In Broadcast - September 2013 - 28

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 23 - SEPTEMBER 2013

N E W S

InREPLY

Qatar TV Invests In Avid’s Interplay
Media Asset Management System
Mohamad Fares, Head of Broadcast Technology
at Qatar TV, discusses the selection and installation
of Avid’s Interplay MAM system...

28

InB: What encouraged Qatar TV
to install the Avid Interplay MAM
system?
Mohamad Fares: We decided to
invest in an Avid Interplay media
asset management (MAM) system
as we were faced with the challenge
of advancing Qatar TV’s existing
workﬂow in order to respond to
new business opportunities in
Doha. Under the patronage of
TVSDC, a re-launch of Qatar TV
was planned to focus on virtually
every interest imaginable, from arts
and entertainment to technology,
education, events, and celebrity
appearances. To meet this
extraordinary range of challenges,
TVSDC built a new production
studio, newsroom studio and
broadcasting complex at its Doha
headquarters in 2012. It features a
new set of media asset management
and media production solutions
allowing it to coordinate and perform
the myriad of tasks inherent in such
a large operation. Installing the Avid
Interplay MAM system would allow
Qatar TV to become a world-class
workflow with one of the most
advanced arrays of Avid solutions
available.
InB: What were you looking for in
the new system?
MF: Our primary objective was to
upgrade Qatar TV’s existing workﬂow
with a new system that would enable
us to respond to new business
requirements more effectively by
getting a clear picture of what
assets we owned, understanding
what those assets were worth,

Qatar TV’s ISIS 5000 shared storage solution

and working more collaboratively
across the entire enterprise.
Therefore, we were looking for an
integrated media enterprise solution
that was highly competitive, and
easily implemented new projects.
Working closely together Avid and
Qatar TV determined that, above
all, the system would need to
be optimised for effective media
management. Secondly, it would
have to provide strong links to
business processes. And thirdly,
it would need to support and
orchestrate workﬂows speciﬁcally
tailored to the needs of Qatar TV’s
diverse production groups.

InB: In what ways has Qatar TV’s
existing workﬂow beneﬁtted from
the new MAM system?
MF: Starting
with the ingest
process, Avid
Interplay
Capture let
the production
team ingest
media from
different
s o u r c e s
including tape
and live feeds.
All AirSpeed
Mohamad Fares gets to work on the Avid Interplay MAM
Multi Stream

servers are controlled by users
through the Interplay Capture
application, which increases the
speed and reliability of media
acquisition through advanced
automated feed scheduling and
control. As the ingests are initiated,
assets are automatically checked
into Interplay Production and
stored on Avid ISIS shared storage,
with capacity for approximately
3,750 hours of highly protected,
high resolution material across
the ten ISIS 7000 64TB engines.
The new MAM system therefore
optimised our media cycle of
acquisition, production, distribution,
and archiving. We can now easily
exchange assets between our
production and our archive system
and, if changes are needed, we can
even apply them with no downtime
while the system is running.
Media management capabilities
provided by Interplay Production
and Interplay MAM lie at the heart of
the system, giving it the power and
ﬂexibility to handle the extraordinary
volume and diversity of content
Qatar TV generates. Integrated links
between Interplay Production and
Interplay MAM provide seamless
transfer of video assets, allowing
a completed video sequence to be
archived directly from the system

production environment and
restored by any user with access.
With 15 Avid Interplay Central
universal clients, Qatar TV now
employs a tightly integrated
workﬂow between script and video
editing. This is especially valuable
for supporting Qatar TV’s diversity
in news and other programming.
We h a v e b e c o m e m o re
collaborative and efﬁcient than ever
before, meeting our business and
technological challenges. Thanks
to this open, well-integrated
environment of industry-standard
solutions, Avid has not only enabled
Qatar TV to meet its go-to-air
deadline, which was by the end of
2012, but also to join the ranks of
the world’s top entertainment and
news networks.
InB: Tell us about your experience
working with Avid’s Professional
Services Team.
MF: The Avid Professional Services
team applied their extensive
knowledge of best industry practices
to help TVSDC gain a thorough
understanding of how this kind of
comprehensive, integrated media
environment could be structured.
The team then worked to
design, implement, and install a
full complement of ingest, editing,
newsroom management, news
playout, and audio post-production
solutions that could meet all
those needs, supported by the
sophisticated asset management
architecture of Interplay MAM and
Interplay Production.
InB: Any plans to further expand
the system?
MF: We are constantly looking into
ways to increase our efficiency
and yes, this includes expanding
the system. Our immediate plans
include an on-air scheduling and
EPG system which will tie directly
to Interplay MAM for media and
metadata. Longer term plans include
upgrading to the new Airspeed
5000 to make use of their new
functionality.
InB: What’s next for Qatar TV?
MF: Qatar TV will continue to evolve
and present new and exciting
content to our viewers over as many
platforms as possible. Driven by
Qatar’s 2030 vision, we have several
projects lined up which will hopefully
be made public in due course.
InB: Thank you for taking timeout
to answer our questions.

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