PROJECT: Production House Werne. LOCATION: Helsinki, Finland

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1 PROJECT: Production House Werne LOCATION: Helsinki, Finland GOAL: Accommodate the latest developments in broadcast technology and facilitate the growing demand for high-end broadcast services.

2 Master Control Playout Production Awards PRODUCTION HOUSE WERNE Ice hockey and football are national pastimes in Finland. Every day, Europe s best ice hockey and soccer players take to the ice and field, and every day Tuotantotalo Werne (Production House Werne) is there to broadcast all the action to Fins at home and across the Baltic. Located in Helsinki, Finland, Werne services two of the leading media groups in the Nordic region ViaSat Sport Finland and Sanoma Media with ingest, media management, logging, editing, archiving, material services and playout for the Finnish national ice hockey league, professional football(soccer) games, and various other programs. A Primestream client since 2009, Werne started small with ingesting, material services, and archiving for Finnish national hockey league games and soccer for leagues throughout the Europe. As technology evolved from standard definition to high definition, new distribution outlets opened up, and clients requested additional and more complex services, Werne added two 24/7 FORK Master Control Playout channels, DAC storage for archiving and a Chyron Hego Graphics system. On the production side, Werne upgraded to the latest version of FORK, adding Logger and Live Assist. For outside access to Werne s Media Asset Management database and archive, Werne added Xchange Suite, offering automation control for restoring content from the archive and requesting the high-resolution source material. Sanoma Media In Helsinki 1

3 IT access switches Virtualization environment DAC Archive IT INFRASTRUCTURE We have a three-layer network with core, distribution, and access switches. Olli-Matti Kärkkäinen System Management Supervisor Werne Sami Peltovuori Every system, server, and production computer on the 10 GB network is connected to the core layer, so a healthy IT infrastructure means everyone can do their job, explains Kärkkäinen. Werne s 10G local area network features a 2G in/out redundant Internet connection. The server room is divided into a production network and an office network people working with FORK are on the production side, while administrative departments such as marketing and accounting use the office side. Olli-Matti Kärkkäinen Werne employs three dedicated system admins to support the operation at all times: Sami Peltovuori, senior systems developer; Kari Kantanen, system specialist and technical support; and Olli-Matti Kärkkäinen, system management supervisor. Sammy Peltavori 2

4 Live stadium feeds BASEBAND INGEST Werne uses FORK to automate HD signal ingest from satellite, fiber, and studio camera sources. 15 stadiums across Finland have direct fiber runs to Werne. The in-house ingest runs on four Apple MacPros using Sonnet s xmac Pro Server and 7 AJA Kona cards. Media is housed on a Harmonic MediaGrid with 100TB allotted for production. During live broadcasts, Werne loggers working on MacMinis with two LCD monitors and two broadcast monitors add descriptive metadata, subclips and markers to incoming feeds. To increase logging speed and accuracy, Werne uses FORK Logger, a customizable application for adding pre-defined metadata. System specialist Kari Kantanen customized Werne s Logger suite with his own theme. With our pre-defined metadata, you can click on a player and get a list of all the other players on that team, which simplifies things for our operators, Kantanen adds. Metadata tags and FORK Smart Bins make it easy for Werne editors to search the FORK database for logged content players, goals, penalties during a live ingest and then send the assets to Adobe Premiere Pro using a FORK Action Script. The assets are cut into highlight packages for live broadcast on Viasat or Sanoma s sport channels. CRAFT EDITING Nonlinear editor integration is a big deal at Werne. Editors using Adobe Premiere Pro have access to clips from games in-progress through a FORK client, allowing them to assemble betweenperiod highlights and post show recaps even while the game feed is still being ingested. Incoming files also contain FORK events and metadata added by the logging team making it fast and easy for editors to locate a specific part of the game and import it into a Premiere Pro timeline. Giving editors the flexibility of working with the live production team means they spend less time on finding assets and more time being creative. 3

5 Werne s set for live ice hockey coverage STUDIO PRODUCTION The benefit with a software-based system is that we can quite easily modify and expand it by ourselves. I can go to the shop and buy whatever we need, and Primestream supports it. Sammy Peltovouri Senior Systems Developer Werne Production control room Werne is home to a state-of-the-art production studio where pre-game, half-time and post-game shows are recorded and played out in HD. In the control room, Live Assist software integrates seamlessly with existing hardware in the Newsroom Control System. Upgrading the Werne system to handle playout for Sanoma s PRO1 and PRO2 sports channels was a matter of allocating 30TB of storage on the MediaGrid and adding two MacPros with AJA I/O 4K playout devices running FORK Playout. Live Assist control room 4

