NDI-Based Master Control in Action
By Adam Noyes
NewTek’s NDI technology is a key ingredient to stepping up your live production studio. This has been demonstrated by VTC Digital Media, who have integrated NDI into their production studio in a big way!
Check out some highlights from this article from NewTek to learn more.
VTC Digital Television is a multimedia organization that’s consistently focused on ways to stay ahead.
Starting in 1988, it was the first to provide post production, transmission and broadcast to all TV stations in in Vietnam. In 2009, it was the first to provide HD broadcast; and in 2017, the first to trial 4K video transmission there as well. Even the company’s mission statement reads like an homage to cutting-edge technologies:
To satisfy VTC’s customers with high-end quality and premium technology at a competitive price, and be profoundly engaged in making Vietnam a pioneer in strong information and communication technologies.
This bold mission reflects the government’s ambitious goal for television in the nation: to digitalize the transmission of Vietnam’s terrestrial broadcasting by 2020.
Now VTC, wholly owned by Voice of Vietnam, is building the foundation to achieve it, one master control room at a time.
Heartbeat of the station
Nguyễn Huyền Diệu, owner of broadcast-industry software company HD Vietnam in Hanoi, saw an opportunity to move VTC forward when the organization built a new building for its television station. VTC wanted to migrate from the old SD/HD facility to all HD video transmission, creating the need for master control playout of multiple TV channels.
“The new master control room will be the transmission center for 16 television channels fully ready for air,” says Dr. Diệu. “It’s essentially the heartbeat of the entire TV station.”
The facility needed to accommodate playout of all channels simultaneously, each of them with full channel branding and live video input. The programs would need to publish the live transport stream directly from the master control room—or MCR—both for OTT delivery and the headend. All fairly conventional requirements by master control standards.
But VTC had even more in store for its new MCR in its journey to fully digital transmission: it had to be built with the ability to upgrade transmission to 4K—at any time.
With existing baseband equipment too outdated for these requirements, and a limited budget, HD Vietnam led VTC’s project down a new path: IP video transmission.
Breaking the chains
Imagine the logistics and expense of wiring a complete facility with SDI connectivity.
“If you build a TV station the traditional way, your MCR will have a lot of cabling coming in from pretty much all the sources in a station,” says Dr. Diệu.
Compared with a typical production room, where you might have ten to twelve sources, and need maybe a 16 x 16 router, he says, “in MCR you’re talking about 3 studios, a few other NLE stations, newsrooms, sound rooms. All of the cables from all of the sources in all of those rooms have to come to MCR.”