BBC regional news - Now with added Reith

When is this fancy equipment coming to Leeds then? It seems we are 20 years behind the south and Salford.

When is this fancy equipment coming to Leeds then? It seems we are 20 years behind the south and Salford.

Eh? There's no requirement for Mosart (no z) to have a physical switcher panel. Lots of Mosart installs are in control rooms without mixer tops (TV2 in Copenhagen is a good example) . What makes you think you need a switcher control surface?

Yes - Mosart requires vision mixer functionality outside the Mosart product, just as I believe Ross Overdrive does, (the core Overdrive automation software doesn't include HD-SDI or 2110/2022-6/7 IP connectivity or processing.) but as long as this external VM functionality can be controlled via industry standard protocols then however the functionality is implemented (separate hardware + control surface, separate hardware and no control surface, commodity IT gear switching in the IP domain etc.) Mosart can control it (just as any automation system could)

Of course you can 'hide' switcher hardware inside a PC, and pretend it's part of the same product, but essentially when Ross do this they are integrating two products into one box.

Lots of Mosart installs do integrate traditional switchers, mainly because the non-traditional ones still don't scale big enough to offer the same functionality required for the 'big studio' shows that Mosart is automating, plus some installs use control surfaces as they need to run in both full-automation and semi-automated (or non-automated) modes - where a switcher panel is required for full control. For quick set-up and programming having one control surface in your installation (which can be routed to multiple engines) can be much easier than trying to program new effects, macros etc. via the software control panels that most switcher manufacturers offer (which are used to allow offline effects/macro programming and set-up offline or online etc.)



Yep - I believe Ross Graphite (a vision mixer on a PCI-e card), Ross Expression (a CG on a PCI-e card) and Ross Overdrive can effectively run within a PC or PCs, with the Graphite having a bunch of HD-SDI I/O ports, and the Expression GFX feeds connecting to the Graphite card internally. As all the English regions have just had Quantel - sorry SAM, sorry GVG - server upgrades to new HD-ready servers, I suspect they will be integrated into any future playout system,

Sky News is running on Ross Overdrive (albeit with external vision and sound mixer kit) and OpenMedia I believe, so that ticks the 'OpenMedia integration' box for the BBC without them having to re-invent the wheel.

However other large operations are now implementing off-site all-IP production environments where a small number of very big hardware switchers (think Kahuna 9600s) are sited in a data centre, with remote production control rooms (possibly in different countries) taking control of all, or just part (one or two MEs) of those Kahunas for production purposes. You could do that with a Maverik or Kula control panel at the remote control room, or just have a Mosart (or similar) automation control platform operated from that remote control room. That moves away from 'switcher per control room' concepts entirely, you just map the facilities you need from a larger crate.

You could easily see one future for BBC English regions where two data centres housed a bunch of Kahuna crates (not one per region, but possibly one shared between two or three?), Quantel servers, Mosart control engines, audio processing cores, talkback matrices etc. with cameras fed down to that centre in the 2110/2022-7 domain (possibly lightly compressed - but probably not needed to be) and some reverse visions carrying multi-viewers, in-vision screen feeds, PGM and PST, and audio and comms streams for local monitoring and panels.

Just as easily you could see a future where a Ross Graphite+Expression+Overdrive, or BlackMagic Constellation + NRK Sofie system could be installed in each region. The latter is probably cheaper, but the former may pay dividends in the long term, particularly in launching new services, relocating production centres etc. (ViLOR has made relocation of radio stations MUCH quicker)

I thought Mosart (I thought at one time the US site had it with the Z) at the time required a surface.

NBC is testing an all IP route with Las Vegas running by sending audio and video feeds back to their Dallas data center for smaller Telemundo stations. There will may be Ross panels on site like a traditional but all of it will be IP. NBC also switched to all Ross Expression for graphics and apparently ABC is doing the same.

The only thing they will have is a small multi viewer on site to feed cameras into for the camera operator as the delay to and from they found could screws up remote positioning.

I think the MOS in Mosart may be linked to MOS - the standard newsroom interface protocol (others will know) It's often spelled incorrectly online though - even in press and PR stuff.

No requirement for a control surface in the control room for Mosart - plenty of installs don't have them and just use the Mosart UI and/or a Mosart 'bash box' instead. Mosart is controlling the mixer crate, and doesn't connect via the control surface. Programming effects in the first place may be easier with a control surface, of course, but that depends on the soft interface of the mixer brand you are using. You'll probably find Mosart can control a BMD Atem without you ever needing to buy a BMD hard panel.

Of course, now Viz own Newtek, they have an in-house switcher division.



Yes - and if you are in a dynamic lighting environment, latency on exposure and colour balance controls can also be quite nasty. Remote server control (if you have an EVS, K2 or LiveTouch panel in front of you, but your monitoring video is via an IP round trip) can also be tricky over latent connectivity.

That’s what they’re trying to replace. For the person operating the APC and other things a delayed Program/Preset and all the rest likely is preferred but for real time cameras best to have as much latency as possible.

The only thing NBC didn’t mention at the TVNewsCheck forum on IP was whether they'd be using a dedicated Comcast backbone to between the station, the datacenter in Dallas and the station’s master control to Denver. I know in Philadelphia the HQ of Comcast when they moved WCAU (NBC) and WWSI (Telemundo) to the CTC there was enough fiber for them to create their own private network without dealing with the public internet. They installed 100Gbps links to their tower / satellite farms and to the ENG receive sites (although the bandwidths nice they probably don’t even need more than 2 GBPs at any moment).

Can we have a clock counting how long it will be until BBC Newsline adopts the new look and goes fully Reith?

Bristol, Birmingham and Southampton have had new vision mixers owing to the original GVG Zodiak desks reaching end of life. Oxford took some gallery kit from BBC Manchester after NW moved to Salford and replaced their original GVG Pres mixer.