Capta Prod designed a resilient multichannel broadcast environment and routing configuration with built-in redundancy at France’s new DTT channel, using Blackmagic hardware.
New national channel NOVO19 in France has launched on DTT (digital terrestrial television) channel 19. It is owned by Sipa Ouest France, a large regional multimedia conglomerate spanning print, radio, TV and digital, and also the publisher of Ouest-France newspaper. Based in Rennes, NOVO19 broadcasts news and daily life programming to audiences across the country.
From its Capta Center broadcast facility, Capta Prod, specialists in multi-camera capture for live broadcast or streaming, manages NOVO19’s technical production and playout from its hub in Nantes, running the control room workflow for daily news and supporting live studio programming. https://capta.tv/capta-prod/
Resilient Multichannel Environment
The Nantes operation is designed as a multichannel broadcast environment, built for resilience by engineering redundancy into the service layer. Capta Prod operates across facilities in the Paris region and Nantes, with mirroring capabilities supporting continuity and failover. Through this approach, Capta Prod can supports more than ten linear TV channels and over 1,000 live events each year.
“We designed the whole workflow from the start as a multichannel broadcast operation,” said Jordi Bouyssou, technical manager at Capta Prod. “The initial brief was to construct a modular infrastructure capable of handling several channels while building in the flexibility to support ongoing growth.”
Also looking for operational efficiency, the facility standardised on Blackmagic Design across the sites’ core production layer. “Blackmagic's ecosystem is affordable enough that we can run fully mirrored A/B chains, keep identically-configured spare channels ‘on the shelf’ and still cover a broad range of needs,” said Jordi.
A/B redundancy chains duplicate the signal path architecture, and are designed to ensure continuous on-air operation if one chain fails. They are identical, parallel signal chains that carry the same content. At any given time, one chain is active (on-air) and the other is on standby, ready to take over instantly. If the spares are called into action, each can be shared across all active chains rather than dedicated to just one.
Routing, Switching and Monitoring
That approach also influenced the routing design, with duplicated paths and multiple external feeds. The architecture centred on a Blackmagic Videohub 80x80 12G router for signal management while the Nantes facility runs a Videohub 120x120 12G router, alongside a separate Videohub 40x40 12G for monitoring and multiview distribution.
In operations day-to-day, the operators use the ATEM 1 M/E Constellation HD live production switcher alongside playout servers. Automated channels operate in playout-only mode, while for live programming, operators are switching multiple sources and handling manual transitions on the ATEM 1 M/E Constellation HD. Monitoring is built on linked Blackmagic Multiview 4 HD units, with select outputs streamed for offsite viewing using a Blackmagic Web Presenter 4K streaming solution to enable remote client checks.
Extending the Duplicate Path Model
With the launch of NOVO19, Capta Prod’s responsibilities expanded to include traffic management and daily remote production. The news studio is located at Ouest France's Rennes headquarters, connected to Nantes via dedicated fibre. The link uses two separate lines from different providers, so if one fails the system switches over automatically.
“Bringing NOVO19 into the same duplicate path model used across our wider operation has allowed us to apply our approach on a national scale,” said Jordi.
For distribution, the Paris site runs two playout servers with automatic failover. The signal runs over fibre to the Digital Realty Paris PAR5 Data Centre just outside Paris, where it connects to NOVO19's final playout chain. Nantes transmits to a separate datacentre with redundant links.
“We were confident that, with a coherent design and proper redundancy, the Blackmagic ecosystem could serve as the centre of our broadcast operation,” Jordi noted. “In practice, it has delivered and become an operational advantage as we've grown.” www.blackmagicdesign.com
