By-Mark Gilbert, CTO, Gallery/IEC and Simon Haywood, Simon Haywood Broadcast Consulting.

Demands of a television newsroom are like no ?other. Those who make programs we watch, need to work with and share media from multiple and varied sources. They need to edit, play-to-air, and archive that material and need to both gather and author the content. It is a tough task, and the tools to do the job need to be functional, reliable, and ready to work.

Delivering those tools is an equally tough task. Even in the not-so-distant past, the only way of getting a news program on the air was to build a station around discrete islands of analog technology, using a token-based workflow, and rely on manual intervention. The path, ‘from glass to glass' (the camera to the television screen) involved many steps, with the token (a video tape containing media) being passed between people and machines.

The end of the 20th century brought developments in technology that enabled those discrete islands to be upgraded to new digital versions. Still though, the technology was very much proprietary. Be it a video server, a graphics device, or an editing system, each item in the chain was a ‘black box' with only baseband video and audio interfaces. Slowly, manufacturers, integrators, and broadcasters found ways to bring the technologies together - building bridges to join the islands. The ultimate goal was to bring together processes; implement a workflow that did away with the token, and gave those making our television news programs the space and freedom to do just that.

And that's where we join the story.

Broadcasters can now choose open standards systems, built on commodity hardware, and networked with off-the-shelf infrastructure that will carry them through the 21st century. A good example of a market leading solution is SIENNA from Gallery UK.

SIENNA is built to operate on standard, off-the-shelf ?Apple computers, and capitalizes on that platform's reputation for power and stability, using a flavor of the UNIX operating system as well as its long history of dealing with video and audio. Apple has brought us a powerful editing tool in Final Cut Pro, and an open standards media wrapper in Quicktime. SIENNA adds capture, play-to-air, media management, archive, and most importantly, integration. Where previously, television newsrooms were dominated by PC workstations and technical areas by closed systems and island technologies, SIENNA software and Apple hardware can deliver an elegant, modern, sophisticated, and highly productive workflow.

Major news organizations and broadcasters across the globe such as the BBC and the Associated Press have embraced SIENNA and the new workflows it offers. ?SIENNA brings news production up-to-date and ready to face the changing nature of news delivery. News producers must now provide content not just for linear transmission platforms, but also to feed the rapidly increasing demand for web and mobile delivery. In order to survive and remain relevant, today's news producers must provide content for all delivery platforms and they demand that their technology delivers.

News knows no boundaries and consumers across the globe demand content from all corners of our planet. In response, broadcasters are seeking to globalize their news operations, with automated transfers of media between cities and continents - following a story as it moves around the world. SIENNA closes the gap between television and information technology, enabling file based workflows across standard computer networks - a true end-to-end digital media infrastructure.

SIENNA is underpinned by Apple's QuickTime technology, and works natively with any format that QuickTime supports. QuickTime's huge library of available codecs enables SIENNA to accommodate and work natively with almost any format that a broadcaster requires either in standard or in high definition - including DV25, DV50, IMX 30, 40, and 50, DVCProHD and many others. SIENNA also integrates smoothly with Sony's XDCamHD and P2 from Panasonic.

Using QuickTime as the native file format means that SIENNA can work with one file for the whole workflow. Media is ingested to central storage, edited in place on the central storage, and played directly to air from the central storage. There is no need to copy, convert, or move media at different stages of the workflow.

Working with QuickTime brings SIENNA the additional benefit of enabling very tight integration into the workflow of Apple's Final Cut Pro. For example, it is possible to use Final Cut Pro to edit QuickTime files whilst those same files are still being ingested elsewhere in the ?SIENNA infrastructure. Final Cut Pro has proven itself to be a very capable and popular tool in broadcast. SIENNA components deliver the real time ingest, asset management, and play-to-air features that enable its use in a live news environment. Media can be ingested, edited, and played-to-air all in real time, all at the same time, and all from the same media file.

The final piece of the jigsaw is integration with a newsroom system. Specialist software applications have been developed by a number of vendors enabling journalists to acquire and author news and news programs. Newsroom computer systems are used to write text stories, and to plan bulletins and programs. The integration of ?SIENNA with newsroom computer systems is made possible by the open-standard MOS protocol. Developed by the Associated Press, and featured in their ENPS newsroom system, the MOS protocol enables SIENNA to appear as a Media Object Server, and embed audio and video elements into news stories as they are written.

