Pinnacle Systems achieves world’s first native-MXF-based tapeless broadcast facility

The world’s first native-MXF-based tapeless broadcast facility, created by Pinnacle Systems with Sony Middle East’s network infrastructure, has successfully been live at Rotana TV since October 2004.
The leading Arabic music TV station has four Pinnacle MediaStream 8000 servers with MediaStream Management Gateways (MMG), five Pinnacle Liquid non-linear editors with Palladium Store 100 networked storage, Pinnacle Deko real-time graphics and Pinnacle DekoCast automated edge graphics systems, Pinnacle Thunder XL clip severs, and Pinnacle PDS6000i / 9000i vision mixers, all in native MXF, at its Beirut facilities.
“With Pinnacle’s MXF-based broadcast system, Rotana TV is spearheading best practice for workflows,” said Pinnacle VP EMEA Richard Scott. “Only completely tapeless environments offer the cost and time savings Rotana TV now enjoys and we see momentum gathering across the Middle East and indeed the world for MXF-based solutions. When implemented appropriately, such as natively in Pinnacle’s product families, MXF delivers an essential building block for faster, cheaper and smarter workflows.”
The landmark installation includes the first ever shipment of a native-MXF-based content-delivery system with MediaStream 8000 following an order in October 2003. MXF (Material eXchange Format) is an open file format allowing the interchange of audio-visual material with associated data and metadata. Using MPEG-2 50Mb/s format, it provides an open-platform data exchange for fully networked operations both within and between Rotana TV’s multiple sites.
In addition, Rotana TV is pioneering the use of Pinnacle’s MediaStream server integrated with Sony Petasite archive library, which it uses under Harris Louth automation, and the Sony Autocat. The system plays up to five channels directly to the server, eliminating time wasted on encoding or decoding.
“MXF means our new networked environment already delivers more efficient workflows with seamless editing and the complete removal of tape,” said Technical Director at Rotana TV, Joseph Saade. “Further, Pinnacle makes it easy to incorporate strong branding through the end-to-end process as, once we design our templates in Deko, we can carry them through on DekoCast and Thunder. In addition, the entire future-proof system integrates with our existing studio facilities and is capable of handling all our requirements as we expand our business.”
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