Customer:
TG4
Country:
Republic of Ireland
Powering Up For The Future - TG4 Switches To Evertz Mediator-X
Overview
Broadcast workflow specialists Evertz have completed a major upgrade project for leading Irish language broadcaster TG4, which has seen the broadcaster's Digital Asset Management (DAM) system move to Mediator-X.
The project involved replacing TG4's HP blade hardware-based Mediator 4.7 flash UI with Evertz' flagship VMware platform Mediator-X HTML5 UI, a highly scalable and infrastructure agnostic platform that can handle Media Asset Management (MAM), Transmission Playout and Non-Linear Delivery.
With the ability to run on private or public cloud infrastructure, Mediator-X provides a versatile and reliable workflow engine that fully automates the MAM workflow and offers powerful benefits in terms of simplicity of use and increased efficiency. The addition of OvertureRT gives TG4 access to many other useful features, including logo/graphics insertion, rich SCTE meta data messaging, audio loudness correction, Nielsen watermarking, Dolby D encoding and more.
Solution at a Glance:
- TG4 produces much of its own content, investing almost €35 million annually in original Irish programming from the independent production sector.
- TG4's long and successful collaboration with Evertz was a key reason why the broadcaster chose Evertz technology for this important upgrade.
- The relationship dates back to 2011 when Pharos, the company that built and installed TG4's original Mediator 4.7 system, was acquired by Evertz.
- The most recent upgrade to Mediator-X was overseen by Evertz Senior Project Engineer Andy Tippetts, who worked closely with TG4's Engineering Operations Manager Gavin Hartigan.
- The addition of OvertureRT (ORT) has also made it possible for TG4 to eliminate a number of third-party hardware units.
- Although planning, configuration and testing for TG4's upgrade took over a year to complete, full migration to the new platform was accomplished in just one day.
[W]e had built up good personal relationships with the Evertz technical team, having worked with them previously on a number of projects, and those relationships were important.
– Neil Keaveney | Director of Technology | TG4
Introducing TG4
Based in Baile na hAbhann, a rural location in County Galway on the west coast of Ireland, TG4 is a free-to-air channel that has been providing viewers with Irish language programming since its inception in 1996. On average, 1.2 million people watch TG4 every week and it is now the country's sixth most popular channel.
TG4 produces much of its own content, investing almost €35 million annually in original Irish programming from the independent production sector. In addition, it manages and broadcasts a large archive of Irish language video material and is a major player in a Broadcast Authority of Ireland scheme that aims to preserve and grant access to its program archive for national channels, universities and schools across 32 counties.
Innovative programming covering the arts, drama, documentaries and sports are key to the channel's success. Alongside its Irish language output, TG4 also provides a schedule of programs in other languages, including live coverage in English of Dail Eireann, the national parliament.
Since its formation, TG4 has been a technological innovator, pioneering many cutting edge broadcast initiatives including possibly the first web player in Europe in 2003 HD broadcasting, which it adopted in 2012, and the delivery of IPTV TG4 Live Player plus 1 and plus 2 DVR streams in 2020.
The History of the Project
TG4's long and successful collaboration with Evertz was a key reason why the broadcaster chose Evertz technology for this important upgrade. The relationship dates back to 2011 when Pharos, the company that built and installed TG4's original Mediator 4.7 system, was acquired by Evertz.
There is an awful lot of pain that goes with installing a completely new
system, so we thought that if we could get an upgrade of what we already had,
then we would be happy to go that route,
says Neil Keaveney, director of
Technology at TG4. When we switched to Mediator back in 2011 the stability,
speed and flexibility of the Mediator system was noticeable, and it just
worked for us. We were very comfortable and happy with our old solution, and
this is probably why we didn't look to replace it for so long. Staying with
similar technology saved us from having to undergo a painful learning curve,
which would certainly have been the case if we had changed everything. Also,
we had built up good personal relationships with the Evertz technical team,
having worked with them previously on a number of projects, and those
relationships were important.
These projects include a major upgrade in 2014 when TG4 added Evertz 3025EMC Master Control Switching and Channel Branding and moved to a more standardized Mediator platform.
Then in 2017, TG4 replaced its storage with Isilon EMC, and in 2018 it worked with Evertz to add Dolby 5.1 support to its system - a project that came with its own challenges because much of the broadcaster's older content needed to be managed.
The most recent upgrade to Mediator-X was overseen by Evertz Senior Project Engineer Andy Tippetts, who worked closely with TG4's Engineering Operations Manager Gavin Hartigan.
The old system had served us very well, but it was time to go forward with a
new generation of broadcast technology,
Hartigan says.
The Challenge
Nothing lasts forever - various hardware and software components had reached end-of-life in the facility and TG4 had reached a point where manufacturers support became unavailable.
