ITN Productions Moves to G-SDI and Uses Blackmagic Design as Part of Expansion

ITN Productions Moves to 12G-SDI and Uses Blackmagic Design as Part of Expansion posted: 31/05/2017

Olly Strous, Head of Post Production, ITN Productions

Blackmagic Design has today announced that ITN Productions has expanded its post production capabilities following an investment of £1.4 million in a new state of the art facility built on a 12G-SDI backbone and featuring software and infrastructure products from Blackmagic Design.

Conceived originally as an in house resource, ITN Productions' post production facilities, located at its Central London HQ, has grown to a facility of more than fifty edit suites. These now support every facet of video post production for ITN's growing creative and commercial arm.

With ITN Production's existing post production facilities at capacity, the decision was taken to upgrade and expand into space underneath the building. The principle driver was a need for greater flexibility to handle the growing number of creative disciplines and program formats we now produce, begins ITN Productions head of post production, Olly Strous. In addition to all of that, we also needed to be capable of supporting demands for 4K and UHD broadcasts.

The answer, according to Strous, was a facility built around 12G-SDI relying on Blackmagic's Smart Videohub 40 x 40 routers for signal management. We looked at IP for this phase of expansion over SDI, yet with the industry still in flux about a universally agreed standard the timing wasn't quite right, he reveals. As such, we felt a solution built around Blackmagic Design and 12G-SDI would fulfill our immediate UHD requirements at a price point that made business sense.

With 12 new suites receiving transmission (TX) and receiving (RX) signals, single link 12G-SDI meant we were able to run a quarter of the cables we otherwise would have. Naturally, we also ran in fiber at the same time to support any future move to IP, Strous explains.

The new infrastructure also incorporates Teranex standards and frame rate conversion as part of a workflow that sees all online editing and grading completed in DaVinci Resolve Studio. We have installed two Teranex Express boxes wrapped around our video matrix. Implementing them ensures we retain a degree of flexibility at every stage of the post process. And I like the fact that all of the processing is done in real time.

ITN has also installed a video wall in their foyer. Requiring the ability to do picture in picture. For this Strous implemented a solution featuring the MultiView 4 and MultiView 16. We daisy chained the multiviewers into the router matrix, which means we can route anything to any of the 16 screens while also then putting the 16 screen inside the four screen if we want to.

Our business is growing so rapidly that spotting trends and being able to technically support our growth in a well engineered and tested environment is incredibly important, concludes Strous. The roll out of 12G-SDI today affords us a small amount of growth tolerance to support UHD at higher frame rates, which is on our roadmap in the near future. Investing in Blackmagic Design products that support 12G-SDI meant we could deal with a single manufacturer using infrastructure that was designed to work together.

About Blackmagic Design Blackmagic Design creates the world's highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design's DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company's Emmy award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia.

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