Etere for Al Dana TV

Facing the music – Al Dana TV. Etere continues it success in the United Arab Emirates with its latest installation for Al Dana TV.

Fatima Mohammed is an Emirati with a degree in media production from the Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Arab Emirates.

For the last five years, Mohammed has enjoyed a steady income thanks to a job at Dubai TV as programmes director. But four months ago, Mohammed decided to fly the nest and look for a more challenging position in a private firm. And she landed one as manager of Al Dana TV, one of the new music channels that was launched from Dubai Media City. “This is a very big challenge for me because the survival of the channel depends on how I steer it,” says Mohammed, who will be managing the whole channel while also directing many local music videos that will be broadcast exclusively on Al Dana. Systems for this facility was designed, planned, sourced, installed and integrated by the Qatar-based systems integrator, Salam Media Cast, Etere‘s distributor in the Middle East. What is more significant, though, is the very professional approach that the companies have taken with regards to the choice, installation and integration of broadcast equipment at their respective facilities. By contracting a well-known systems integrator to put in place their systems, they seem to indicate that they mean business. Shafi, senior sales manager of Salam Media Cast, was responsible for the project right from the stage of planning, he explains: “For Al Dana, we had a much tighter deadline but we were able to meet those requirements as well and they have been on air since the beginning of this month”.

Solutions at the facility are state-of-the-art, scaleable for future requirements and completely in a full caching technology. The Master Control room (MCR) includes a three-node video server from Seachange, which currently has a capacity of 200 hours at the bit rate of 15mbps. Each node can carry six hard drives and has a storage capacity of 147 GB each. Al Dana has opted for Leitch’s 16x16 SDI router and two of the vendor’s remote control panels (RCP) with specs of 16x16 for production and 16x1 for output. The channel’s audio and video distribution are handled by Leitch’s 6800 plus series. Besides this, Salam has also installed a Leitch GPS 575 frame synchroniser to ensure that the audio and video streams are synchronised and a steady feed is send to air.

Etere Automation System, the server and the rest of the broadcast equipment are locked through the GPS so that the software can ensure that there is no drift in timing. “This is primarily useful for all live and external feeds because it allows them to go directly on air,” says Shafi. Al Dana is equipped with an audio monitoring system from Del and a patch panel from Bes. The channel has also acquired two Synch pulse generators (SPG) from Trilogy that are connected to a mastermind auto changeover switch. This allows it to switch to the backup should one SPG fail. Al Dana has also invested in a Sony DVW M2000P VTR, which enables both playout and recording in multi-format. Solutions at both facilities are controlled by the Etere automation system, which is installed at several other such facilities in DMC as well. In terms of editing, Al Dana has chosen Pinnacle chrome and 3D Max software. Al Dana currently has only a playout centre and an SMS room but it has plans to include a studio to accommodate its production needs as soon as it gets more space in DMC.

Etere Automation supplies an integrated automation system able to share information with all the TV infrastructures and the best protection for data and the On-air. Etere manages the scheduling with Music Manager. It’s must-have software to make easier the music scheduling.

Etere Music Manager integrates with Etere Automation to enhance music programs scheduling performances. With it the music scheduling system is frame-accurate, the last minute changes applied in real-time and it quickly makes music formats with minimum resources usage.