Thu 28th Jan, 2010
Aggressively priced, state-of-the-art HD/SD four-channel production server with superior image quality is server of choice for live, on-air replay for sports
MENLO PARK, California — January 28, 2010 — Abekas, Incorporated announced deployment of the Abekas Mira digital video production server in the television studio serving the athletics teams at Old Dominion University (ODU), located in Norfolk, Virginia. The new Mira server was installed in the recently upgraded television facilities inside the Ted Constant Convocation Center as part of an HD upgrade, with Mira being used primarily during live university sporting events televised by the facility. These events include ODU Monarch men’s and women’s basketball games, university wrestling and university football games—with Mira televising the first ODU football game played since 1941 from the newly remodeled Foreman Field. In addition, Mira is used during other live entertainment events hosted at the Ted Constant arena, including USA Boxing, Cage Fighting, Harlem Globetrotters, along with many others.
In this application at ODU, the Mira server is used for uninterrupted, continuous recording from three HD 720p cameras televising the live event, while the fourth video channel in Mira is used to instantly replay any of the recorded cameras. Any of the three camera angles can be selected by the operator for replay, with instant switching, re-cueing and playback of a newly selected camera angle. Mira is user-driven by a hardware control panel, the DNF Controls model “DMAT-AB”; which features a jog knob, T-bar and dedicated buttons for fast-paced and demanding live television replay operations.
“For the price, there is really no better replay system on the market; and the customer support provided by Abekas and DNF Controls is wonderful.” commented Julie Kindinger, the Audio/Video Production Coordinator at the Ted Constant Convocation Center. “We really like the fact that Mira is always recording the three cameras—so even if we’re doing a replay and some new action happens during that replay, we can always go back and replay the new action. And the Mira system is very flexible and easy to use—so it’s simple to train new operators.” said Kindinger.
With instant access to any of the recorded content, Mira with DMAT provide users the ability to create slow-motion instant replay events, as well as creating highlights play lists for action review any time during or after the televised event. And with the included file importer, Mira can ingest QuickTime MOV files of promos, bumpers and other animated graphics before the event—with instant access and replay of these video clips during the event.
With a very aggressive price point anywhere from one-third to one-fifth of competing systems, the Mira/DMAT solution is quite attractive for “tier-two” and “tier-three” sports instant replay applications. And Mira provides superior JPEG-2000 image quality with an incredibly reliable server platform featuring: a RAID-6 parity protected media disk array—allowing up to two simultaneous media disk failures without affecting operations; hot-swap media disk drives; a dual-redundant hot-swap mirrored system disk; a dual-redundant power supply with hot-swap modules; and a redundant hot-swap cooling fan assembly. To top it all off, Mira is housed inside a very compact and robust chassis, measuring just three rack units (3RU) in height.
About Mira
Combining state-of-the-art video/audio processing hardware with the latest RAID.6 disk drive technology, Mira has an extremely competitive price point and is available in three storage capacities: 19-, 30- and 60-hours of recording time (when recording at the highest bit-rate of 200Mb/s) for HD digital video, key, audio and timecode—all housed inside a compact 3RU chassis. When recording in SD, the three storage capacities equate to 27-, 42- and 84-hours. Ultra high-quality JPEG-2000 (J2K) wavelet compression technology with a recording bit rate up to 200Mb/s with 10-bit resolution; or up to 140Mb/s for SD digital video. There are ten compression presets to set the bit-rate from 200M/b down to 20Mb/s for HD; and from 140Mb/s down to 15Mb/s for SD.
Access to the RAID.6 media disk drive array is conveniently provided at the front of the chassis, with the RAID.6 parity protection allowing up to two disk drive failures at the same time—without any interruption to user operations. Simple and fast “hot-swap” media disk drive exchange is achieved without the use of any hand tools, with provision for a stand-by “hot spare” disk drive with automatic swap and parity rebuild in cases of media disk drive failure.
The rich feature set of Mira includes: a high-speed graphics file import utility which imports QuickTime MOV files that include RGB, alpha and audio to create video+key+audio animation clips; four RS422 serial control ports with Sony, Louth VDCP and Odetics protocols (providing precise control from third-party controllers, including those from Sony, Thomson Grass Valley, Lance Design™ and DNF Controls™, to name just a few); eight tracks of embedded uncompressed digital audio with 24-bit resolution/48kHz sampling (with optional 16-track embedded digital audio available in HD); LTC & ATC timecode record and playback; a unique graphical user interface with integrated video/audio/timecode displays; a built-in multi-paned quad viewer on 1.5Gb/s HD-SDI and/or “desktop” DVI for live video/audio/timecode “video wall” monitoring; and highly reactive transport controls with instant response.
As a standard feature, Mira can record or playback one or two sets of video, key, audio and timecode (VKAT) within a single operation under a single clip identity. VKAT storage capability dramatically streamlines many production and post applications and greatly simplifies media management. 2X and 3X Super Slow Motion recording and replay capability is available as an optional feature. With just a couple of mouse clicks, Mira hardware can be reconfigured by the user to record and play simultaneously using the shared storage, with any combination of the four video streams. These features, along with the aforementioned feature set, provides a powerful HD and SD recording platform for use in live, on-air broadcasting environments.
About Abekas
Abekas, Incorporated (www.abekas.com) is a privately-held company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Abekas designs, manufactures, sells, and supports a complete line of digital video/audio delay devices, video disk recorders and servers, digital special effects and editing tools for use in the worldwide professional television marketplace — encompassing the production, post production, broadcasting and computer video markets.
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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