New kid on the block

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AMG’s local programmes for channels, Noor Dubai and Nickelodeon Arabia, will be set against the top and bottom backdrops respectively.

Arab Media Group gives Digital Studio an exclusive tour of its brand new facility at Dubai Studio City, from where it will carry out its broadcast operations from this month.

September 2008 is a month of milestones for Dubai-based Arab Media Group's broadcast arm, Arab Television Network (ATN). After the launch of MTV Arabia last November and the unveiling of Nickelodeon Arabia in July 2008, this month will see yet another new TV channel called Noor Dubai go on air from the AMG stable.

More importantly, this month will also see ATN begin its broadcast operations from its new facility in Dubai Studio City.

This facility is significant for many reasons. For one, the media group has adopted a completely tapeless workflow and invested in state-of-the-art broadcast infrastructure to accommodate different kinds of expansion in the future, be it increasing the number of TV channels played out from the facility, raising the storage capacity as and when the need requires or upgrading to HD.

"All the kit we have installed at Studio City is future proof, scalable and ready for n number of expansions," explains Afzal Lakdawala, director of broadcasting services at Arab Media Group. "We have selected the Omneon MediaGrid active storage system and its Spectrum media servers as the foundation for our tapeless infrastructure. In fact, this is the first installation of the Media Grid in the Middle East.

The fast processing and real-time scaling of both capacity and bandwidth on the MediaGrid were key factors in helping us decide that it must be at the heart of our workflow."

Additionally, although most of the equipment at the new facility is currently geared for transmission in standard definition (SD), they can all be upgraded to high definition (HD) should such a need arise in the future, claims Lakdawala.

"The entire setup is SD but can easily be upgraded to HD in the future. In fact, we have already procured HD P2 cameras from Panasonic and have started HD production; all of our Final Cut Pro edit systems are also HD ready so we even edit on HD but the final master gets converted to SD for transmission. This process is currently limited to some very important projects but will be extended gradually," he adds.

The installation has been undertaken in two phases. As part of the first phase, AMG installed its post production and transcoding system at its existing facility in Al Quoz, Dubai. The playout is currently being done from Samacom teleport using AMG's own equipment.

The second phase has been the migration from Al Quoz and Samacom to its facility in Studio City. "Since we have a tapeless environment, it is not difficult to produce multiple copies of the media for the migration plan.

Once everything is in place in Studio City, we plan to have a simultaneous transmission from both locations for at least six weeks to ensure a smooth transition. We have tried to keep the workflow similar to what we have planned for our Studio City operation so as to ensure that we do not deviate from the current workflow.

The move will make things a lot more easier once we move to one central location for production, post production and transmission," explains Lakdawala.

Three buildings have been leased in Dubai Studio City to handle AMG's current broadcast operations but a more purpose-built facility will be in place at the free zone in the coming years, confirms AMG's CEO, Abdullatif Al Sayegh. All of its TV operations will be handled from Studio City while only four of AMG's radio stations - those that have thus far been operating from Dubai Media Inc's office in the city - will be shifted to the new facility.

The broadcast infrastructure at Studio City including the playout of ATN's TV channels as well as the central apparatus room, master control room, post-production and media management are housed in one building while the shooting floor, the Production Control Room and the office area are in a second building and a third building comprises the studios for four of the radio and TV channels along with an off-air shooting floor.

"Since Dubai Media City was running on full capacity and our requirement was huge, Studio City seemed ideal for ATN's operations. Since it is also a free zone, it comes with similar benefits plus it is connected with fibre to Samacom's Teleport, which we required for our transmission playout," explains Lakdawala.

The new facility boasts three five-camera studios and one three-camera studio that is also kitted out with a virtual set. Each of the five-camera studios can be expanded to eight in the future while the smaller studio is wired for expansion to five. The studios are equipped with high-end Ikegami cameras while Panasonic's P2 cameras are being used for ATN's ENG operations.

While ATN is involved in a lot of local production, a significant portion of the content for both MTV Arabia and Nickelodeon Arabia comes from their international offices. This content is received by ATN in the MPEG-2 format, converted to DV-25, the media company's house format and ingested into an Omneon server.

Pro-Bel's Morpheus automation then takes over the migration of this content from the Omneon Spectrum servers to the MediaGrid online storage system, which currently has a capacity of 27 terabytes but can be expanded in the future. The content on this server can be edited from any of the 10 desks on which Apple's Final Cut Pro is loaded.

From this month, ATN will have three TV channels playing out from this facility but they can play out a maximum of six channels in SD. ATN will maximise this playout by next year. Already, Dubai Eye, another of AMG's radio channels is scheduled to have a visual presence. Two more new channels are scheduled to go on air from the Group next year, confirms Al Sayegh.

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