In Broadcast - NABSHOW 2015 - 62

62

www.inbroadcast.com | NAB SHOW 11-16 April 2015 | InShow Guide

Octopus Makes News with
Newtek for Radio Liberty
TV news programme Current Time is a new joint production
of Radio Liberty and the Voice of America...

C

urrent Time is a groundbreaking
news partnership undertaken with
public and private broadcasters and
Internet portals in Georgia, Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, and
Ukraine.
Drawing on a network of reporters
throughout the region, it presents
a daily half hour mix of live news
coverage, interviews, original features,
and political satire. Offering content
not available on state-controlled
media, it provides a new angle on local
events.

Using watch-folders, ﬁles, and data
are copied between Newtek's Tricaster
and Octopus

For this new video-based venture,
the audio specialists of Radio Liberty
leveraged its existing news experience,
as Systems Administrator, Michal
Weiss explains, "We obviously already
had journalistic resources in place,
but it's our use of Octopus Newsroom
to manage our agency feeds over
the last few years that has made a
real difference to our video news
programming."
Originally installed for the radio
news operation some six years ago, the
use of the specialist news software had
been limited to managing incoming
multi-lingual wires. As many as 120
concurrent users were logging into the
system, which was a central part of the
radio news production workﬂow.
"Octopus6 was useful, but we
were under-using it. It was when
investigating how to organise the
video news department that we
understood its full potential. We

looked at Czech TV's
news operation, and this
reinforced the ability of
Octopus7 to deliver the
whole news planning and production
functionality we needed, far beyond
the feed management features we had
been using," he continues.
As Radio Liberty's video broadcasting
was to broadcast a single news
programme a day, the initial budget
was limited.
This meant that a fully integrated
MOS solution was out of reach. The
team opted to use Newtek's Tricaster
video production system. Its API
communicates with Octopus via
Newsmaker's Newscaster tool. Using
watch-folders, ﬁles, and data are
copied between Tricaster and Octopus,
creating place holders, scripts, and
rundowns ready for playout.
Now, instead of manually importing
text into the prompters, the Autoscript

On the set of Current Time

devices communicate directly with
Octopus, automating and accelerating
the production workﬂow.
This new solution means that
journalists can make full use of
Octopus' feature set: they are now able
to work as a team on stories, organise
reporters' activities, track the progress
of reports, and preview video clips.
As a broadcaster operating in
Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the
Middle East, the multi-lingual and
multi-script abilities of the Newsroom
have proven vital. Other features
of Octopus such as social media
integration are now ready to be rolled
out to journalists, giving reporters
original news feeds and another means
of communicating breaking stories to
online viewers.

http://www.inbroadcast.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UioV-HwDUHo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UioV-HwDUHo http://www.octopus-news.com/en/ http://nab15.mapyourshow.com/6_0/exhibitor/exhibitor-details.cfm?ExhID=1121

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