BBC News gets a make-over

BBC News and current affairs productions from London studios N6 and TC7 received a “make-over” at the beginning of May.
Using Geevs MR+ servers from Gee Broadcast Systems Ltd to provide High Definition playout for the studio backings, the studios have been re-equipped with multiple large screen HD capable projectors which are fed with clips from a bank of synchronized Geevs servers to provide the background or “set”.
BBC News originally contacted Gee Broadcast in late February after having seen the Geevs MR+ in use by Red Bee. The requirement was to provide up to 7 HD channels playing out frame accurately locked clips under control from a simple user interface. After some initial trials to prove the technology and refine the concept, Gee Broadcast was given a couple of weeks to create a new user interface to allow simple playout control of multiple Geevs MR+ servers in the studios. This control has been implemented using a touch screen PC which is connected to the Geevs Servers via Ethernet. While keeping the user interface easy to use, the key point was to ensure frame locked playback across all screens. This interface also had to allow easy selection of the set of clips to be used depending on the program in the studio, eg night time scenes for the 10 O’clock news.
Clips for playout on the Geevs servers can either be imported via Ethernet from the production team or captured directly as HD-SDI video. (CD/CL)