Las Vegas, 12 April 2015 – TV 2 | ØSTJYLLAND (East Jutland) was amongst the first broadcasters to select Sony SONAPS as their production platform. Now, the regional TV station in Denmark's second-largest city has upgraded to the latest version of SONAPS, integrating it with Sony's archiving system, ODA. This allows the team to handle images faster and easier, leading to the broadcaster’s success on the internet and on TV.

TV 2 | ØSTJYLLAND – or TV 2 OJ – is located in Denmark's second-largest city, Aarhus, and is one of Denmark's largest regional TV stations. In 2010, after thorough studies of the market and precise requirement specifications, the broadcaster chose to install Sony SONAPS as their production platform.

Since then, the system has delivered programmes, news and local material day after day on the organisation's digital platforms. In 2014, TV 2 OJ chose to get ready to produce in HD and to acquire a new scalable archiving solution. Once again, the market's options were investigated and again, a solution from Sony Professional was selected.

The transition to HD required an upgrade to the latest version of SONAPS as well as the replacement of some of the station's third party hardware, as TV 2 OJ moved from Windows XP to Windows 7 simultaneously. In addition, Sony's Optical Disc Archive (ODA) was installed to become the broadcaster's archive.

"The upgrade is now complete so all journalists and technicians have access to the new advantages at their respective workstations," explains Gunnvør Klementsen, Head of Technology at TV 2 OJ.
​Viewing directly from ENPS

All workstations have XPRI proxy editing, Outlook, internet access, ENPS and access to the ODA archive from one PC. Everyone can now view directly from ENPS in an Active X window, faster and easier, without opening Sony editing. All locations have also changed from mp4 to H.264, which significantly improves video quality on the screens.

Besides the journalist workstations, the broadcaster has six high-end editing rooms, editing in TV 2 OJ's SNG vehicle and two portable editing units. This means that the station's journalists, who produce the content, do the editing on Xpri Proxy and operate the station's editing room themselves for the daily 12.30 pm TV broadcast. TV 2 OJ has chosen to have a total of 26 simultaneous SONAPS editing licences.

A better tool for online editing

From early in the morning, TV 2 OJ has two video jockeys (VJs) on the move in the transmission area, sending images and videos directly to the website, social media, the TV 2 OJ app, to the station's own channel "TV 2 | ØSJTYLLAND" plus to the nationwide TV 2. It can be done directly from ENPS, which automatically opens a new window, Active X, and is controlled directly from inside ENPS.

Optical Disc Archive - ODA

In the new archive system, TV 2 OJ will save the low resolution proxy copies online, which will always be searchable from both ENPS and SONAPS. From inside ENPS, journalists can find the correct material, then start Xpri Proxy and edit without having to retrieve the heavy broadcast version from the archive. The proxy can also transmitted, if necessary. Journalists clip the archive material from an Xpri Proxy or Craft where the material is located on a device with a total capacity of 12 TB, which are stored on shelves when they are full.

"ODA is a robust and budget friendly system, which I know many people use as a stand alone. It is future-proofed for 50 years and can tolerate floods," said Klementsen.
​A number of good advantages

Klementsen emphasises, moreover, that everyone will no longer need to enter ID numbers in the SONAPS system. Instead, the on duty editor creates the relevant stories in ENPS so the stories also appear automatically in the SONAPS system. "In this way, the users do not need to think about the system, but can focus on the journalistic content," she concludes.

Tremendous growth in online

"Flow TV is under pressure, so we are consciously focusing on increasing our online activities with live images," explained TV 2 OJ's Head of News, Lars Mandal. He has strengthened the online section with two video jockeys who are out gathering stories for all TV 2 OJ's platforms before East Jutland residents are awake. This has resulted in a tremendous growth on the web of over 30% in the first year, and is now already more than 60%.

"Consequently, we are the "top boys" of the country's eight regional TV stations and leaps ahead of the others," explained Lars Mandal who, with a solid background in the Danish media world, recognises the need to deliver news to the East Jutlanders on the platforms and at the times they want. "When we can give the people of East Jutland their news on the mobile platforms early, we find that they return later in the day to get the background and the latest updates on the other platforms," he said.

"We battle with a number of other media for the East Jutlanders’ time. We will win with speed and live images. Content is king. But technology is Queen!" he finished.