Case studies
Audio to picture
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miXart 8 AES/EBU and Xtrack make EuroNews speak seven languages Voice-over recording system for international TV news channel |
When EuroNews added Russian as its seventh language, it took that opportunity to overhaul the news voice-over recording system. To save costs, the international news channel decided to go for an in-house development based on Digigram technology. Digigram's application development tools provided the right mix of features to build an open platform, which would not only cater to present needs, but would also meet future requirements.
Benefits:
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Project:
- Customer: Euronews, Lyon
- Digigram partner: EuroNews, Lyon
- Country: France
Challenge:
EuroNews is Europe’s leading television news channel, covering world news from a European perspective. Its marketing theme “Many voices. One vision”, refers to the fact that each news story on EuroNews is broadcast simultaneously in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. In the EuroNews newsroom, seven journalists write seven different stories, in their own language, to the same picture. EuroNews’ voices and vision reach 150 million homes in 79 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, North, and South America via cable, digital satellite and through terrestrial channels. When EuroNews added Russian as its seventh language, it took that opportunity to overhaul the news voice-over recording system in order to produce its multilingual content in a cost effective way.
Solution:
EuroNews decided to go for its own in-house development and to purchase Digigram technology. First, the news channel was familiar with the quality of Digigram sound cards, having used them in the previous system, and it expected the integration to be quite easy, as Digigram has constantly improved its development kit and the associated DLL’s over the last years. Within the Digigram range of products EuroNews decided on the combination of the miXart 8 AES/EBU multichannel sound card and the OEM version of Xtrack Digital Audio Editor.
All told, EuroNews out-fitted seventeen PC’s as workstations, and four others as transfer stations. All had a miXart 8 AES/EBU-Xtrack OEM combination with EuroNews’ own piece of software on top. The workstations are located in soundproof booths, where reporters record their commentaries. The resulting soundtracks are then stored into the audio database on the production system (NAS and servers). The eight inputs/outputs of the miXart 8 AES/EBU and its LTC input allow the transfer stations to play out all seven languages and natural sound, called “international track”, synced to the corresponding video for recording onto the broadcasting servers.Benefits:
The miXart 8 AES/EBU-Xtrack OEM environment allowed to build an open platform, which would not only cater to present needs, but would also meet future requirements like integrating new functions. It was important that the miXart 8 AES/EBU had Word Clock, LTC, AES/EBU and video synchronization capabilities. Finally, a single miXart 8 AES/EBU’s eight input/output paths could handle EuroNews’ seven languages plus the international track.
As for Xtrack OEM, EuroNews liked that it came with an extensive development kit and featured comprehensive editing and processing functions within the DLL (Dynamically Linked Library). EuroNews completely redesigned the user interface and benefited from the editing engine, which provides accurate syncing capabilities, which are crucial to the application. EuroNews is already looking at software enhancements for the system, like storing the journalists’ voices separately from the natural sound allowing better quality control through remixes, or automating the insert of audio headers.
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