducing costs and boosting creativity. The semi-portable platform is due to be installed in January 2014 in Sochi.

“We worked closely with Grass Valley last summer covering a number of London’s major sporting events,” said Oleg Kolesnikov, Chief Technology Officer, NTV Plus. “Drawing upon this positive experience we reached the natural conclusion to continue our relationship with Grass Valley as we move towards Sochi. With less than six months to go, we needed to act quickly, and Grass Valley was able to meet our immediate need for a fast, flexible, and reliable system that integrates smoothly with our existing production gear. Once again, Grass Valley has exceeded our expectations and delivered a system on time and on budget—allowing us to concentrate on our own preparations as excitement continues to build in Russia.”

The K2 media server and storage platform includes the only media client that supports end-to-end SD/HD workflows in DVCPRO, MPEG-2, AVC-Intra, H.264/AVCHD, and DNxHD formats. Teamed with the K2 Dyno S Replay Controller and integrated with GV STRATUS, it offers an ideal solution for live events. K2 Summit can be configured as part of a SAN solution comprised of multiple K2 Summit clients, K2 media servers, and K2 RAID storage. GV STRATUS is an easy-to-use and custom built suite, with a wide range of software-centric tools for a robust nonlinear production workflow, offering support for ingest, editing, content aggregation, logging, transfer, and playout. It combines with EDIUS nonlinear video editing software to offer powerful, real-time editing functionality.

“It’s great to be partnering with NTV Plus again” said Said Bacho, Senior Vice President of EMEA, Grass Valley. “It’s important to us that we work flexibly with NTV Plus’s existing system—to support them in the expansion of their capabilities and to maintain their first-rate reputation as a technologically superior organization in the Russian broadcast market. Our solutions unify workflow and configurations that can be used in an infinite number of combinations across the entire production ecosystem. We are thrilled to be able to swiftly meet NTV Plus’s production needs for the Winter Games and to also help them plan for the future.”

Shaw Media Deploys Nonlinear Platform Across Canada with Grass Valley STRATUS
Canadian Broadcaster Shaw Media will upgrade its existing Grass Valley Aurora system to the GV STRATUS media workflow application in seven of its news stations throughout the rest of this year. T

he project will stretch across the country with integration of GV STRATUS in five additional TV stations in 2014. GV STRATUS will optimize Shaw’s workflow by providing a versatile software-based platform for nonlinear media production. It will expand desktop access to all users and provide integration across all GV STRATUS sites, enabling users to share functions for search, view, move and edit. It will also provide Shaw Media with an impressive 3,785 hours of HD storage.

“As a leading broadcaster in Canada, it is vital for us to ensure that our news media management tools and systems enable us to provide our viewers the level of service and quality they have come to expect, as our news publishing opportunities grow. Upgrading our existing Aurora system to GV STRATUS is an important step in streamlining our operations for multi-platform publishing on a 24/7 basis. Having worked with Grass Valley technology already, our experience has been that Grass Valley stands behind their products and we look forward to their continued support. With GV STRATUS all of our users will be connected and able to share content, which is ideal for a network such as ours which stretches over a large geographical area,” said Carol Darling, Vice President of Engineering and Broadcast Systems, Shaw Media.

GV STRATUS is an innovative application framework for nonlinear production tools to support every part of the content creation and distribution lifecycle through a common graphical user interface model. It includes tools for ingest, editing, content aggregation, logging, transfer and playout. It is a collaborative, evolvable and agile platform with a common user experience across media production applications, enabling more efficient operational models. All archive content, proxy files, and metadata can be moved from an existing Aurora system to a GV STRATUS system. This permits a facility to have a smooth transition to a newer state-of-the-art news production system without losing pre-existing content.

“It’s exciting for us to be able to announce a Canadian GV STRATUS customer because there the broadcast market is such a vibrant and fast-paced environment to work in,” said Tim Thorsteinson, President and CEO, Grass Valley. “One of the real challenges for today’s broadcasters is investing in technology for the future while also maximizing cost efficiencies. Grass Valley solutions like GV STRATUS are future-proofed and offer new streamlined ways of working so that broadcasters can meet this challenge head-on.”

 

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