Seamless Integration To Benefit Newsroom Ops

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New Delhi: : What is a digital newsroom, and why must we have it? Vice-president engineering and operations at Sahara India, RS Chauhan, goes into the various nuances of a digital newsroom. Here’s how.

In his presentation on digital newsrooms, he begins with the basic theory. That is, making best use of new technology both to get stories to air faster and to get better stories to air.

Talking of recent advances, complete integration into a seamless working system is what Mr Chauhan is talking about. The so-called seamless working system would include diverse equipment as video servers, non-linear editors, different types of transmission devices and a host of broadcast equipment.

It is here that automation is crucial. So that all these devices and equipment are brought under the control of a reliable automation system. “The correct choice of this will bring immense benefits to the newsroom operation,” he says. Ultimately, the objective is to give journalists unprecedented freedom to tell their stories.

“Story writing, video editing, graphics preparation and programme structuring all proceed in parallel to come together in the studio gallery as the bulletin is aired,” the presentation says.

Growth in the volume of gathered news material is yet another reason for having a digital newsroom. “Broadcasters now require systems which provide an efficient means of logging, tracking, sharing, transmitting and archiving media.” According to Mr Chauhan, the best solution should bring together newsroom editorial processes and newsroom computer systems into the final transmitted output without users having to worry about the underlying technology.

But, he points out that a standard solution is not always viable for news operations and the chosen automation provid-er should be relied upon by its ability to adapt to needs.

Some more about automation systems. Automation systems offer the ability to manage more of the process, freeing up valuable resources to front line roles, says Mr Chauhan. While certain segments of a news programme lend them to full automation, other sections are better served by partial automation or fully manual operations, he adds.

The important point that he makes here is that “it is vital for any news automation system to be able to switch seamlessly between any of these modes.”

Next is editing. Non-linear editing potentially frees online from the restrictions of tape allowing multiple versions to be produced almost as easily as producing a single-tape version, it is felt. “Editors can simply change the length of a package to fit the time available and can build stories in modules before all the shots have even arrived,” says Mr Chauhan.

Video servers, which are a part of the digital newsroom, are all about new transmission flexibility and the ability to add and drop stories at a moment’s notice and to do it with far less manual intervention, according to the presentation.