OMAN TV
Monday, 25 April 2011 01:00
OMAN TV
Tedial forms heart of Oman TV HD project.
Late last year the Sultanate of Oman’s Ministry of Information (MOI) appointed Sony Professional Solutions MEA (PSMEA) to build state-of-the-art HD studios at Oman TV’s headquarters in Muscat. They were also contracted to refurbish its television broadcast facility located in Salalah.
The project is being supervised by technical consultants Masters who designed the overall architecture. Tedial is working closely with Sony’s system architects, drawing on its many past experiences on major MAM installations, by leading the joint review of Oman TV’s media workflows. The key to this project is to simplify and automate different processes that make up the workflows without compromising functionality and reliability.
Sultanate of Oman Television began life broadcasting from Muscat in November 1974 and then from Salalah a year later. In 1979 the two stations were linked by satellite to form a unified broadcasting service. Oman TV's content is broadcast through a network of transmitters spread across the country in both populated and remote areas to overcome the natural obstacles created by the mountainous terrain.
Mohammed Al Marhouby, Oman TV Director General of Engineering says, “This state-of-the-art installation is a big investment for Oman TV and will provide a reference for other broadcasters in the region. We have worked hard to ensure that we’ve selected the best systems.”
Due for completion in November 2011 this major broadcast installation, costing US$69m, will mark the country’s 41st National Day celebrations and will be the first HD offering in the country. As part of this project Oman TV selected MAM specialist Tedial to manage the digital archive and production workflows for its new HD-tapeless system. Although both the Muscat and Salalah facilities provide independent production and transmission services they will be fully integrated by Tedial’s technology, delivering a single virtual system that’s able to share media and act as mirror for disaster recovery purposes.
Tedial’s technology will allow Oman TV to take full advantage of file-based workflows by optimising and automating operational procedures. The Tedial system, which is made up of four key components– AST Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM); Tarsys Media Asset Management (MAM); Media Process Manager (MPM); and Ficus Business Process Manager (BPM) - will provide a complete solution for controlling, storing and processing Oman TV’s media and its workflows.
Tedial is a pioneer in the broadcast industry providing an enterprise level integration platform based on IT architecture. Traditionally, MAM providers use wired logic connecting systems peer-to-peer. As such when a change is made to third-party solutions it can affect other interconnected components in the system. Tedial’s MPM works as a middle layer integrating all the third-party systems, which means there’s no impact on the overall workflow structure should a replacement be required in the future. This not only helps when making future changes to the overall system it also helps when upgrading the software of a key component.
The first component – the HSM – will control Oman TV’s complex distributed storage system split between Muscat and Salalah consisting of robotic LTO libraries and disk storage servers.
The second component - Tarsys (MAM) – manages the content and personalises its associated metadata according to the specific needs of Oman TV. Tarsys offers powerful searching tools and functionality such as cuts-only editing, browsing of low-res proxies with multiple audio tracks etc. Tarsys Oracle database is built in a clustered configuration to provide high availability, redundancy and load balancing.
The MPM forms the key third component of the system providing an important dual role. On one hand, it automates all the media moving within the facility between the archive and external systems such as video server playout, post production and other areas. On the other, MPM provides the interface layer amongst all the different components and technologies used by the facility. For example at Oman TV, Tedial’s tight integration with Avid’s API will enable operators to ingest and edit metadata directly into Avid’s Interplay.
The Ficus BPM system sits above these three components automating Oman TV’s entire production workflows. The overall Tedial system controls media creation integrated with traffic, digitisation of assets, automatic QC, subtitling, archive management and delivery of media required by automation playlists to the transmission servers. Tedial’s flexibility allows it to use the best possible integration tools provided by the third-party vendors. For example, the traffic system uses a web service, which in turn is employed by Tedial providing a bidirectional interface to exchange media and metadata whilst maintaining information stored within the database.
For the Oman TV project Tedial’s Ficus BPM software will integrate a BTS traffic system, Pebble Beach playout automation, SeaChange video servers, Avid iNews newsroom computer system and Interplay.
What further sets this technology apart from other MAM systems is its ability to deliver media to transmission, editing, archiving or any other area of the facility, whilst carrying out all the media processing, so that it arrives in the most efficient way in the correct format for the device that’s going to use it. This is done automatically.
The second overall element of this installation is its multi-site capabilities. Although the Muscat and Salalah facilities are independent they can synchronise automatically and transparently. Media will be ingested in Muscat and copied to Salalah so that operators in either location can access and share material. The sites are joined by a private optical link. In the event of a system failure the other site can act as a mirror adding an extra layer of security.
When the system goes on-air in November 2011 Oman TV will transmit in both SD and HD to fully satisfy the needs of its viewers. This installation is an example of a state-of-the-art tapeless HD broadcast facility, which has been a huge undertaking for the MOI both technically and financially. It will act as a significant reference site for other broadcasters across the Middle East.
Additional information:
Tedial is a content management company specialising in Media Asset Management (MAM), Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) and Business Process Management (BPM) software. Its proven solutions are developed with the latest software technology under the strict ISO 9001 & 27001 quality standards. With ten years’ experience Tedial’s innovative technology allows broadcasters to take full advantage of file-based workflows by optimising and automating operational processes. Tedial’s solutions are vendor and hardware independent releasing customers from proprietary constraints and thereby significantly increasing productivity and ROI. With more than 50 reference sites, some of the world’s most complex and largest broadcast MAM systems use Tedial. For more information, please visit www.tedial.com