Computer repair portland oregon

Byline: Mike Janes, Blazers Broadcasting

Blazers Broadcasting handles a full NBA sports television schedule, which keeps this inhouse video production department of the Portland Trail Blazers busy. We produce all of the teams' shows and even the playback on the Rose Garden arena's huge Panasonic Astrovision screen. For broadcast and cablecast, this includes the live game that airs on KGW-TV (the local NBC broadcast TV station), as well as two other Oregon stations and the Trail Blazers cable format show on SportsNet, the Fox Sports show.

We must be flexible. It's a completely separate production, for example, to fill the Astrovision screen. Throughout the game, the display fills up continuously with fan motivational pieces, player stats, and corporate sponsored segments.

The Blazers Broadcasting facility, located inside the Rose Garden, includes an analog and a digital control room. The analog composite control room, with its older switcher, works only with the Astrovision screen. The serial digital (ITU-R601) control room, and several complete nonlinear edit systems, handles our over-the-air and cable TV broadcasts.

During any given sports broadcast we use live and pre-produced video and audio clips along with dozens of stills. We use a Grass Valley 4000 digital production switcher for this, with a Grass Valley Series 7000 routing switcher signal to distribute everything throughout the facility.

Blazers Broadcasting makes a continuing effort to stay ahead of the technology curve. In an effort to migrate away from videotape, we've tried a variety of video servers. We know what the technology is capable of and how we want it to work for us.

Currently, we own a Grass Valley PDR 300 Series Profile server for commercial playback that has served us well for the past few years. In addition, when we built the Action Sports Cable Network (ASCN), we used four Grass Valley PVS 1000 (SD) and two PVS 2000 (HD) Series Profile XP Media Platform systems.

Due to the reliability and flexibility of the equipment, we're comfortable with Thomson Grass Valley's server expertise. Facing continuing production demands, we wanted to get our hands on the new M-Series Intelligent Video Digital Recorder (iVDR). The device builds on the valuable features of the Profile server, including stability and realtime processing technology, while adding newer PC technology. One appreciated advantage: a highly intuitive touchscreen interface that mimics VTR controls.

There's a price/performance consideration too in our decision to use the new M-Series iVDR. With some 15 older but serviceable tape machines in several different video formats (such as DVCPRO, D-5, D-2, Digital Betacam and even Betacam SP), we reached the point where it didn't make sense to invest any more money in such tape technology. With the M-Series iVDR, we get four channels - two record and two playback - for less than the price of replacing a single professional VTR; it also supports both DV and MPEG-2 files in the same chassis.

Moving to an all-inclusive postproduction device such as the M-Series iVDR brings a number of benefits. With no tape heads or mechanical parts that need attention and repair, the iVDR will save us money in equipment repair. Meanwhile, it provides the benefits of a hard drive, with the ability to record, play, and organize video and audio clips in a random access, highly immediate way. Since it takes advantage of highly scalable media networking, such as 10/100 Base T Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and Fibre Channel, we'll be able to rapidly transfer files anywhere in the building on our secure network.

As we integrate more M-Series iVDRs, the DDR changes how we work. We can produce segments faster, for example. Once material is stored on the iVDR's drive, the clips are available to anyone on the network, even as they are ingested into the system. That's pretty cool stuff.

Today's PC-based technology solves our storage needs too. The basic M-Series configuration uses three 36GB drives (eight hours of DV 25 storage), but it can be expanded up to six 146GB drives (for 64 hours of storage). Thomson also offers a Disk Expansion Chamber. This setup holds 12 drives for an astounding 130 hours of video and audio storage capacity.

In addition, the M-Series iVDR's removable media drives will really come in handy as we do more work from DVD data disks. Essentially any drive in the 5in. computer bay form factor with industry standard I/O can be plugged into the M-Series. The iVDR also has an option for a DVD-R format optical drive, making it compatible with our nonlinear edit system.

Right now we have an older four-channel EVS Broadcast system that handles our live replays, but it will not support a network. However, the multi-channel Grass Valley M-Series iVDR can handle both our slow motion and replay elements. It's easy to implement too, since the iVDR talks to our existing DNF Controls machine controllers. We don't have to retrain an operator to use it, which has saved time and money and made management very happy.

Although we consider video servers and the iVDR to be the future of production, Blazers Broadcasting will always use tape to some extent because we produce a lot of long-form (two to three hours) programming that needs to be archived forever. It's very important for the history of our franchise as well as for the future repurposing of that archive.

When it comes to in-game production, we're still using a lot of tape for slo-mo replay and element playback. But that will change. A server rather than a tape machine can better handle these kinds of applications and others. Especially if the server has a familiar VTR-type interface, can create sub-clips and playlists, and has easily removable media and networking capabilities that the M-Series offers right out of the box.

The Grass Valley M-Series iVDR enables us to create something in our nonlinear edit suite and send it over the network. No more "sneaker netting" a tape cassette. That means segments can get to air more efficiently and with better quality than we had with traditional analog VTRs.

Our success in the highly competitive world of sports television relies on our ability to streamline production and provide up-to-the-minute stats and images for the enjoyment of the fans. Luckily, Thomson continues to give us the tools to make it happen.

Mike Janes is director of engineering at Portland, Ore.-based Blazers Broadcasting. Blazers Broadcasting recently won top prizes at the 2003 IDEA Golden Matrix awards for its in-game video presentations. For more information, visit www.blazers.com.