TV Markíza is Slovakia’s leading privately owned TV station and is part of CME group. Launched in 1996 and reaching 99% of Slovakia’s 5.4 million population, TV Markíza broadcasts family entertainment 24 hours a day via satellite, cable and IPTV operators and also via analogue and digital terrestrial transmitters across the country.
Requirements:
TV Markíza sought to transition its operations and production environment from analogue to digital, which naturally required moving from tape to digital archiving in order to take full advantage of the improved efficiency afforded by digitization. Implementation of a new large digital deep storage archive would become the cornerstone of the company’s infrastructure, including playout servers, news production, automation and traffic systems and media asset management.
The archive solution had to enable TV Markíza to manage and quality-control SD and HD material within a centralized architecture, with data fed from an AVID Interplay news production system, graphics files and projects from the graphics department and the complete transfer of all acquisition SD and HD materials.
Solution:
The solution for the Digital Archive Centre is based on a custom-designed broadcast IT infrastructure, integrating sub-systems DIVArchive and DIVAdirector from Front Porch Digital, central storage from Data Direct Network and IBM TS3500 Tape Library. It has enabled TV Markíza to efficiently transition its channels to digital and HD and enjoy the benefits of a digital workflow, fi le-based operation and centralized resources.
Technical overview:
At the core of the solution is placed a Front Porch Digital DIVArchive system integrated with existing Seachange broadcast servers, Pebble Beach Neptune automation and AVID news production and editing system.
DIVArchive is connected with the Program planning MIS-TV traffic system and through a special feature developed by our team in-house team, users can view files in low resolution on their office PCs. The DIVArchive is attached to a DDN xStreamScaler™ central SAN storage system with 88 TB capacity and manages an IBM TS3500 tape library with 5 LTO-5 drives and 800 active slots. According to defined rules, material is moved to the tape library or temporarily stored on the SAN storage for production operations. The files are deleted by DIVArchive once it is archived.
A DIVAdirector system provide a multiuser, multi-task environment with powerful tools to search archived materials via any metadata field and view content via a built-in Windows Media Player. Automated systems monitor output and content, and data is systematically backed up for rapid service restoration.
Benefits:
- built an efficient robust solution
- integrating best-of-breed technologies, to move content back and forth from acquisition to deep archive