WHEAT:NEWS TV OCTOBER 2018 Volume 5, Number 10
All for One. One for All.
On most days in the Carolinas, Bahakel Communications produces newscasts and weather reports from its main newsroom in Charlotte for WCCB-TV, Charlotte; WOLO-TV, Columbia, S.C.; and WFXB-TV, Myrtle Beach, S.C.
But, on other days when, say, a hurricane pays a visit, live broadcasts can take place just about anywhere there’s a dry studio and an IP connection.
Bahakel Communications has an IP-networked Dimension Three audio console that handles mixing, mic control and IFB for three stations: one in Charlotte, one in Columbia and one in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The console is part of the AES67-compatible WheatNet-IP audio network and is located in the main newsroom in Charlotte, which is almost 100 miles from Columbia and more than 150 miles from Myrtle Beach.
All studio cameras, mics, IFB, prompter, weather system, and set monitors in the Columbia newsroom are linked to Charlotte by IP. In Charlotte, it all goes through production and master control, and is then re-encoded with all the sub-channels and sent back to Columbia via IP transport for transmission. The same setup is used for some programming for WFXB-TV in Myrtle Beach. Mid-day weather is presented from the Columbia newsroom, through WCCB-TV production, and fed back via IP to WFXB-TV for air.
At any time, news and weather reports can originate from any of the three locations for all or any of the stations. Should staff need to evacuate one studio location, they can continue to broadcast updates from another studio location. This was the case when Hurricane Matthew required a mass evacuation in Myrtle Beach. As WFXB-TV’s building sat empty and dark, the staff was able to remotely produce live updates for the Myrtle Beach community from the main studio in Charlotte.
For Hurricane Florence, most of the live coverage was done out of the WCCB-TV studio in Charlotte, and our friends at Bahakel Communications tell us that all three stations weathered the storm without incident.
NAB NY 2018/AES AoIP TECHNOLOGY SHOWCASE
October 17-18, 2018
Booth N163
Wheatstone will be at the the NAB NY Show, held in at the Javits Center in NYC, October 17-18, 2018. Come visit us in Booth N163 and check out our latest advances in broadcast audio production, networking, and processing.
Be sure to also check out the Audio-Over-IP Technology (AoIP) Pavilion at AES New York 2018, co-located with NAB Show New York at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, Oct. 17-19. Wheatstone will be there with the wares to demonstrate AES67 compatibility along with other vendors.
Wisconsin Broadcaster's Clinic
October 16-18, 2018
Booth 55
We'll also be at the Wisconsin Broadcasters Clinic.
Jeff Keith will be presenting "New FM Processing Technology Brings Studio Quality Audio to the Receiver" featuring our AirAura X4 processor, which breaks acres of new ground. If you are in Madison, stop by and see us at the Madison Marriott West Hotel in Middleton, WI.
We’ll be showing WheatNet-IP consoles and networking, the new Audioarts Lightning console, plus signal processing, VoxPro 7 and ScreenBuilder.
As many of you know, Wheatstone’s factory is located a few miles from downtown New Bern, North Carolina, which was hit head-on by Hurricane Florence. Our little town survived tropical storm force winds on September 14, with initial water levels reaching at least 10 feet above sea level.
We closed down our factory ahead of Hurricane Florence’s arrival and shifted tech support to Wheatstone engineers in California, Texas and Syracuse, N.Y. Meanwhile, many of our sales staff were at the IBC show in Amsterdam, watching weather maps and news reports and hoping for the best as events unfolded in our little community.
We’re happy to report that all our staff and their families have been accounted for and the factory stands high and dry on Industrial Drive as it always has, thanks in part to the sturdy construction of our plant.
Thank you all for your continued best wishes and especially to our local broadcasters who stayed on the air to keep us informed during wind and high water.
Meanwhile, In Amsterdam...
…our VoxPro 7.1 digital recorder/editor made Best of Show! As we mentioned last month, our VoxPro digital recorder/editor is being used by sportscasters to easily drag and drop sound bites into a multitrack window and add fades and effects as needed, all while they’re editing or recording a separate track in a side window AND sending a mixdown to air! At IBC we introduced VoxPro version 7.1, which features smarter hotkeys, customizable shortcuts and improved file naming and importing functions.
FREE E-BOOK: IP AUDIO FOR TV PRODUCTION AND BEYOND
Putting together a new studio? Updating an existing studio?
We've put together this IP Audio for TV Production and Beyond e-book with fresh info and some of the articles that we've authored for our website, white papers, and news that dives into some of the cool stuff you can do with a modern AoIP network like Wheatstone's WheatNet-IP. And it's FREE to download!
There's Something We've Been Meaning To Show You
Here it is, the IP-64 – easily our most versatile all-around audio console yet. This board is right at home just about anywhere, whether you’re doing live remotes or newscasts at home. There’s not much of a learning curve here; the IP-64 is very intuitive to operate, even though it has all the top-tier functions like weighted auto-mixing, soft programmable function knobs, and deeper level dynamics and other audio tools.
Q: We expect to be able to use AES67 at some point. How hard is it commission AES67 in your network and others?
A: We think you’ll find that manufacturers have worked hard to make AES67 adoption fairly straightforward. As you know, AES67 is part of the SMPTE 2110-30 standard. It’s an audio transport standard and an important piece of the equation for moving to separate video and audio streams, rather than embedding/de-embedding audio with video as is done now with HD/SDI workflows.
Now, about your question: We recently did an extensive commissioning experiment with AES67 devices from Genelec, Ward-Beck, Dante, and Axia into the WheatNet-IP system. Setup was uneventful, and the system proved to be very robust even during some pretty intense torture tests. During the plugfest, we discovered five key findings for commissioning AES67, which you can read about here.
How WheatNet-IP Powers Modern Television Broadcast and Production Audio
Wheatstone's VP/Technology, Andy Calvanese, discusses some of the advantages of the seamless, built-in control layer of the WheatNet-IP audio-over-IP network when used in television applications.
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