Enhancing news production: requirements of a modern NRCS

In the past, news production required total control by the human team, that didn’t have the technological resources to automate repetitive tasks or to coordinate different reproduction lists. Each Department was strictly responsible of a part of the global work and of a concrete phase of the production process. How has this changed over time? What are the main requisites of modern newsroom control system? Mr. Ramón Dueso, International Business Development Engineer at VSN, provides answers to this questions and much more.

Nowadays, the panorama in modern newsrooms has changed a lot in regards of how it worked ten or fifteen years ago. The development of unified newsrooms and the popularization of user-level video editing systems have created a new type of worker, capable of writing and editing video while on direct contact with playout and archive, giving birth this way to a collaborative workflow that replaces the traditional linear one.

Also, thanks to modern Media Asset Management (MAM) systems, content is easily retrievable and reusable in different news through time, easing the journalist’s labour, enormously improving productivity and allowing for a better leverage of assets.

However, there is something that has not changed in time: the need to produce quality content in limited time, that has even got tougher in news and live events environments. This makes it necessary to operate with a solution that eases to the fullest the performance and that gives directors, journalists and producers the security that technology will be on their side on the mission of being first on air. There is not one second to lose and the whole process must be optimized.

That’s why a modern news system should allow for the deployment of a complete automated workflow for news and sports production and broadcast, covering all the necessary steps in a uniform and neat environment. This includes a wide variety of resources, such as rundowns planning and creation, resources management, text processing, video sources ingesting, live logging, cataloguing and archive, sending to air, second screens and social media, as well as collaborative work for teams in different locations.

So what are the requirements of a modern NRCS? It must cover all the necessary steps: from planning, assignment of available resources, rundown creation, integrated production (text, video, audio and graphics), to automating playout and synchronizing the CG and prompter. And also integrate the next features:

• A single journalist desktop application, with an intuitive and simple interface.
• ActiveX MOS plugin for integration with 3rd party NRCS systems (Avid I.News, ENPS, etc.).
• Web pre-editor: search and preview media, add marks, export EDLs and send to broadcast.
• Live logging tool for sports and live events.
• Newswires reception module for external news agencies text and video.
• Web client for correspondents and accelerated transfers for contributions and news distribution.
• Automated video ingest from external lines, files, VTRs, XDCAM and P2 cards, etc.
• Module for news web-publishing.
• It integrates with most NLEs in the market (Premiere, Avid, FCP, Vegas or Edius). It includes a powerful PAM system for shared editing.
• A MOS compatible studio playout automation system for integration with third-party video servers. Several levels of redundancy.
• Multiplatform: (Mac OS X, Windows XP/7) and multi-language (Unicode).
• Perfect integration with VSN´s PAM, MAM, Archive and Web TV solutions.

With these requirements, we can be sure that the NRCS we are choosing is the right one. In a more and more competitive environment, key reaction is crucial to be the first to get the news out, and a powerful and reliable newsroom control system is the best possible ally for any TV channel.