Questek announces the completion of a large systems integration project for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).
"SABC required a complete turnkey system centred on a networked news production and playout system to co-ordinate video, audio and text arriving from more than a thousand journalists," explains George van Gils, Questek's Director. "Most of the SABC news team operate from laptop computers, as is true of reporters worldwide, so it was essential to have an efficient, centralised system to handle content arriving from many different sources.
"The project included designing and integrating a networked ENPS newsroom with 1 100 user licences, the world's fifth largest of its kind. It is now being used to prepare content for all SABC television and radio news operations, including 10 regional stations as well as international bureau.
"The largest part of the installation is located at SABC's headquarters in Johannesburg. In addition to the massive ENPS system, we have installed Quantel sQ server and production infrastructure, including an ingest server, transmission server, 140 viewing clients, 25 edit clients, four tape ingest stations, two Panasonic P2 ingest stations and AmberFin file ingest with software-based transcoding. Additional infrastructure installed includes Snell Pro-Bel routers, HP IT servers, Cisco IT routers and Miranda glue."
SABC's entire news operation has transferred to ENPS from an outgoing Dynatech Newstar system. Training was a vital element of the transition. ENPS super-user instruction for about 1 500 of the network's staff was arranged, centred on dedicated demonstration terminals attached to the main system.
The project was supervised by ATG Broadcast's Senior Project Manager, Dave Whitaker, in conjunction with colleagues from the company's UK headquarters and Questek Advanced Technologies.
South Africa's public service broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) provides three television channels (SABC 1, SABC 2 and SABC 3) and 18 radio stations (AM/FM). The first television channel was initially funded entirely through a licence fee, supported from 1978 by advertising. SABC 1 broadcasts primarily in Nguni, SABC 2 in English, SeSotho and Afrikaans, and SABC 3 in English and Afrikaans. See www.sabc.co.za for more information.
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