Case Study: Imagine Communications Assists VICE Media With IP Production Center Conversion

The ongoing evolution of the broadcast industry requires signal monitoring technology to be more scalable, flexible, and multi-faceted than ever before. That’s why leading broadcast facilities rely on Imagine multiviewers. From modular to integrated router/multiviewer to software-based solutions, Imagine offers a proven, high-performance monitoring system.

Business Challenge
One would expect “the definitive guide to enlightening information,” which is how VICE Media describes itself on its social media sites, to be an envelope pusher when it comes to building out a technology foundation to support its latest television enterprise. The technologists at VICE Media didn’t disappoint, pulling together a news production control room for its recently launched VICE News Tonight show that’s based on IP technology and built to keep the avant-garde media organization operating on the cutting-edge of video production for years to come.

VICE required a solution that would not only be relevant and supportive of its unique brand of journalism for the foreseeable feature, but one built on standards-based technology that could evolve and expand seamlessly and without disrupting the production of a daily news show.

The decision to go with SDI or IP, for most media companies, is still fraught with agita-inducing deliberation. For VICE Media, which produces VICE News Tonight out of its New York City headquarters, located in an iconic 125-year-old former sugar factory on the Brooklyn waterfront, IP was a no brainer. For starters, the facility is near capacity, and its in exible layout required VICE to locate the various components of its production operations, including control room, audio suites, studios and machine room, in various locations across the campus.

Going with an IP infrastructure enabled VICE to eliminate latency concerns by interconnecting the widely dispersed production sites over a ber network. A stronger driver for IP over SDI, though, was VICE’s limited history in the SDI realm. Instead, the company had been well-immersed in IT technology, relying on IP-based edit suites and network storage systems, for the past several years. A corporate culture that thrives on forward thinking and seizing on the latest and greatest also pointed to IP playing the lead role in the company’s new production center.

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