In Broadcast - May 2014 - 70

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

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 31 - MAY 2014

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InMEDIA

NBC's The Voice Turns To Avid Workflows
Avid's cutting-edge workflows have dramatically enhanced collaboration and streamlined
the production processes on NBC's top-draw musical reality show The Voice...

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70

BC's Emmy Award-winning
The Voice is the Number one
rated musical competition show
on television, drawing millions of
viewers each week who tune in to
watch aspiring talent from the US
and other countries perform in an
internationally televised singing
contest.
The stakes are high: The winner
receives a record deal, worldwide
recognition and a career-boosting
opportunity like no other.
For the production team behind
The Voice, the stakes are just as
high - they face a nearly continuous
production schedule and extremely
demanding deadlines. With shoots
occurring nearly every week, the
team has to edit and manage a
massive amount of media quickly
and efficiently. The production
team relies on Avid's cutting-edge
workﬂows to enhance collaboration,
streamline production, and produce
the high-quality content that
makes The Voice so enthralling
for audiences.

The judges give a standing ovation on NBC's The Voice

Wide Range
In recent years, the complexity
of video projects has increased
dramatically - because of the
accelerated digitisation of media
assets, video professionals and
facilities need to store, access,
track, and share content in more
formats than ever before.
The Voice production team uses
a diverse range of media formats
to create the show- from iPhone,
Android, and YouTube videos, to
broadcast masters and more. To
handle such a wide range of formats,
the team uses the industry's
leading video production software,
Media Composer.
"You'd be hard pressed to name a
ﬁle format we haven't used on The
Voice over the last ﬁve seasons,"
says Robert M. Malachowski Jr.,
Supervising Editor for The Voice.
"Our Avid workﬂow allows us to
manage and utilise the high volume
of media that comes in daily."
In the past, the team used a nonAvid solution that made it difﬁcult
to know and understand where the
media came from. Now, using Avid
workﬂows, the team can manage
and optimise a wide variety of media
with unparalleled ease and efficiency.
"With Media Composer, we can
immediately tell what the media is,
a broadcast-ready master or overly
compressed YouTube sequence, for
example, and know how to best
utilise it," says Malachowski. "It
allows us to incorporate many

different media formats, while
simultaneously managing
expectations of quality."

Fast Turnarounds
Each season, The Voice produces a
series of "Battle Rounds," in which
two singers are pitted against
each other to sing the same song
in front of a studio audience, with
the winner advancing to the next
round of competition. For the two
hour Battle Rounds, the production
team has to turnaround a complete
show from ofﬂine to online in ﬁve to
six days - akin to creating a featurelength ﬁlm in under a week's time.
Just a few years ago, such a
tight timeline would have been
impossible to meet. But with Avid
post and shared storage solutions
all integrated and synchronised into
one cohesive workﬂow, the team
can work much faster than before.
Using Media Composer, up to
25 editors and assistants work
on a project simultaneously. The
team speeds up production
by "compartmentalising" the

show, putting editors on different
scenes or sequences that they
are particularly suited to, greatly
increasing efﬁciency. And with a
huge amount of pre-taped footage
from the auditions, plus 24 camera
feeds that need to be ingested,
grouped, and sequenced, every
editor has to do their part.
"With Avid workﬂows, we can ﬁnish
what would normally be a full day of
work in a fraction of the time," says
John M. Larson, Supervising Editor
at The Voice. "The whole package
helps us maximise the amount of
content that we can create and
produce a much better product than
if we were using another solution.
The Avid workﬂow makes our jobs
so much easier."
And since all of the show's content
is in one centralised location,
editors can quickly ﬁnd the media
they need and stay in the creative
ﬂow. "They aren't worried about
finding the tools they need, so
they can concentrate solely on the
storylines and production of the
show. Only Avid allows us to do
that," says Malachowski.

Growing ISIS
As The Voice has grown over the
last few seasons, the Avid workﬂow
has grown right along with it. The
team is currently using a 128 TB
ISIS conﬁguration, but could easily
scale their storage capacity without
changing systems. "It's very helpful
knowing that we have the option
to expand our capacity if needed,"
says Jim Sterling, Post Supervisor
at The Voice.

The team currently has 40
production stations working on
the same project, and ISIS allows
editors, ﬁnishers, and producers to
access the media simultaneously.
This integrated workflow allows
them to connect their team together
and increase collaboration every
step of the way. "Without ISIS, our
workﬂow would be severely limited,"
explains Sterling.
"Being able to share media with
so many stations has made a huge
difference - we can stream media
easier, and have more editors
working simultaneously."
With all the media in a centralised
storage location, the team can easily
maintain consistency between
shows and seasons. In an instant,
editors can access clips from
thousands of hours of archived -
and extremely valuable - media.
The proven and trusted reputation
of ISIS gives the production team
conﬁdence that it will deliver week
after week, season after season.
"We don't have to worry if it's going to
work - we know it's going to work,"
Sterling says.

Moving Forward
The Voice production team
continues to turn to Avid's proven
and trusted solutions to get the job
done. Malachowski says: "Having
the complete, end-to-end workﬂow
that Avid provides is the only way
that this show can do what it does
on such quick turnarounds. For
reality television, Avid is the default
- the industry standard."
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