ITN Productions, a leading factual content producer, has revolutionized its news bulletin production with a cutting-edge, low-latency IP gallery. This innovative setup, designed by Techex, combines the TAG Video Systems Realtime media platform with Matrox Video ConvertIP decoders, offering ITN a highly responsive and customizable monitoring system within its new production control room (PCR).
The PCR, a hub for daily news coverage across two newsrooms, boasts reduced latency and enhanced flexibility. John Treadwell, Techex's senior strategic account manager for global accounts, highlights the collaboration with ITN, emphasizing their expertise in designing the system using the TAG-Matrox Video integration. This partnership ensured a seamless integration process, with ongoing support for system evolution.
The TAG Realtime media platform, a fully software-based system, unifies probing, monitoring, visualization, and analysis, all within the IP domain. Its adaptive architecture enables efficient load balancing, rapid mosaic generation, and on-the-fly transcoding, making it a scalable and future-ready solution for live news production. ITN's adoption of SMPTE ST 2110 and JPEG XS further enhances the PCR's capabilities.
The deployment significantly reduces multiviewer latency to between 1 and 1.5 frames, achieved through the Matrox ConvertIP ST 2110-HDMI interfaces driving the PCR's 10 4K multiviewer displays. James Wickes, lead media engineer at ITN Productions, praises the system's agility and low latency, ensuring operators experience the familiar reliability of traditional galleries while enjoying the benefits of an all-IP monitoring workflow.
Matrox ConvertIP technology plays a pivotal role in this setup, translating IP signals into native HDMI outputs with deterministic timing and no perceptible lag. This ensures consistent, frame-accurate synchronization across all 4K displays, crucial for the live feel operators rely on when switching between sources.
Daniel Maloney, technical marketing manager at Matrox Video, emphasizes the Matrox ConvertIP family's suitability for such projects. He highlights ITN's achievement of low-latency multiviewer performance across multiple 4K displays as a testament to the power of tight partnerships in IP-based control rooms.
TAG's Operator Console further enhances the system, allowing ITN staff in the gallery to adapt multiviewer screens swiftly to the current production. Paul Briscoe, TAG chief architect, praises ITN's new gallery for achieving full broadcast responsiveness, demonstrating the potential of IP-native monitoring in a newsroom environment.
This cutting-edge setup not only showcases the capabilities of IP-based control rooms but also sets a new standard for live news production, combining efficiency, responsiveness, and future-readiness.
