Tribune Stations Get CDC-enabled With Grass, by Rich Kittilstved

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They're installed at leading station groups in the top five U.S. markets -- and at leading news outlets worldwide. With a complete workflow that spans acquisition, production and playout, it's clear that when you're watching the news, you're watching Grass Valley technology at work.

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User Reports

Tribune Stations Get CDC-enabled With Grass

by Rich Kittilstved, January 16, 2007

Director of Engineering, Tribune WXIN/WTTV

INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

The Central Distribution Center for Tribune Broadcasting Co. is located here and is responsible for ingesting and distributing syndicated programming to a dozen stations within our group. Designed to be a centralized repository for content, it ultimately will serve all Tribune stations.

The CDC began operating in 2004 with four Grass Valley Profile XP Media Platform servers. These handled the syndicated programming distribution to numerous Tribune stations and program/spot play-out for two of those stations. They also helped to maximize resources and reduced the number of copies of a particular show that we had to downlink or ingest prior to air.

EXPANDS WORKFLOW

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Rich Kittilstved

With the success of those initial Profile XP Media Platform servers and a need to bring more stations online quickly, this file-based workflow was expanded to include two fully redundant, mirrored storage area networks that link 14 Grass Valley K2 Media Servers in a closed loop for a high degree of security and reliability.

We also have several built-in layers of redundancy in the form of dual RAID controllers and media servers. Because the servers are configured in a SAN, the storage capacity of both SANs (nearly 10 TB) is available at any moment. When one server is full, data is automatically stored on another K2 within the SAN.

Utilizing an innovative centralcasting model, the CDC is now feeding stations in Indianapolis, Chicago, New York, Denver, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Portland and Seattle. Each station has installed a dedicated receiver system, including a K2 server.

The Grass Valley system can grow as our needs change. Our initial design included enough extra bandwidth on the K2 SANs to accommodate origination of more program streams from our Indianapolis facility. To add more stations, we simply add more media clients to the existing SANs, and we can do this without disrupting systems already in operation.

Programs are sent from the content distributor/owner to the CDC in real time and recorded directly into one of the K2 servers as an MPEG-2 file. The CDC processes and queues it for transmission to the station group. There are also a number of non real-time services that send programming as digital files which are transcoded and stored.

A file from the CDC’s K2 SAN ends up on a similarly equipped, remotely located, server and is ready to go directly to air. The process is completely automatic, saving time and resources. We also use the distribution path to create a copy of any file on the network, so nothing is ever lost.

ECONOMY IN PREP

Only one of the stations receiving each program has to prep it for automation. That station then sends the program metadata back to the CDC, where it is relayed to the appropriate stations prior to on-air play-out. This reduces the prep load at each station. The important part of the workflow is that the CDC and the Tribune stations all have the same file and metadata to enable the automation system to properly play the programming to air.

With videotape, we could never handle the workload of multiple stations or have the functionality we have now with the Grass Valley servers. Maintenance has not been an issue for us, as we have a comprehensive Grass Valley Service Contract. Any replacement parts needed get to us by the next business day.

Tribune is so confident in the Media Server platform, that plans are underway to install K2 systems and create additional CDC-enabled stations in California and Texas.

Rich Kittilstved is director of engineering for Tribune’s regional operating center in Indianapolis. A 30-year veteran of the broadcast industry, he has spent the last 17 years working in various capacities with Tribune. He may be contacted at RKittilstved@tribune.com. For additional information contact Grass Valley at 503-526-8200 or visit www.thomsongrassvalley.com.