Case Study
PLAZAMEDIA
Written by Thomas Geppert, SGL, Chris Wieland, PlazaMedia and Norbert Funk, Vision 5
Overview
Munich based PLAZAMEDIA is one of Europe's leading, full-service TV providers and the largest producer of sports content in Germany. "With its roots firmly in sports production, PLAZAMEDIA'S goal was to provide its customers (currently 19 channels, 24/7) with a fully-integrated, file-based workflow with mixed-format capabilities and digital archiving services, replacing its existing independent, production islands "says Chris Wieland the Technical Director of Plazamedia. This state-of-the-art platform now forms the heart of PLAZAMEDIA'S new e-Center, which produces high-profile international sports events for a number of customers including: DSF, Premiere, 9Live, ARD, ZDF, SAT.1, ProSieben, RTL and RTL II.
Solution
The key for the system's designers, Vision 5 Media, and the project managers, Norbert Funk of Vision 5 and Phil Bettinson of SGL, was to deliver a fully-integrated, file-based workflow that could handle and move mixed formats seamlessly. The system selected by Vision 5 Media for PLAZAMEDIA controls 2 workflows: one forPlazaMedia's eCenter system, and the other for the transmission system.
The eCenter workflow is controlled by BlueOrder's MediaArchive asset management system, ingesting onto Omneon servers and moving material to an Omneon MediaGrid storage system. From there material is archived by SGL under BlueOrder control or restored to the Harris ADC 100 playout system and the editing suites. In the case of eCenter SGL FlashNet is serving an Avid Interplay, a Final Cut Pro and an EVS editing environment. The transmission workflow is controlled by Pro-Bel's Morpheus media management solution. Material is ingested to Omneon servers and migrated to Omneon Spectrum servers, from where it is archived to the SGL archive.
SGL FlashNet provides seamless integration with Media Archive, Morpheus, Media Grid and the Spectrum servers. The project sees data delivered to the SGL archive in two stages: the first is instigated via Morpheus following ingest, QC and transcode etc, archiving data that has been ingested to the MediaGrid. The second stage is from the Spectrum playout servers. The archive is a 4 node FlashNet cluster, with 6TB of StorNext temporary cache storage and a Quantum Scalar i2000 tape library. PLAZAMEDIA's archive currently has 500 slots with expansion planned as required (capacity for 3000+ slots) and eight LTO4 drives. Avid forms the heart of the editing suite. Marquis Broadcast's Medway system transfers material between (to and from) Avid and the rest of the workflow.
Result
PLAZAMEDIA has a fully scalable system that can expand as its channel portfolio grows. The seamless integration of SGL FlashNet with Media Archive, Morpheus, Media Grid and the Spectrum servers provides PLAZAMEDIA with a sophisticated, archiving workflow that excels in a mixed-platform environment. Because the SGL archive is tape-slot and not terabyte based, PLAZAMEDIA can significantly expand at a lower cost providing greater ROI.
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