Liverpool FC TV to Air
When Liverpool FC decided to launch their own TV channel, they took the view that they wanted to own and manage the infrastructure themselves rather than work with one of the existing broadcast service providers. In addition to a broadcast slot on the Sky platform an engaging web presence was a priority.
In the Spring of 2007, Liverpool FC approached Boxer Systems to discuss how we could help them meet their on air date for the early part of the 2007-2008 season - a few months away!
Timescales were tight and so was the budget, therefore it was important to select reliable, economical equipment that needed little customisation to meet Liverpool's requirements. It was also impoortant that we designed a solution that matched our experience base as closely as possible to reduce the number of unknows.
The brief for Boxer Systems included design and supply of the video and audio infrastructure and the editing, production and playout management systems to run the station. Installation was to be in the recently developed Matchworks site just outside Liverpool.
Overview
On the video side, a brand new 3 camera studio was integrated into a gallery with vision and audio mixers, combined video router/multi-screen display system, high end broadcast graphics generation and transmission automation. All monitoring is on high resolution flat screen creating a spacious and impressive working environment with a high degree of functionality and a low operational overhead.
The editing, production and playout systems were designed around Apple hardware and software allowing a reliable, high performance facility to be created in a short period of time and with a good degree of expandability.
The overall design of the production and playout systems uses Apple Mac Pro computers for editing, Xserve computers for ingest, management and playout; and Xserve Raid disk systems for the high speed central storage. Where video input and output is required, high quality digital video input/output cards were used from AJA video. As material is brought into the system it is stored at DV25 and this is the format that is used throughout for editing and transmission ensuring that no transcoding is required when moving from production to playout.
An advantage of using DV25 as a native format is also that material can be easily imported from DV cameras and laptops when shooting and editing has been carried out in the field.
The budget did not allow a fully mirrored system to be built but wherever possible, features such as redundant power suppliers, raid protection with hot spare disks and backup servers were included to minimise the effect of any hardware failures.
As the system was being installed in a "green field" site and new staff had to be found to run the operation, it was decided that Final Cut Studio from Apple should be the editing and graphics effects system of choice. In addition to being a low cost, high performance suite of software, it is also the most widely used in the industry meaning that experienced editors are widely available.
An advantage of the fact that this was a new installation was that Boxer were able to install the video infrastructure on site whilst at the same time building the Apple based production and transmission systems at their offices in Harpenden. This allowed both operations to be carried out in tandem with little effect on each other and meant that the production and transmission management systems could be tested in advance of the wiring and infrastructure being ready at Liverpool FC TV.
Operation
Considering the life cycle of a piece of materialm it is first ingested into the system either as a file or via video tape. It is catalogued in the content management database to allow it to be later located by date, title, content or a combination of search paramaters. The material is then typically edited prior to on air use or compilations and promotional items made to suit the upcoming broadcast schedule.
The finished and quality checked material can then be built into transmission schedules and played out under gallery control in combination with studio based material to form the overall Liverpool FC TV schedule.
It is important that an archive copy of any material on the system is saved for use at a later date or to deal with accidental deletions or system failures. Due to cost considerations and flexibility of operation, a decision was taken to use DV video as the archive medium for this system. The content management system keeps track of the tape location of archived material and it is a real bonus that the tape can be used by any DV machine in another facility without worrying about data translation issues.
An increasingly important part of the operation is re-purposing of material for use on the web and shortly after launch a FlipFactory transcoding engine was added to the system to provide an efficient gateway between the broadcast world and the internet.
In conclusion, the system has performed well and is being used every day to produce and on-air look and feel that bears comparison with any other channel. The system design has proven to be sound and the equipment has shown itself to be more than up to the job and is further testimony to the broad abilities of Apple equipment from broadcast to consumer.
For more information and further details on how Boxer Systems would approach your production or transmission challenges, please feel free to get in touch.