Timeline Television Selects AmberFin iCR to help support New BT Sport Production Hub

Timeline Television Selects AmberFin iCR to help support New BT Sport Production Hub 23 Sep 2013

AmberFin, a leading developer of file-based media ingest, transcoding and quality control solutions for content owners, broadcasters, sports organizations and post-production houses, has announced that UK-based broadcast facility provider, Timeline Television, has integrated the AmberFin iCR software platform within a bespoke production centre to support BT Sport, the new UK sports broadcaster.

AmberFin iCR is providing high-speed file playback and transcoding resources as well as comprehensive standards conversion capabilities within the state-of-the-art file-based production and playout facility. Also, the addition of AmberFin's Unified Quality Control system running Digimetric's Aurora QC system as a seamless component within iCR ensures high media file quality and rapid turnaround of material within the workflow.

As part of the system delivery, Timeline TV is utilising AmberFin's Digital Production Partnership (DPP) compliant file format support for content delivery to UK broadcasters.

BT has chosen the former International Broadcast Centre at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as the home of its new BT Sport channels. Timeline Television has refitted part of the building to house three TV studios, a control centre, 20 edit suites and an audience holding area. Designed, installed and operated by Timeline Television, the new Olympic Park studios is a production hub for all the sports content that BT will offer and some programmes will be hosted from the studios.

Timeline Television reports that iCR's ability to combine a number of parallel real-time processes, together with its unique Unified QC solution, which enables fast and efficient manual review of content along with best quality picture quality, made the platform an obvious choice.

We chose AmberFin for the BT Sport project because we needed the highest-quality transcoding, QC and re-purposing available, delivered in the least possible time. This was essential in our design for the fast-turnaround workflow which lies at the heart of BT Sport, commented Charlie Tear, Technical Director at Timeline Television. AmberFin sits at the centre of the BT Sport workflow, providing file ingest, re-versioning and delivery for BTs three new flagship sports channels. AmberFins API allows us the flexibility to customise its monitoring, control and integration with the rest of the facilitys systems and last but not least, AmberFins integrated DPP capabilities have helped BT Sport become the UKs first fully DPP-compliant broadcast production hub.

Launched on 1 August, BT Sport broadcasts a range of live sports content including Barclays Premier League football and Aviva Premiership Rugby plus Serie A, Ligue 1, Brasileir o and Major League Soccer from overseas. Additionally, its studios broadcast a range of original debate and information shows every day of the week.

BT Sport is one of the most ambitious European broadcast infrastructure projects in many respects including the creation of this new leading edge production facility on the Olympic Park, remarked Jeremy Deaner, Chief Executive Officer of AmberFin. We're pleased and proud that AmberFin iCR has proved itself to be the optimum transcode, standards conversion and QC solution for this prestigious new complex.

Jamie Hindhaugh, Chief Operating Officer of BT Sport said At the core of our new studios build is a spirit of collaboration that brings the best of industry and sometimes competitors working together toward a common aim: to make the BT Sport studios a world-class hub for the best ideas and talent. We believe talent attracts talent and our partnership has helped us to foster that mind-set.

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