Switzerland’s Canal9 Relies on Grass Valley Gear for Remote Workflow

Canal9, the Switzerland Valais canton regional television station, has selected the GV Director nonlinear live production center for the Parliament of Valais, along with K2 Summit and GV STRATUS from Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, to provide a uniform workflow between its central station and remote sites throughout the region.

This investment follows the initial installation in 2014, when Canal9 selected GV Director to combine the functionality of a switcher, video server, graphics generator and multiviewer in a simple, powerful and creative workspace. Additional products installed include K2 Summit 3G production servers and a GV STRATUS video production and content management system to integrate video switching, multilayer effects, animated graphics, multiviewer monitoring, and more into a single, intuitive, and highly creative system. With great success, the decision was made to expand the use of Grass Valley equipment to the Parliament of Valais remote station. Facilitated by Grass Valley reseller PZ-Multimedia AG in Switzerland providing important local and level 1 support services, Canal9 now has a complete, interoperable solution using one dynamic platform.

“GV Director removes the typical complexity of production when working with remote sites, and now Canal9 will have a unified workflow across all stations,” states Stéphane Sassano, CTO, Canal9. Joël Antonin, co-CTO, adds, “Integrating GV Director into our workflow leverages powerful interoperability with our other Grass Valley products, streamlining operations and adding greater efficiency to our day-to-day tasks. We couldn’t be happier with our decision to replicate this investment for our remote sites and expand our partnership with Grass Valley.”

Canal9’s remote stations will also install Grass Valley K2 Summit 3G production servers, optimized for a broad range of production and broadcast applications that will support their end-to-end SD/HD workflows, along with GV STRATUS for greater simplicity, flexibility and efficiency within their news production system.

“Many of our customers have remote sites that need to deliver highly creative, valuable content that can be easily shared with their central station,” states Said Bacho, senior vice president, EMEA. “In selecting GV Director, Canal9 will have the ability to easily collaborate without being restricted by their operators’ geographic locations. Canal9 is a perfect example of how Grass Valley products allow broadcasters to work seamlessly together throughout the entire production cycle, in any environment.”