The “One-Button” Broadcasting Transmission

The “one-button” broadcasting transmission.

TV-production in a totally digital environment 1 SVT Malmö

This is me and the tv-station in Malmö.

The station has a staff of 240, including the newsroom. The programmes transmitted are entertainment, current affairs, religion, music, culture, drama, youth, news and sport for SVT Channels SVT1, SVT2, SVT24 and the Internet channel www.svt.se/

Regional news are transmitted in "windows" in SVT Channel 2, Monday until Friday 17.55-18.00, 19.10-19.30 and 22.00-22.03, 22.15-22.28 in the evenings. Regional News are also transmitted in Sunday evenings, 2x5 minutes. My local station Sydnytt is the regional news for south of Sweden, covering the area of Skane and Blekinge, broadcasting to 1.3 million inhabitants with 650.000 TV-sets.

2 The Good Old Days The work in the newsroom and the news broadcasting transmissions from Sveriges Television have been radically changed in a few years. In the “Good Old Days,” the company’s local newsrooms in different parts of Sweden was connected only by telephone and traditional video transmission links. All video material was stored on tape.Video sequences from the Archive in Stockholm could be transferred to our video editing room in Malmö after a request over the phone. But that operation could take several ours and involve at least a handful persons. And the broadcasting transmission of our local news was dependent on a staff of 6 persons except the anchorman/woman in the studio.

3. The Internet revolution

During the last 10-12 years, this has changed dramatically. First we got the Internet Revolution, and a growing Intranet.

All of a sudden there was a user interface, that was easy too understand, and looked the same, for all databases! The Internet-success marched into our newsroom!

Every user in the system has full access to all information, wires, scripts and rundowns not only in our own newsroom but in every newsroom within the company, locally as well as nation-wide. But there was still more to come.

4. The Production Facilities The Swedish Television Company is covering all of Sweden. In smaller cities we have local news correspondents with a camera crew and video editing facilities. We have 11 local news stations like my own SYDNYTT. Every local station has this new One- button studio, for the broadcasting of their local news program.

Some of our local stations have also other Studio Facilities and produce entertainment, documentary programs, sport and family shows. They have Post-production facilities.

The three major cities in Sweden, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö has fully equipped TV-studios and all heavy tv-technique for all kinds of TV-production.

5 Map 1-wan

The white spots on the map are local correspondent office, reporter and a camera crew The Yellow spots are TV-stations for our 11 local news. Soon all with one-button studios. Some of the TV-houses like Norrköping and Sundsvall also have a studio for family shows and so on.

6 Map2 –WAN

All broadcast transmissions and data communication is carried by the SVT wide are network WAN.

Today we use the WAN/LAN and TCP/IP for access to all video in the system, and we have the archive online, access able on every computer in the company. As soon as a video sequence has been posted to the system, every user in the system have fully access to the video file. A browse copy (mpeg) can be played on the PC-screen and the original dvcpro-file can be transferred to the local video server and imported to the nearest video editing room.

7 Local Production system

The local area network, LAN, gives access to servers for video archive and stills.

8 Desktop tools

We have developed some simple video editing program and graphic tools, that makes it possible for the journalists to do quick archive research, video editing and graphic work on their own computer. Also the control over the downstream key, for names and graphic signs in the video during transmission can be edited by the journalist just after editing the video sequence.

Translations from foreign languages are made by translators in Stockholm and automatically put on the downstream key layer over the video as subtitles during transmission, independent of location of the control room that is running the video whit translations.

9 Archive before broadcasting

Gives a complete archive online. Every video sequence can be seen on the PC.

9 Copyright notes to archive.

10 Video from the field via FTP

Pictures from the latest news are transferred via FTP over the Internet from the field to the local network and system of video servers and ready for broadcast only minutes after the have been taken.

11 Exchange of video with other TV-companies

We have exchange of video files with other TV-companies via FTP over Internet.

12 One button control rooms

And every event in the rundown is programmed before the broadcast begins, so that the broadcast can be handled by one single button: NEXT. That means that one single person, can run the whole program, using ONE FINGER. That means starting next video, cut to next camera, change of graphic elements and so on. Every line in the rundown can mean series of events, all controlled by the magic NEXT-button. The cameras are remote controlled and every “shoot” is fixed in advance. When a video sequence ends, there will be an automatic mix or cut to next camera and the sound from the video will fade down and the microphone in the studio will fade up.

13 Digital Broadcasting in Sweden

The Swedish government has decided to close down the analogue boradcasting network in 2005 – 2008. So now will the TV-signal be digital all the way home to the households.

14 Publishing on Internet, Wap, 3G

We publish also on other platforms like Internet, Wap and 3G.

15 The way to succes