Hi,
are there known users of vdr within TV or radio operators?
There was a claim that some TV stations use vdr to archive their broadcast stream and another that vdr is used by cable companies as part of their infrastructure.
Are there any references / citations for this?
Thanks,
Hanno
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 9:13 AM, Hanno Zulla abos@hanno.de wrote:
Hi,
are there known users of vdr within TV or radio operators?
I work in the entertainment industry and deal with tv/radio companies pretty regularly.
There was a claim that some TV stations use vdr to archive their broadcast stream and another that vdr is used by cable companies as part of their infrastructure.
I've never heard such but have never inquired either. I would be greatly surprised if either claim were true because I don't see a need to incorporate VDR in any capacity, or that it offers anything their existing hardware doesn't. That's not to say none of them do however.
Are there any references / citations for this?
Ask the person who's making these claims for the name of the companies and give them a call. It would make for nice PR if either were true!
Hi,
It would make for nice PR if either were true!
Here's one I found:
http://www.en.xeatre.tv/cms/index.php?page=tv-sender http://www.en.xeatre.tv/cms/index.php?page=unternehmen
Based on vdr, used for broadcast archives.
Xeatre.tv is in use at a number of media companies, press agencies and archives. Clients include Brainpool TV, Endemol Germany, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Fraunhofer-Institut
Regards,
Hanno
Hanno Zulla wrote:
are there known users of vdr within TV or radio operators?
There was a claim that some TV stations use vdr to archive their broadcast stream and another that vdr is used by cable companies as part of their infrastructure.
You've probably heard of xeatre.tv, a large scale TV broadcast archiving system. Can record and archive TV on several channels 24/7 and has easy to use interfaces to access archived recordings. They use Linux and VDR for the recording part.
Cheers,
Udo
Hanno Zulla wrote:
are there known users of vdr within TV or radio operators?
There was a claim that some TV stations use vdr to archive their broadcast stream and another that vdr is used by cable companies as part of their infrastructure.
Are there any references / citations for this?
Tobias Grimm (e-tobi.net) wrote that in the latest c't (13/2008, p. 187). He says that some TV stations use VDR to save their program for 90 days. Apparently they are required by German (?) law to do this. He also mentions xeatre.tv, a system which is based on VDR. On http://www.xeatre.tv/cms/index.php?page=referenzen you can see some of their clients, including one TV station and two production companies.
Regards... Michael
2008/6/13 Michael Mauch michael.mauch@gmx.de:
Hanno Zulla wrote:
are there known users of vdr within TV or radio operators?
I worked a couple of years for the ndr and ard as engineer and video editor. And i use vdr. But I've never seen a vdr at work. I don't know, how long the archived records have to be kept, but several programmes are archived for quite a long time. I personally copied tagesschau (german news cast) and zdf fernsehgarten (you don't want to know) episodes from the 70ies / 80ies to new media. Older material usually is on 1" B-Format tape, newer material either BetaSP od DigiBeta. The braodcast signal is archived on DigiBeta also, using Barco satellite tuners. I don't know, what they use for DVB-H, but i was told there wasn't a reference receiver on the market so they went cheap.
I don't see any advantages using vdr. Archived material might be used in future productions, so you'll definitely want to record the best signal, you can get. Furthermore, archived material might be needed to reproduce the signal as close as it was, to determine where a distorted signal came from.
I worked at tagesschau during the switch from tape based to non-linear editing. The use 4 Quantel SQ servers (double redundant) totalling up to 300 hours storage (MPEG2 compressed). I don't have figures for disk space or data rate, but if anyone's interested, i can ask a former colleague. About a hundred editing clients (a lot of sqEdit, some sqEdit+, some PaintBoxes,...) have and need instant access to all material. The system has 24 input channels and 12 (not sure on that) output channels. It is used for tagesschau/tagestehmen/nachtmagzin and for eins plus, which evolves slowly into a 24/7 news channel.
So, i reckon, for broadcast demands, vdr isn't "big iron" enough and doesn't have the interface capabilities needed. And nobody really wants to use a broadcasted signal again.
The only use i see would be for automated recording and converting for web archives like zdf's mediathek (which btw is great). With the ndr's setup although, it would be easier to just add a scheduled task to the Ingester and let the internal engine encode the video to the desired format.
regards, Peter Marquardt
Peter Marquardt wrote:
I don't see any advantages using vdr. Archived material might be used in future productions, so you'll definitely want to record the best signal, you can get. Furthermore, archived material might be needed to reproduce the signal as close as it was, to determine where a distorted signal came from.
There was a lecture on VDR Camp 2008 about xeatre. From what I remember, this system targets on-air digital TV archiving, and not just only for a broadcasters own channels, but also to monitor concurrent broadcasters, or to verify advertising placement (even finds certain ads by itself). The VDR backend is just for recording, while the instant access of archived broadcasts and live TV is done by web browser and video streaming, including automatic splitting to individual broadcasts and easy exporting to DVD.
Cheers,
Udo
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Hanno Zulla -
michael.mauch＠gmx.de -
Peter Marquardt -
Udo Richter -
VDR User