6 Xchange software at Sanoma FILE-BASED INGEST, MATERIAL SERVICES, ARCHIVE, AND CLOUD ASSET MANAGEMENT The FORK Production Server, Xchange Server, Harmonic WFS, FTP and render farms run in a VMware virtual server environment. These applications drive the Werne Material Services department, which is primarily tasked with receiving media from Sanoma -- movies, commercials, and promos -- and preparing it for broadcast delivery. Content Navigator and FORK Production Server rely on watch folders for file-based ingest via FTP, Arkena, and Sanoma s M4 traffic system. Actions automatically populate Smart Bins based on metadata properties, and files are transcoded to MXF in Harmonic WFS (for editing and playout) then archived and also placed into a mirrored 200TB network attached storage for playout. It used to be that when Sanoma pulled footage from the Werne archive, they had to request a tape. Now with Xchange, Sanoma has instant Web access to Werne s 864TB ALTO archive from any PC. Sanoma can browse and request downloads of proxy files or source content to repurpose in promos or other marketing and sales activities. This new version of Xchange provides Sanoma with a more efficient way to access the content we produce for them, says Kärkkäinen. They also needed automation control over scripts to trigger things like restoring an asset from archive. 5

7 Supporting the FORK platform Live logging CONCLUSION As Werne continues to grow and evolve, FORK helps them quickly and easily adapt to bigger jobs for bigger clients. We re looking to grow our playout services and invest in developing applications for video-on-demand platforms like Apple TV, says Peltovuori. Our client s needs are always changing and FORK and Xchange give us the scalability and customization we need to keep our system one step ahead. Sammy Peltovouri Senior Systems Developer Werne 6

8 Production House Werne facility breakdown: Two channel playout: 2x Mac Pr 2x AJA IO4K Video cards Ingest: 4x Mac Pro 20 FORK ingest ports 2 Live Assistant 2 Direct Out Storage: Online: Harmonic MediaGrid 100TB Production, 30TB Playout Archive: Alto DAC 864TB Mirrored NAS for data transfere, FTP etc. 200TB Mirrored Transcoding: 1x Harmonic WFS server 2x Harmonic WFS node servers Edit: 15x Edit workstations (imac, Mac mini) Adobe Premiere FORK client Virtual clusters: Cluster 1: vsphere Essentials Plus, ESXi x HP DL380 G7: 2x Sockets, Xeon E GHz - 6 Cores \ CPU, 64Gb RAM Cluster 2: vsphere Essentials Plus, ESXi HP DL 560 G8: : 4x Sockets, Xeon E GHz - 8 Cores \ CPU, 128Gb RAM HP DL360p G8: 2x Sockets, Xeon E5-2643v2 3.5GHz - 6 Cores \ CPU, 64Gb RAM Several virtual servers on both clusters.for example, PDS, WFS server and Render/E2P/Drone. Networking/IT: 2x Arista 7050T-64 (Core layer) 4x HP G with 10G module (Distribution layer) 8x HP Switch (Access layer) 10G Production LAN* 2G in/out redundant Internet connection Arena network: 10G connection to 15 ice hockey arena Primestream s FORK line of products combines multiple modules in a single, integrated software suite. The range of functions that FORK provides includes advanced metadata search and scripting that empowers media companies to implement advanced automated workflows that free humans to do what they do best create. Based on an open and hardware-agnostic architecture, FORK integrates with most standard broadcast software and hardware from a wide range of manufacturers. This high level of integration provides total control for end-to-end management of the production process of live news, sports, video production, publishing and archiving, with significantly improved efficiencies that maximize the use and value of a client s media assets. Primestream s FORK software suite is a proven solution for complete facility management. Primestream customers include some of the world s leading broadcasters, such as CBS News, CNN, NYSE, NASCAR, NFL Networks & Films, Reuters, SunTV, Disney, Cisco TV, Yahoo Studios, The Wall Street Journal, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, Microsoft, Tennis Channel, VICE and many more. For more information about Primestream s solutions: sales@primestream.com primestream.com 2016 Primestream Corporation. All trademarks remain property of their respective holders, and are used only to directly describe the products being provided. Their use in no way indicates any relationship between Primestream Corporation and the holders of said trademarks.