The software systems were not supported by the operating systems in use today
and this was causing us problems,
Neil Keaveney says. Despite the fact
that, from a workflow point of view, it was still working just as it had
been designed to do all those years ago, the underlying architecture and
equipment was outdated, and we needed to make the change.
TG4 wanted to retain its existing playout engines and record servers, the Evertz Media Clients, and it also wanted to transition to the new system without causing any interruption to its scheduled transmissions.
In addition to the upgrade, TG4 also wanted to rationalize and improve some of its workflows, as well as removing ones that were no longer used.
Our operators love the speed of the new system. They find it a lot more intuitive, so it makes their working lives faster and easier on a daily basis. It is also more robust and reliable, and because it is very similar to the old system, they haven't had any real issues learning how to use.
– Caitríona Ní Chuláin | Technology Coordinator | TG4
Our original Mediator 4.7 system was highly customized to meet our specific
needs,
Neil Keaveney says. We had special elements designed for the studio
workflows and the editing workflows, and we automated a lot of workflows
that would traditionally have been manual. It took a long time to get them
to work and at the end of the day we probably didn't see the benefit of the
amount of development work it entailed.
Keen to avoid running into the same problem again, TG4 approached this project differently. At the start of 2021 when the decision to upgrade was given the green light, technical staff from Evertz sat down with TG4 staff and talked through all the existing workflows to see what could be changed.
We realized we could simplify a lot, specifically the studio and gallery
workflows,
Keaveney says. We worked with the design team until we knew
which ones we were keeping, which ones we could lose and which ones we
needed to replace.
With Mediator-X using a Marina database, it was very different from the
database used in the older Mediator version. It was not appropriate to
convert the existing schema, therefore we created a migration script to poll
the existing system for materials and save them in the new system,
Keaveney
explains. We were keen to move workflow history over to the new system, so
we ensured that the migration script added comments of any workflow history
to the material card in the new system.
The addition of OvertureRT (ORT) has also made it possible for TG4 to eliminate a number of third-party hardware units.
In one sense there's a lot going on in the ORTs,
Keaveney says, but there's
also a lot less hardware to go wrong because we no longer have playout
servers, presentation graphics devices, subtitle devices, up mix for Dolby
and so on. We have two ORTs which buys us good resilience and simplifies all
our broadcast chains, as well as giving us fewer points of failure between
the playout server and air. It also eliminates the need for a transmission
mixer desk because this task can now also be done within the ORT. That is a
huge change and one that raised a lot of eyebrows among our presentation
staff, but having had time to get used to it they are now very happy with
the changes.
His comments are upheld by Caitríona Ní Chuláin, TG4's Technology Coordinator,
who is responsible for training at TG4. She says: Our operators love the
speed of the new system. They find it a lot more intuitive, so it makes their
working lives faster and easier on a daily basis. It is also more robust and
reliable, and because it is very similar to the old system, they haven't had
any real issues learning how to use.
The Solution
Although planning, configuration and testing for TG4's upgrade took over a year to complete, full migration to the new platform was accomplished in just one day. At the same time playout and recording hardware was also moved to the new system - and all this was performed without any interruptions to transmission.
Physically, all we had to do was swap eight 1U rack-mounted servers with
eight new ones,
Hartigan says. That was easy - it was getting the software
right that took time. We couldn't afford any downtime, so we had two
workstations side by side - one running the old system and one running the
new. By running the two systems in parallel, we were able to fault find and
train staff prior to the switchover so that everyone was comfortable with
the new workflows.
It was a really successful upgrade, mainly thanks to the pre-upgrade work and
planning that we did with Evertz,
Keaveney adds. Even when we did have
issues, the Evertz team were willing to do a lot of work to make things
right. A good example is subtitles - in particular the position of subtitles
within different file types, which are covered by EBU specifications. Evertz
engineering team quickly corrected this with a software update in a short
time frame.
TG4 finally powered down its old system a couple of days after the new one went live and was happy to do so because with less hardware and a more efficient VM-based platform, it is now also greener and more energy efficient.
After completing its major upgrade and spending some time acclimatising to the new system, TG4 marked its Autumn 2023 season with the launch of a new Children's channel, Cúla4.
It was important that the upgrade happened in plenty of time to allow us to
concentrate on this,
Keaveney says. Thanks to some smart thinking by the
Evertz team we have been able to use our existing ORTs for the new channel -
something we would never have been able to do with the old hardware and
playout servers. It is a very exciting time for TG4, and Evertz has been
instrumental in this success. I can't fault the support we have received.
They have lived this project just as much as we have!
Looking back to our earlier system, I think we just tried to achieve too much. We created too many dependencies - to the point where some of the workflows were overly complicated. For this reason, when we decided to invest in Mediator-X, we did a huge amount of simplification and that has really benefited us. As we do a lot of trans-coding through our own development systems, we can make changes ourselves without impacting the main core of the automation, which remains Evertz.
– Gavin Hartigan | Engineering Operations Manager | TG4