ITN Productions Moves to G-SDI and Uses Blackmagic Design as Part of Expansion

Blackmagic Design has today announced that ITN Productions has expanded its post production capabilities following an investment of £1.4 million in a new state of the art facility built on a 12G-SDI backbone and featuring software and infrastructure products from Blackmagic Design.

Conceived originally as an in house resource, ITN Productions post production facilities, located at its Central London HQ, has grown to a facility of more than fifty edit suites. These now support every facet of video post production for ITNs growing creative and commercial arm.

With ITN Productions existing post production facilities at capacity, the decision was taken to upgrade and expand into space underneath the building. The principle driver was a need for greater flexibility to handle the growing number of creative disciplines and program formats we now produce, begins ITN Production s head of post production, Olly Strous. In addition to all of that, we also needed to be capable of supporting demands for 4K and UHD broadcasts.

The answer, according to Strous, was a facility built around 12G-SDI relying on Blackmagics Smart Videohub 40 x 40 routers for signal management. We looked at IP for this phase of expansion over SDI, yet with the industry still in flux about a universally agreed standard the timing wasnt quite right, he reveals. As such, we felt a solution built around Blackmagic Design and 12G-SDI would fulfill our immediate UHD requirements at a price point that made business sense.

With 12 new suites receiving transmission (TX) and receiving (RX) signals, single link 12G-SDI meant we were able to run a quarter of the cables we otherwise would have. Naturally, we also ran in fiber at the same time to support any future move to IP, Strous explains.

The new infrastructure also incorporates Teranex standards and frame rate conversion as part of a workflow that sees all online editing and grading completed in DaVinci Resolve Studio. We have installed two Teranex Express boxes wrapped around our video matrix. Implementing them ensures we retain a degree of flexibility at every stage of the post process. And I like the fact that all of the processing is done in real time.

ITN has also installed a video wall in their foyer. Requiring the ability to do picture in picture. For this Strous implemented a solution featuring the MultiView 4 and MultiView 16. We daisy chained the multiviewers into the router matrix, which means we can route anything to any of the 16 screens while also then putting the 16 screen inside the four screen if we want to.

Our business is growing so rapidly that spotting trends and being able to technically support our growth in a well engineered and tested environment is incredibly important, concludes Strous. The roll out of 12G-SDI today affords us a small amount of growth tolerance to support UHD at higher frame rates, which is on our roadmap in the near future. Investing in Blackmagic Design products that support 12G-SDI meant we could deal with a single manufacturer using infrastructure that was designed to work together.

LINK:	https://www.kitplus.com/news/ITN_Productions_Moves_to_12G-SDI_and_Uses...
	See more stories from tvbay

Most recent headlines