KOIN Automate Local HD News With Grass Valley

KOIN, the CBS affiliate in Portland, Ore. (DMA 22), has streamlined the production of its local news with the installation of a full complement of Grass Valley live news production technologies. The station recently added K2 media server and shared storage technology to help record and deliver its news and syndicated content.

KOIN’s new eight-channel media server comprises a K2 SAN (storage area network) and two K2 Summit production clients. Attached to the K2 SAN are their Sony Vegas HD edit systems allowing editors to share clips and work on projects simultaneously. The previously installed Grass Valley Ignite automated production system will be used to control a new four-channel standalone HD K2 Summit media server to playout the scheduled lineup of local news packages on a daily basis.

Because KOIN journalists shoot with Sony XDCAM (MPEG-2) camcorders, the station is deploying 300 hours of storage at XDCAM 25 resolution, along with Grass Valley AppCenter Pro software to control the server channel operations, and a Grass Valley BaseCamp Express content management software to add and manage files and metadata, as required, in tandem with a low-resolution proxy encoder. The solution offers a drag-and-drop media manager and full archive support.

“We have always had success with the Grass Valley technology that we’ve used in the past and it has met all of our expectations,” said Rick Brown, KOIN’s director of technical operations. “As a leading news station, we need to get content on the air first and with our Grass Valley systems now firmly in place, it has made our production workflows more efficient and our staff better able to handle more content faster. That’s the name of the game in news.”