World Wrestling Entertainment Makes $12 Million Commitment To Server-Based HD Workflow With Thomson and Nesbit Systems
After successfully completing a multi-phase conversion from analog to digital operations in 2001 with the help of Thomson, WWE, an integrated media and entertainment company that generated more than 100 hours of new SD content each week, is now making the move to a server-based HD production and distribution workflow with a major order of Thomson Grass Valley HD equipment, systems, and services from Thomson, as well as a media asset management system from Nesbit Systems.
"We looked at several manufacturers and solutions before choosing Thomson," said Mike Grossman Senior Vice President of Television Operations, for WWE. Thomson offered the most comprehensive, integrated solution that could handle the unique demands of WWE's production environment.
When completed, the extensive system, with full redundancy to protect against system downtime, will allow WWE to produce entertainment content in high definition faster and more efficiently than their standard definition (SD) tape-based system could before.
"We've used Thomson Grass Valley equipment for almost 20 years and have been very pleased with both the performance and the productivity benefits it has given us," said Grossman. "Now, as we make a rapid move to HD, it was natural for us to turn to Thomson and its engineers, who have the knowledge and expertise to get the job done right."
Leveraging their extensive Thomson Grass Valley-based environment, all of WWE's audio and video assets will be archived and organized with the MLS/Preview+ comprehensive media asset management system supplied by Nesbit Systems, Inc. Preview+ is a new module that is now a component of Nesbit's widely used Media Library System (MLS), which is already in use at WWE. The system provides unlimited access to over 100,000 hours (and growing) of media assets in a shared SAN.
"We are very excited about this opportunity," said Irene Nesbit, President, Nesbit Systems. "Installing MLS/Preview+ and integrating it with Grass Valley's MediaFrame to provide a seamless solution for managing all of WWE's assets is a big win for everyone."
"By choosing to install Thomson Grass Valley equipment and teaming MediaFrame™ metadata architecture with Nesbit Systems' MLS/Preview+, WWE is at the forefront of how a global media company creates, manages, and distributes content on a variety of platforms in the 21st century," said Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of Thomson's Broadcast & Professional Solutions business unit.
WWE's HD digital production system includes 16 HD ingest channels and will have a minimum capacity of 2,000 usable hours of HD with 15,000 hours of online disk base proxy storage. The system is designed to support 200 named users and 50 simultaneous users, 20 full resolution viewing seats, and 36 full featured multistream nonlinear editing systems.
A key component of the WWE installation will be the integration of Nesbit Systems' MLS/Preview+ and the Thomson Grass Valley MediaFrame metadata architecture, which links all of the functionality and metadata of each application under a task-specific GUI that provides users of each application with the ability to access the other tools in the suite from the same desktop. MLS/Preview+ integration with the Aurora Browse production suite will be used for low resolution viewing, logging, and EDL clip selection, and has been modified for a two-way exchange of metadata with MediaFrame.
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