WNYF upgrades to HD with state-of-the-art purchase

SUNY Fredonia’s WNYF-TV received a makeover recently, upgrading to a one-of-a-kind video production system that allowed for the transition to high definition production and file-based workflow.

Last spring, the SUNY Fredonia Student Association awarded $36,000 to the 32-year-old station to replace its old control room equipment and enhance its budget.

The upgrade is the largest change to WNYF’s control room since 1997, and addressed the need for a cost-effective transition to HD production, a more organized control room, and a way to provide high-quality production services to its campus audience.

According to WNYF’s staff advisor T. John McCune, the station had been looking for new technology and jumped at the chance to upgrade to Broadcast Pix, Inc.’s “Granite 1000” system, due to its originality and simple use. In fact, WNYF purchased the fourth model ever made by Broadcast Pix, and are now the first to have an HD video switcher on campus.

General Manager Amanda Brennan, a junior TV / Digital Film major from Lancaster, N.Y., is excited about the new possibilities the upgrade can bring. “It creates a really great workflow by cutting down the steps it takes to make shows,” Brennan explained. “It also requires fewer people to be in the control room, which means more people [can be] on campus producing shows.”

WNYF produces several original programs including news, cooking shows, game shows, event coverage and public service announcements (PSAs). Due to the upgrade, the station was able to stream men’s ice hockey games live this season, and acquired 200 viewers for the first game it carried. Fans and players’ parents who weren’t able to make it to the games appreciated it and produced a lot of positive feedback. WNYF also hopes to expand its live coverage to include basketball as well next season.

The revamped control room includes a Yamaha audio board, two legacy tape decks, computer stations for prompter and automation control, and an Apple Mac Pro. Programs are shot with Sony HVR-S270U cameras, which connect directly to the Broadcast Pix system using special outputs, with the footage archived to an Apple Final Cut Server.

The new system also comes with workflow software that allowed a single, 46-inch SONY LCD monitor to take the place of 15 smaller monitors that consumed the entire wall. Also, a 24-inch LCD panel in the control room is used by the CG (Chryon Graphics) operator, who uses Granite’s built-in Harris Inscriber CG along with a built-in file management system that allows clips and graphics to be sent directly to the Granite system from separate workstations over a network.

The station is now 80 percent HD capable, needing just 20 percent of infrastructure to complete the transition. The HD capabilities allow them to migrate away from tapes and allow productions to be stored on two external machines called “Drobos” that have five terabytes each of hard-drive capacity.