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Al Dawlia’s main studio is equipped with five JVC ProHD cameras and is expandable to eight in the future while its virtual reality studio has three cameras fitted with sensors.

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Upcoming Middle East news channel Al Dawlia has tried to be different from competing channels.

Early last year, a group of high-profile Saudi investors got together and formed Al Dawlia Media Group, a media company with a massive amount of capital and ambitious plans to launch several television channels over the next few years in the Middle East.

The firm's first ambitious offering is Al Dawlia, a news channel that is scheduled to be go to air on March 1 from Dubai Studio City.

When it does, the channel's nine bureaux spread across the Middle East will also simultaneously become operational. The multi-million dollar project, which included building and kitting out new studios at the nine bureaux, was undertaken by Dubai-based systems integrator, United Broadcast & Media Solutions.

"Our chief objective was to source new technology, but not necessarily the most commonly used, and put them together in a creative way," says Vasken Vartzbed, executive general manager and head of technical operations at Al Dawlia. "We were not looking at HD technology per se. But we did not want to use the same equipment in the same combination as all of the other channels here because the creative output - however different originally would end up looking similar."

Vartzbed, who has spearheaded several broadcast projects in the US, Europe and the Middle East prior to this, says it was important for Al Dawlia to put together a unique combination of systems that would be difficult to imitate.

"Often, if you come up with something original here, it is easy for popular channels to copy it and take credit for it. So I prefer to do something with different equipment so that imitation becomes difficult. We also chose a systems integrator who would respect our need to produce something different and would have the flexibility to make changes to the workflow to ensure operational flexibility and future scalability. We chose UBMS because they met our criterial. In hindsight, I believe it was a good decision."

A four-storey building has been kitted out for Al Dawlia at Dubai Studio City. The entire Studio City project includes a five-camera production studio that is expandable to eight in the future, a virtual reality studio equipped with three cameras, a master control room, two production control rooms, a newsroom as well as eleven editing rooms across different areas of the facility.

The main studio is equipped with five JVC GY-HD 101 cameras, a Ross Vision mixer, a Yamaha audio mixer, a mix of Marshall and Sony monitors as well as an Evertz Multiviewer and ClearCom talkback systems.

"We chose JVC's Pro HD cameras because they produce great images and have a futuristic vision. All of our systems support both SD and HD and we can switch to HD at any time in the future. However, for the moment, we will be producing and transmitting in SD. Only our promos are being made in HD," clarifies Vartzbed.

The facility also has a virtual reality studio equipped with three cameras fitted with sensors as well as a FOR-A vision mixer, a Sound Craft audio mixer and other associated equipment.

"We created a virtual reality studio so that we could create a three-dimensional environment for our viewer. We do not have enough space to create more than one set here. As we have several different programmes in a day and no room for more sets, we have to create them in the computer. All you have to do then is push a button and in five minutes, the anchor is in a different place. This way, we can have as many different sets as you like."

Special sensors have been fitted into the JVC cameras in the virtual reality studio to read every movement made by the camera. These movements can then be read by the system and it can change the background appropriately.

The virtual reality studio is connected to a production control room (PCR), which also acts as a backup should anything fail at the main PCR.

Lighting for the two studios are from Sachtler and includes pantographs and telescopic drop arms. The lighting control panels in the two studios are from Strand and Behringer.

The Master Control Room (MCR) is equipped with the Ross Master Control Vision Mixer, a Ventuz OnAir Graphics system, router and glue products from Network Electronics, and Evertz Master Clock & Multiviewer.

The ingest, playout and newsroom includes Nexio servers with Autocue's ingest/playout control, QNews Newsroom Computer System and Q MEDIA low-res browse and edit system. "This is only the second Autocue newsroom installation in the region. The first is in Oman TV," says Vartzbed.

The Autocue newsroom system includes a Q news module, which is similar to Avid's iNews and ENPS while its Q Media is a low edit browse system. What makes Autocue different is that the end user only pays a one-time license fee for the system unlike ENPS, which has an annual renewal fee.

The down side is that the end-user has to pay for all future upgrades.

On the news side, feeds can be ingested - either from the two studios or from any other source e.g. VTR, TVRO etc. This media can also be sent for live telecast from any of the two studios or any other source without the need for ingesting it into the server.

Wire feeds are received into the Autocue Newsroom Computer system, and the journalists can access this from their desktops.

The users can also browse through the low-res/proxy media from their desktop, create stories, edit them and record voiceovers. The edited stories are then sent to air with the Harris IOL server, which confirms the Edit Design List (EDL).

The material from the editing machines are transferred to the Harris Nexio server through FTP. In the meantime, channel branding and on-air graphics are inserted into the MCR by the Ventuz system.

"The Autocue system allows the broadcaster to integrate different types of information it takes from one central point - whether feeds from Reuters, media, video, graphics etc... or scripting for various programmes," explains Parwaiz Anjum, senior systems & technical manager, UBMS.

"The main challenge here was providing multi-lingual support and integrating Autocue with Harris and Miranda Graphics systems. Autocue, however, has more flexibility than other vendors so it was easier."

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