Telestream, a provider of video transcoding and workflow automation solutions, has announced the successful implementation of a major transcode farm, file-based content ingest platform and intelligent workflow automation system at Jerusalem-based broadcaster, Channel 2 News. Managed by leading Israeli systems integrator, Draco, the project sees the country’s leading news broadcaster moving away from tape-based production systems to a digital tapeless technology environment.

Initially, Draco specified Telestream Vantage as the central transcode farm for all of Channel 2’s newsgathering needs. Later the project evolved as Vantage was defined as the main production workflow platform for the news broadcaster’s Arab Desk. For this application a combination of Telestream Pipeline, Telestream Vantage Transcode, Check-in to Avid Interplay and Avid storage systems provide Channel 2 News with a powerful and robust newsgathering platform that ideally suits its needs.

A major investment in digital file-based production technology for Channel 2, Draco has developed a production environment that comprises asset management, an advanced news production system, 20 suites of post production resources, server-based playout, two foreign desks with 22 acquisition channels and a transcode farm supporting ultra-fast news turnaround workflows, which are split over two discrete sites.

“The nature of modern newsgathering requires an ability to ingest all content in every format and so we were drawn to Telestream Vantage by the wide variety of video formats that it supports,” commented Eli Neeman, Business Development Manager at Draco. “Another key factor is the well-established and advanced integration between Telestream and other vendors.  In this case, the seamless integration between Telestream and Avid was critical.”

Avid’s newsroom technology is central to Channel 2’s new digital production system while Telestream Vantage provides the primary ingest channel into this file-based environment. Vantage can take the widest spectrum of content from baseband video to a plethora of file formats, quickly and reliably transcoding the content into the production format required by Avid.

“Telestream’s ability to create smart and advanced workflows, making content ingest and transcoding a fast and intuitive process identifies Vantage as a valuable production resource to us,” said Rami Daniel, CTO at Channel 2 News. “We gave Draco a challenging wish list, but by working with a group of leading technology vendors, they have developed a news production solution that exceeds our hopes and dreams.”

The digital news production system was entirely new to Channel 2 News but working together, Telestream, Avid, EVS and Draco insured that the customer had all the workflow design, installation, operational support and training services that they needed. As a result, the new facility has functioned flawlessly since it went online.

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