An early installation......
CBS STATION KYW-TV PURCHASES PANASONIC DVCPRO
NEWS AUTOMATION SYSTEM
Philadelphia Station to be First On Air with DNA for News
LOS ANGELES, CA (January 1999) -- Panasonic Broadcast &
Digital Systems Company (PBDSC) has announced that CBS
owned-and-operated station KYW-TV, Channel 3 in Philadelphia,
PA, has purchased a DVCPRO News Automation (DNATM)
digital video server system, valued at $1.1 Million, for news
postproduction and multi-channel playback to air.
The Panasonic DNA system configured for KYW is a seamless
network of six high-speed newsBYTETM nonlinear editing
systems with dual redundant Silicon Graphics (SGI) Origin200
GIGAchannel servers working on a Prisa Fibre Channel network.
Ciprico FibreSTORE on-line disk arrays provide the DNA system
with a total of 24 hours of online storage.
DNA is an end-to-end DVCPRO solution, offering the benefits of
the world's most popular professional digital recording format,
DVCPRO, in a powerful central server system. DVCPRO, with
more than 65,000 units in use worldwide, has become the de
facto standard for cost-effective digital acquisition and recording.
With DNA, DVCPRO processing easily and transparently
integrates into KYW's production environment to complete the
digital news production and delivery chain.
"The Panasonic DNA system meets all the requirements of our
station's news operations. It's a highly-automated turnkey
system delivering high quality video and audio, and we anticipate
that it will be highly reliable," said Jim Chase, Director of
Broadcast Operations and Engineering, KYW. "We especially
like DNA because of newsBYTE's fast transfer and dubbing
capabilities, fibre channel transmission, and its powerful video file
server for highly-automated playback control."
Chase continued, "KYW completed its conversion to DVCPRO
two years ago, and has been using DVCRO for four years now.
We love DVCPRO because it has performed so very well."
"So it was imperative that the new system we selected be
DVCPRO native and transfer video at four times normal speed,"
Chase added. "Panasonic showed DNA at NAB '98 and we were
very interested. Over the past year, Panasonic has rapidly
improved newsBYTE by offering a new control panel and major
software upgrades. Now our editors have as much confidence in
newsBYTE as they do in any competitive news nonlinear
system."
Chase added, "In addition to the time-saving benefit of 4X
transfer, newsBYTE is extremely easy to use, especially for
editors who learned linear-style editing. It's an easy transition for
them because newsBYTE is so intuitive. By using newsBYTE to
edit and then 'drag and drop' the media file with completed
stories into the SGI server, we'll be able to save tremendous time
in the editing process."
Robert Mueller, President, PBDSC, said, "Panasonic is
delighted that KYW, a pioneer in broadcasting and news, is
combining its field-proven DVCPRO acquisition equipment with
the total system solution that DNA brings to the broadcast news
environment. DNA will allow KYW to increase its production
capacity, delivering higher quality stories as well as different
story versions in less time."
The DNA system replaces an on air BetaCart System, and will
go on-line in March 1999 when all news stories will be edited
with newsBYTEs and transferred via fibre channel to the SGI
servers, Chase explained. One SGI server will play the story to
air, while a second SGI server will serve as a "hot" stand-by
playing redundant material. KYW has been Beta testing the
Panasonic DNA system since November and collaborated with
Panasonic in writing the server control, mirroring and play list
editing software.
In addition, KYW will implement a separate, single-channel
Promotions system to edit short-term "topical" promos. In this
system, newsBYTE will edit the promos, and transfer them by
high-speed ethernet into a separate DNA server for playback to
air.
Phase II of KYW's news automation upgrade, Chase explained,
will complete the DNA project later this year with the installation
of the Promotions system, which will consist of five newsBYTEs
and a redundant on-air news server.
Within DNA, native DVCPRO files move between clients and
server at faster than real-time to increase production efficiency
and maintain original digital production quality. Real-time I/Os
employ ITU-R Rec. 601 digital video I/O and 48kHz digital audio
interfaces as well as DVCPRO 1X and 4X I/Os. TCP-IP Fibre
Channel networking carries DVCPRO native files to and from the
server. By processing compressed DVCPRO native signals, the
DVCPRO stream throughout the DNA system is lossless during
input, transfer and playback, insuring the highest quality signal
for both playout to air and archiving.
Panasonic's newsBYTE features a built-in DVCPRO 4X
recorder/player with disk transfers at 4X faster than normal
speed. By uploading and downloading of video data at 4X speed,
newsBYTE significantly shortens system input and preparation
work and accelerates story editing in the news production studio.
The tower system, running Windows NT, features an internal
hard disk array that can store about 70 minutes of high quality
video and stereo sound. The newsBYTEs delivered to KYW have
their storage expanded to more than 2-1/2 hours.
DNA's main server, the SGI Origin200 GIGAchannel, provides
PCI bus and XIO slots for system interfaces. The DIVO-DVCPRO
adapters in the Origin200 offer multiple digital video I/O ports for
playback to air, 4X DVCPRO SDTI I/O or recording from live video
sources. SGI's XFS real-time file system is utilized to store
media files for real-time playback of native DVCPRO data.
DNA easily replaces aging robotic news playback units or
multiple manual-load and can be controlled via RS-422A using
Louth, Odetics, VTR or native protocols. The fault tolerant
features and ample bandwidth of the Origin200 make it ideal for
on-air use and system expansion. In its news configuration at
KYW, the DNA server supports up to six Fiber Channel
networked newsBYTE systems, sending or receiving
simultaneously from the server at faster than realtime. In addition
to the serving the edit systems, the server can also
simultaneously play three channels of video to air while recording
a 4X DVCPRO SDTI data stream.
In the U.S., PBDSC markets Panasonic's extensive lines of
broadcast and professional video and audio systems and
products. Panasonic Broadcast & Digital Systems Co. is a unit
company of Panasonic Broadcast & Television Systems
Company, itself a division company of Matsushita Electric
Corporation of America, the principal North America subsidiary of
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (MC, NYSE), one of the
world's leading producers of electronic and electric products for
consumer, business and industrial use.
For more information on Panasonic professional video and audio
products, phone 1-800-528-8601 or visit our web site at
www.panasonic.com/PBDS.
Copyright © 1997 Matsushita Electric Corporation of America. All rights
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