The New Master Control

After I arrived at WNKY, I was requested to design a new Master Control facility that would increase the number of broadcast channels from the current two (NBC-SD and NBC-HD) , to be able to handle five, with the addition of CBS-SD, CBS-HD and a future addition of a local news & weather channel. The control room in place was made up of a 16x16 router, a video server, 5 VTRs and 6 consumer-grade satellite receivers.  The router had already been maxed-out and was not expandable. The video server did not have suffient inputs or outputs to handle the load of an additional content stream, and the satellite receivers were definitely not in compliance with broadcast standards.

The first step was to locate a space for the new control room. I opted to build it in what was the engineering office. It was cleaned out, a sliding glass door put in, and racks put in place to house the new equipment.

Next had to come up with what equipment I needed and the budget I was to request to do this project. I knew the router, an additional video server and new satellite receivers were in order, as well as supporting equipment, such as DAs, video standard convertors and encoders. Then I designed the conceptual equipment layout, to give me an idea of how I was going to place the equipment.

This gave me a good starting point. Equipment was ordered, prewiring was done and as equipment started to arrive, was installed in place.  Numerous changes were done in order to smooth the flow of signals and to better accommodate the operations personnel better, taking input from them as I moved forward. I started the project in August, 2006 with a scheduled completion of December 15, 2006 and a budget of $225k.

Many additional factors had to be considered and resolved, such as moving the back-up generator feed to the new room, increase the air handling and additional network wiring and security. I was able to put the new room on the air with our new CBS signal to our digital transmitter on December 11, 4 days ahead of schedule and $20k under budget.

The new room used the existing Microfirst automation system, increasing the license to handle 2 schedules and upgrading the servers from the 16 port to the 32. Standard receivers were put in place to handle analog satellite feeds and are controlled by the Microfirst Automation.  Satellite distribution is handled by Quintech Satellite DAs. EAS insertion is handle by multiple Miranda Imagestore units. Being the existing video server was a Leitch Nexio, and additional Nexio was purchased to handle the additional load, using one unit for WNKY-NBC, the other for WNKY-CBS. All commercial content is mirrored, but content unique to each station is only stored on it's own server, in order to maximize disk space, yet maintain back-up copies of commercials and other paid content. A PESA Cougar 32x32 hybrid SDI video/ analog audio router was used for signal distribution and on-air switching. Audio delay is managed via RANE AVA22d units. Audio and video conversion is handled by Miranda and AJA converters.

Local high-definition insertion is an upconversion for the SD channel of both stations with network high definition content switched via an automation with a PESA Ocelot HD-SDI router, controlled by the Cougar routing processor. Audio encoding is processed by Dolby Labs, ASI encoding is done with Tandberg Encoders.

Leaving Master Control, our transmitters are fed the NBC-SD to the analog ABS transmitter, NBC-HD and CBS-SD to the Harris digital transmitter via redundant MRC Twinstream microwave transmitters and receivers. Our local cable system is feed via 2 fiber optics, one handling the two lower-teir/ analog channels with a Fiberlink system and a Multidyne system handling the ASI stream with NBC-HD and CBS-HD programming.

The project came together with relatively few problems. As I said, it went online with CBS programming December 11 and has had no failures, only a few configuration issues that were resolved in a short time.

*Special thanks to the following individuals and companies for their assistance:

* John Pfankuch, Sales Professional, Heartland Video Systems
* Chad Olig, Technical Support, Heartland Video Systems
* George Teplansky, Microfirst Automation
* Rick Sonderfan, Microfirst Automation
* Everyone else at Heartland Video Systems and Microfirst Automation who helped make this project a success
* Steven Schultz, CDW
* Dawn Vance and Bil Aker, Leitch/Harris Corp
* Sunderesh Sathasivan and Abhishek Pakhira, OIS Traffic Systems, Harris Corp.
* Satellite Engineering Group
* Dawnco Satellite
* David Fields, Chris Matlock, Tosh Mracek and Greg Gibson, Insight Communications
* Media Concepts
* CBS
* NBC
* Kevin Werner for his wiring assistance
* Tom White
* Everyone at WNKY-TV for their patience
* Ed Groves for having the confidence in me to do this project

Frank Brucks
CHIEF ENGINEER
WNKY-TV