For its live production of the latest series of Grande Fratello – which is the Italian version of reality TV format Big Brother – broadcaster Euroscena was aware that it needed to invest in powerful video servers to record, playback and process significant volumes of daily content, prior to transfer to the Mediaset HQ in Milan.
After consideration of the available options the Euroscena team determined that a deployment of two aVS servers from aQ Broadcast – which designs, develops, manufactures and supports an integrated range of scripting, newsroom, automation and media management software alongside video server and production hardware – would provide the required flexibility and reliability.
At the top of the priority list, recalls Euroscena technical manager Fabrizio Galletti, was the ability for series content “to be captured in a format that could be used by other systems within our facility, so it was important for us to find a video server that would integrate seamlessly into our existing storage solution.”
The aVS video servers’ ability to be incorporated into a wide variety of workflows was therefore a big plus in their favour. Flexibility was further guaranteed by the inclusion on each unit of two bidirectional ports that can be individually configured as a recorder or player, thereby supporting a combination of two recordings, two playouts, or one recording/one playout.
With the aVS also providing an easy-to-use GUI suitable for operators with different levels of experience, Euroscena engaged aQ – with assistance from Italian partner Blutek – to install two aVS video servers at its production facilities ahead of the latest series of Grande Fratello. As part of this project and designed specifically to meet the desired workflow needs for Euroscena, aQ developed ‘Storage Gateway’, a new function that provides an interface to an external Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. As a result, content can be recorded onto either of the aVS servers and transferred to the NAS, while existing content stored on the NAS can be played back on the aVS.
Production of the new series – which was won by Alberto Mezzetti in June 2018 – proceeded smoothly, with Galletti remarking that “the aVS servers have given us all the flexibility we needed, providing us with both a simplified and extremely cost-efficient workflow.”
