RCTV: towards total digitalization

The state-of-the-art technology took over Radio Caracas Televisión, RCTV, during the broadcasts of the football matches that the channel made in the last France 98 World Cup.

The advances in the technological field are due to an ambitious investment plan that has been fulfilled in the course of this year, which includes acquisitions of software, hardware, technologies for editing, digital cameras and antennas of greater range for the capture and reception of the signal.

"Earlier this year, we began airing through a new all-digital satellite with stereo audio quality, expanding coverage areas across Venezuela," said Edgardo Mosca, manager of RCTV's Engineering and Operations Division. In the same way, an improvement plan in transmitters has been advanced," he concluded.

For the Information and Special Programs Division, which covers the entire production of newscasts, opinion programs and social analysis, about a dozen high-resolution digital cameras (CCDs) with all their accessories have been acquired, which will allow to further dynamize the informative work. "Very soon the news will be edited on machines without tapes. The information brought by the reporters will be entered into a video server and will be linked to an automated text system; that is, journalists will be able to observe how the images of their news were edited and, at the same time, write their script or vice versa. In the same way, the editors will be able to read the text and edit the news according to the script, and everyone will be able to have access to the news at the same time," Mosca said. Such equipment will enable digital work that prevents degradation by multiple generations.

Similarly, RCTV is interested in buying disk systems for master transmissions, where a server will be used for commercials, which will allow the spots to go on the air with greater speed of resolution, preventing the wear of equipment and heads while reducing the consumption of tapes.

Mosca reported that by the third quarter of this year, the digitization of the video and audio post-production area will have been completed, with the implementation of the latest generation of AVD and also three post-production rooms and off-line room will be incorporated.

The rooms dedicated to promotions will be interconnected with the graphic room to send the animations directly to an uncompressed file, which will result in excellent image quality.

Within this plan, a standardization of all the channel's cameras is envisaged, with which telenovelas and variety and opinion programs are recorded. Another improvement in external activities will be the increase of field units with all their accessories, to materialize all recordings in the shortest possible time.

To cover the France 98 World Cup, a Spanish company was hired, in charge of providing the services of mobile units, each equipped with five groups of high-resolution digital cameras. The human team was RCTV staff, which together with commentators and narrators covered the ten stadiums where the matches were held.

During the sporting event, RCTV received three distinct and fully digital signals: one to its offices at the IBC, another to the mobile units and the third broadcast by the OTI. In the same way, it established strategic alliances with several important channels that provided their signals from Europe and the channel had an exclusive transponder, 24 hours a day, with a digital line that went from the offices of the IBC to the Panamsat V and from this system to the digital satellite, which sent the information to RCTV.

RCTV also had digital processing and sound reducers for the signals that came from the satellite and a modern character generator in its studio in France 98, two Steeve Store, non-linear equipment based on Avid, two post-production rooms and two fully digital editing rooms for Oh la la programs, Magic ball and the World Cup news mics aimed at all audiences.

The channel also had a software called "virtual football", created by the firm Merlin, specially designed to transmit in the third dimension the interactive analyses and make graphic representations of the outstanding plays, and with a disc-based platform that allows repetitions to be made instantly when the plays were made.