Cycling programming specialist VSquared TV uses the Monarch HD to
produce H.264-encoded MP4 viewing and compliance copies of their
daily race transmissions on-the-fly from France.
VSquared TV Follows Tour de France with Matrox Monarch HD |
VSquared TVis a specialist producer and distributor of road and track cycling programmes, whose primary project each year is the Tour de France. Clients include BBC and ITV in the UK and sports governing bodies such as UCI and British Cycling. |
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Viewing, Logging and ComplianceTo satisfy legal compliance requirements, VSquared needs to makeviewing copiesof all transmissions, one withtimecode. In previous years, the team would normally make two DVD copies, one with the timecode and one without, and meanwhile handled further requests for copies that come in from time to time. Because the recordings were done during transmission, a DVD recorder had to be set up for each copy. |
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More recently, however, the team has been using twoMatrox Monarch HD H.264 encoderson the truck. They can now create H.264-encoded MP4 files on-the-fly from the output of the switcher, and no transcoding is required. Using the source as video input with burnt-in timecode, one Monarch HD generates a file with timecode and a second Monarch HD generates a clean file without timecode onto aNAS drive. |
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File-based WorkflowThe live programme output from the production switcher goes to twoSDI-to-HDMI converters. From the converters, the HDMI outputs - one with timecode overlay - are fed into two Monarch HD devices that encode the signals to MP4 files and write them toCorsair USB 3.0 flashdrives. To store and distribute the recordings, VSquared transfers the files from the USB drives onto aWD My Cloud NASdrive. All recordings can then be immediately viewed and accessed using a web browser by any computer on the same network. Copies are available immediately on the NAS following the airing of the programme and can be distributed in any quantity by email or pushed to a drop box. Using one of the encoding presets called ‘Matrox YouTubeLive 720p’ keeps thefile size below 1 GB- because these are viewing copies, full 1080 resolution is not required. Production assistants can now complete the compliance paperwork - music returns, transmission forms and so on - immediately after transmission, and view the recording in their desktop web browser. In effect, VSquared’s workflow on the truck has been modernised. While earlier on, space and power had to be allocated for a bank ofsix to ten DVD recorders, VSquared now uses thetwo compact Monarch HDsinstead. |
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Future Plans – Live StreamingFurther to the TV programming, VSquared produces extra feature material and a nightly podcast for ITV’s website. Again, they need to produce viewing copies of that material, and can use the Monarch HD to generate MP4 copies of everything they produce for the web as well.Sylvain Swimmer, an engineer at Timeline TV’s facilities where VSquared were working, said that setting up the Monarch HD via the web-browser was very straightforward, especially using the presets, and the whole process was their simplest option. |
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For the next big cycling event, theWorld Track Championshipsto be held in London in February 2016, VSquared’s client will run a live, continuously updating website alongside the TV coverage. Live streaming is increasingly becoming a requirement and with theMonarch HD streaming and recordingdevices already part of their workflow, VSquared is positioned to meet their clients’ future requirements. www.matrox.com/video |