The MOS protocol allows a text story and its associated media to flow back and forth between the text based newsroom system, and the video oriented SIENNA and Final Cut Pro. As a result, video material appears in text stories in very much the same way as images appear within the text on Web pages. A link embedded in the text references media stored on the Media Object Server. To the user, it is transparent and enables very powerful, natural, and ?intuitive workflows.

SIENNA delivers MOS in abundance as it features the most sophisticated MOS integration ever developed in a Media Object Server. Whilst many vendors support the most basic features of the MOS protocol, SIENNA embraces the MOS protocol standard completely and uses it to deliver advanced functionality and tight integration with the newsroom computer system.

SIENNA is modular and scalable. It is as equally suited to the smallest entry level system as it is to the largest and most demanding of infrastructures. Each module delivers functionality required for key stages of the newsroom workflow. There are modules to deal with baseband and file-based video ingest, ingest automation, asset management, MOS integration, edit integration, live assist automation, and archives. The modules can be implemented on whatever scale is required to meet the demands of the broadcaster.

SIENNA PictureReady handles the ingest of media from baseband video sources. The sophisticated software runs on a standard Apple XServe equipped with an AJA Kona video card, and connected to a central storage system. SIENNA PictureReady is capable of ingesting standard definition or high definition video using a variety of standard codecs including the DV Family (DV25, 50, and 100 HD) and IMX 30, 40, and 50.

Reliable capture to shared central storage - even over Gigabit Ethernet - is ensured by the implementation during recording of PictureReady's dynamic RAM buffer technology. The RAM buffer allows SIENNA PictureReady to ‘ride out' storage availability problems and times of unusually heavy load, without dropping frames. The feature is an essential part of the product, because if a frame is dropped on capture, it is irreplaceable.

As SIENNA PictureReady is ingesting media, it simultaneously creates a low (proxy) resolution version. During capture, both native and proxy resolution versions are available for browsing, logging, and editing. The creation of proxy resolution media is central to the workflow. It enables even high definition pictures to be browsed, logged, and edited even across low performance local or wide area networks.

A typical SIENNA installation will include many individual channels of PictureReady, each used to ingest ?material from video sources available to the broadcaster. SIENNA IngestControl enables the control from a single workstation of up to 15 PictureReady channels. IngestControl brings the added functionality of scheduled ?recording and integration with the station video router.

Tying everything together, SIENNA includes a central data-hub which acts as an asset database, and an MOS interface to the text-based newsroom computer system. The asset management functionality is delivered through a powerful Web-based interface, and is available to users of either Apple Macs or PCs, including operation as a plug in from right inside most newsroom computer systems. With every piece of media within the SIENNA infrastructure automatically having a proxy version available, this makes sophisticated Boolean searching, browsing, and delivery of assets to and from Final Cut Pro, quick and simple. It is even possible to access the database and browse media from the other side of the planet.

Because it fully embraces the feature set of the MOS protocol, SIENNA can be interfaced to all popular newsroom computer systems. When partnered with the popular ENPS newsroom system, SIENNA goes several steps further, and delivers unrivaled functionality.

During the development of the SIENNA suite of products, Gallery worked closely with the Associated Press and ENPS to create a system which took total MOS integration as its standard. Gallery did not simply bolt-on an MOS interface like so many other automation systems, but instead based SIENNA natively around MOS at ?every level. ENPS is designed to utilize MOS to its limits, and so is SIENNA. This meeting of MOS yields a variety of unique capabilities that bring several advantages to the user and the broadcaster.

One such advantage is the ability to edit news story text whilst working inside the environment of the Final Cut Pro application. Another is the transparent movement of media between SIENNA-based sites around the world. A multinational news organization can follow a story as it passes from a London bureau running order to a running order of the New York operation. The SIENNA system will automatically move media so that it is available where and when it is needed. It can even perform automated intelligent standards conversion between television systems (for example, PAL and NTSC) during the transfer. All this happens behind the scenes with the operator simply dragging a story from one rundown to another.

Edit integration

The modern newsroom demands that its digital media systems deliver the best in breed technology. A particularly important part of the infrastructure is the interface between the newsroom system and the editing system getting media and other information into an editing application, and then allowing the user to quickly and easily deliver a finished package - with the all important metadata intact - for play-out to air.

SIENNA builds on the power of industry leading Final Cut Pro from Apple, and provides unrivaled integration. Using SIENNA's Final Cut Pro plug-in, the user is uniquely given the facility to work with the text of a news story whilst inside the interface of the editing system. The text is displayed right alongside the video content, allowing the editor to match the video timeline to the text story. The system even allows the text and video timelines to be locked together offering a real time display of the relationship between video time and text story ‘talk' time, for the creation of video packages.

