Broadcast Solutions, has recently equipped new production facilities at Finnish production company Director’s Cut with new technology and optimised workflows. In addition to updating technology, the aim of the modernisation was to increase flexibility in daily work and optimise production workflows. Broadcast Solutions worked with its Finnish subsidiary to plan and implement the upgrade after the Helsinki-based company’s existing infrastructure had become inadequate to cope with an growing volume of simultaneously produced sports programming.

In the two renewed multipurpose control rooms, Director’s Cut creates the Finnish national programmes for international sporting events (football Champions League, ice hockey and tennis) for primary customer MTV3, Finland’s largest private television station. It is now possible to produce up to six Finnish-language programme feeds simultaneously from both control rooms with only two producers.

One Mainfeed and two Sidefeeds can be produced per control room. Audio processing takes place in a Lawo Powercore. Control is via Lawo VisTool user interfaces and an 8-fader ruby console for the Mainfeed and via two 4-fader Ruby consoles for the two Sidefeeds. Broadcast Solutions created the VisTool interfaces especially to meet the individual workflows of Director’s Cut. The new facility also includes six commentator booths equipped with Lawo LCUs and 43-inch Sony monitors. One Grass Valley 1ME Kula vision mixer and two Grass Valley channel branding processors are available per control room for image processing.

As part of the contract, Broadcast Solutions also replaced the video matrix, which had become too small, with a 168x168 Grass Valley Sirius 830 matrix with an integrated 96 x 12 multiviewer. A Lawo VSM system controls the complete installation.

One challenge of the successfully implemented project was the short project period and the fact that the modernisation was carried out during ongoing operation with only ten days available for the actual switchover.