Al Mashhad TV Channel Continues Growth with Avid
Launching a high-quality, news and entertainment channel in record time is no small feat. For Al Mashhad TV and Digital Platform, the challenge was big: build an entire broadcast operation from the ground up and go live in just ten months. To achieve the goal, they turned to a trusted industry leader—Avid.
“Avid is known for being very stable, with fast turnaround workflows which are essential for news,” explains Kuppa Srinivas, Head of Technology for Al Mashhad. Given the ambitious timeline, the efficiency and reliability of Avid’s solutions were critical to success.
The leading general entertainment channel operates from Studio City, Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
The Arabic language station is on-air ‘round-the-clock, producing around seven hours of live broadcast per day. It offers a mix of regular headline bulletin shows providing updates and high profile shows in prime time, such as Al Mashhad Al Yawm, Dardachat, Studio Al Arab and Al Mashhad Al Lailah.
The newsroom has a staff of nearly forty people, supported by fourteen correspondents spread across the region and worldwide.
With an end-to-end Avid solution for their broadcast production needs, Al Mashhad’s workflows include ingest, editing, shared storage, story creation, rundown management, studio playout, media management and archiving (a full list of all components is below). Collaboration is key, with easy, instant sharing of stories and media between team members powered by the system.
The efficiency and reliability which the Avid news solution provides, enables staff to produce a constant stream of high-quality stories, particularly when it comes to breaking news and the need to deliver quickly and react to fast changing events. Competition for news viewers in the market is high, demanding the distinctive, original, creative stories which set the station apart.
MediaCentral | Newsroom Management (formerly known as iNEWS) drives the on-air show production, with users accessing it both from the iNEWS client and through the rundown app in MediaCentral | Cloud UX.
In addition to crafting shows in rundowns and writing stories, journalists can also directly access news wires from agencies, both local to the region and from international sources, which come into the Newsroom Management system automatically. This ensures the team is fully on top of breaking stories.
“Avid has many ready-to-use functions that make it easy for users to react and create,” Kuppa says. “It is that adaptability which helps our users.”
Providing the backbone of the live production environment is 800 terabytes of Avid NEXIS shared storage, with MediaCentral | Production Management in place for collaborative editing workflows – either in the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX, or in a high-powered craft editor. Incoming video feeds from remote locations or satellite trucks are available within seconds of starting, so journalists and editors can get to work quickly with the latest footage for their stories. This is handled by the ingest team using MediaCentral | Capture to control up to twenty-four simultaneous ingest channels from three FastServe | Ingest video servers.
Editors work with Media Composer to craft high-quality video packages for broadcast, accessing video footage from MediaCentral | Production Management from the MediaCentral panel directly within the edit client. Edits can be shared instantly between editors and journalists for ultimate creative collaboration.
The MediaCentral system is also flexible and open to supporting editors working with Adobe Premiere Pro through the MediaCentral | Panel for 3rd Party Creative Tools. Material created by the team is also shared for publication to Al Mashhad's digital properties such as their website www.almashhad.com
The facility has two studios, one of which is primarily used for news. Journalists prepare stories and create video edits using the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX, which brings together both video collaboration and story writing in a single application. Users can easily search for material on either the online or archive system.
In the control room, producers work with iNEWS clients to output the show, with video playback from FastServe video servers controlled through MediaCentral | Command. Command is tightly integrated with the rundown, so any changes made by the producer are instantly reflected in the on-air playlist. This powerful combination enables the producer to seamlessly make changes whenever there is breaking news or a change required in the rundown.
In addition to the main system, which is hosted in a data center within their facility (shown below), Al Mashhad has a second system running in a data center nearby for full solution redundancy if required. Selected media is automatically moved (using a defined workflow) between the two sites to allow continuous operation in the event of a failure of the main system using a dedicated WAN link. This is also used for archiving purposes with Avid MediaCentral | Production Management and Avid MediaCentral | Asset Management working together seamlessly.
MediaCentral | Asset Management provides an enterprise asset management layer for managing different media assets like videos and pictures. In addition to managing the archive for all finished material, the system provides a tight integration with the scheduling and playout systems at Al Mashhad to automate various workflows like missing media retrieval for transmission.
The ability to quickly train users and provide support was another key factor in the decision to go with Avid. Avid’s professional services team worked with Al Mashhad to define a tailored training program, ensuring that all staff—technical and editorial—were trained in a three-week period, enabling them to effectively prepare for going on-air. At launch time, the Avid team was onsite to support the users to ensure success.
Looking to the future, Kuppa says that the station is exploring ways in which AI and story-centric workflows can help expand efficiency.
“AI functions such as speech-to-text, and translation services to support Arabic languages, which are fully integrated into solutions, is required in a modern newsroom environment,” Kuppa says.
Avid’s latest release of MediaCentral features a preview of Avid Ada Transcribe, the first in a number of secure, locally run, AI services which will be part of MediaCentral. Avid also recently acquired Wolftech, the leader in story-centric news capabilities.
With Avid’s inventive technology and customer support, Al Mashhad is redefining news production in the Gulf region—delivering fast, reliable, and engaging stories to audiences around the clock.
The Al Mashhad end-to-end Avid news solution includes:
- 24 channels of ingest
- 80 licenses of MediaCentral | Cloud UX
- 10 licenses of Media Composer
- MediaCentral | Newsroom Management
- iNEWS clients for rundown preparation and show production
- MediaCentral | Production Management
- MediaCentral | Asset Management
- MediaCentral | Capture for ingest control
- MediaCentral | Command for studio playout control
- 16 channels of playout
For more information about Avid's news solution visit
Al Mashhad
Al Mashhad is a multi-media platform based in Dubai, UAE. Al Mashhad provides an innovative experience that transcends the boundaries of platforms to present bold and varied content based on cutting-edge technologies by mixing television and digital broadcasting. Launched in January 2023, Al Mashhad brings change and development in the media, to engage younger generations and to benefit from the digital transformation in the region. Al Mashhad is led by an exceptional team of specialists in the field to create outstanding content that tackles the most important issues and topics for the Arab viewer in an innovative and unique manner. Al Mashhad, which seeks to meet the needs of audiences throughout the Middle East and North Africa region, presents its content in a digital and technologically advanced style that inspires and attracts viewers with a variety of programs, including the most important and latest political, economic and sports news through tasteful and fast news bulletins, in addition to a group of talk shows and satirical criticism of the Arab reality. Al Mashhad presents a comprehensive and unique vision designed specifically for the Arab viewer based on the presence of an exceptional distinguished team of correspondents and journalists from all over the world, in addition to the fact that Al Mashhad programs are based on the diversity of opinions and the richness of content through interaction with the Arab viewer on social media.
Website
https://almashhad.com
Industry
Broadcast Media Production and Distribution
Company size
201-500 employees
Founded
2022