Media and text are grouped together during the journey from the newsroom system where the story was written and the rushes logged, across to the craft editor who conveniently discovers that all raw materials required for cutting the package are attached to the text story, ready to be dragged into Final Cut Pro for craft editing. Similarly, when the edit is complete a single mouse click sends the completed edit back to the SIENNA system, once again attached to the story it accompanies, now ready to be played to air.

SIENNA offers various levels of editing, including simple browse and logging, cuts-based remote proxy editing in a web interface through to proxy editing and high resolution finishing in Final Cut Pro.

Newsroom systems like ENPS are designed to enable the journalist to compose a news program - laying out the structure and timing of a bulletin and writing the text-based content. When ENPS and SIENNA are integrated using the MOS protocol, the user benefits from instant and seamless text story writing and video package creation.

As the program takes shape, an MOS rundown is built in the newsroom system, which will form the schedule for the bulletin. Once again, the power of the MOS protocol is leveraged and the rundown will be communicated dynamically to SIENNA at every change, and SIENNA AutomationX reflects this rundown as a video playlist.

SIENNA AutomationX is a linked representation of the rundown, oriented toward the video elements of the program. It is tightly bound via bi-directional connection to the rundown in the newsroom system, and constantly tracks changes and updates as journalists and producers are putting the finishing touches into place.

During the bulletin, AutomationX controls a bank of up to six SIENNA VirtualVTR playout channels. Each channel of VirtualVTR can play video into a news program with each item being cued up in turn the video rolled as directed. Rich status is fed back to the newsroom system via MOS and channel assignments can be pushed in either direction.

In this way, SIENNA AutomationX provides powerful automation assist, allowing the director of a news program to focus on content and direction.

An essential part of any commercially viable news organization is a properly organized and easily accessible archive. This valuable resource allows material to be easily reused or recycled for new media platforms and it is vital that the archive is easy to use, and that its contents are easy to find and quick to access. SIENNA integrates the archive directly into the main workflow, utilizing the same database both for live and archived material, providing a single user experience when locating current and historic assets.

The process of triggering the archive of media is equally transparent to the user, and restore on demand is seamlessly integrated into SIENNA. A user only needs to search for an asset in the web-based interface and then send an archived asset into the newsroom system or to Apple's Final Cut editor to trigger an automatic restore. It is all achieved with a single click of the mouse, and the asset is delivered into place with no further user involvement.

Even from right inside the interface of the newsroom system, the user can search for an old story and immediately bring up a playable proxy of the archived media embedded in the story. If a story is dragged from the archives of the newsroom system to a live rundown, SIENNA will trigger an automatic and transparent restore process, and deliver the media into place, cued up and ready to air.

Most amazing of all, SIENNA offers an intuitive and simple interface for the partial restore of large files. The user can browse the proxy resolution media right at their desktop and mark the area of interest, before triggering automatic creation of a new asset from partial selection. The process is a true partial restore. When selecting ?media from an LTO4 library, only the section of media ?required will be read back from the data tape, ensuring rapid operation, even where the original media had a very long duration.

SIENNA has attracted unprecedented attention from broadcasters and other technology vendors and great integration partnerships have developed. Apart from the natural bond with Apple, SIENNA has forged strong links with the Associated Press and ENPS. More recently, Omneon and Gallery have worked together to build a scalable news infrastructure - seamlessly integrating SIENNA with Omneon's broadcast products.

Around the world, SIENNA is finding natural homes with forward-thinking broadcasters who want to embrace new technologies. It allows them to create a more productive and more capable newsroom for unrivaled multi-platform delivery.

Perhaps SIENNA's most attractive feature is its most surprising functional upgrade. Broadcasters who install the system are always pleasantly surprised at how little their functional upgrade has cost them when they compare it to the price of traditional proprietary systems coming with inevitable technology baggage of the past.

Early adopters of SIENNA included the Associated Press, who now have four SIENNA sites linked across the Atlantic for real time collaboration, and the BBC who have found that SIENNA's superior functionality and reasonable price allows them to realize their mandate to reorganize for a multi-platform world. Since then small, medium, and large broadcasters have found that SIENNA's scalability and functionality fit with a changing landscape for TV news.

India representatives: The system integrators for Apple and SIENNA in India is HCL.

For more information visit:

http://www.sienna-tv.com
http://www.simonhaywood.com