News automation

News process

All news organizations such as agencies that produce reports, news, photo news, and even newspapers used to prepare the news using traditional equipment and tools. It still is the same in some cases. The process of news production is entirely done manually and based on human resources capabilities. In this process, the base was using paper to produce news. It was hard to handle and categorize the material like news, photos, footage files, and search within them. Nowadays, in new digital news producing systems, users play their roles in the process of news producing, editing, and preparing through the local network or web.

Script editing

News objects, with different languages, are inserted into the newsroom from various News Feeds. Journalists observe the inserted news using the provided facilities such as searching, filters, and news tree. After surveying the news subject, they produce or select their news items. The news editor defines tasks for each journalist and supervises the whole process. News montage is available using professional and appropriate tools, as well as producing and attaching images, video, and graphics, and adding news comments like <LVO> and <VC>. The workflow is defined, respecting the users' access levels so that news will be produced with the desired quality in the least time.

Object editing

Media sources are accessible in the newsroom via the Media Asset Management system, and news footages are inserted by ingesting. The Ingest system will automatically start the ingestion if there is a defined pattern at the beginning of the movie. Then, it inserts the movie and its preliminary information into the newsroom.

Journalists will search for the newly inserted or archived resources and watch the Low-Res version of them. And then, based on the news script, create the primary rough-cut. The prepared story will be retrieved in NLE boxes with High-Res quality. Simultaneity between the news script and the timeline is assured both in NLE boxes and the Newsroom system. After producing the final movie, the news item is ready for broadcast. CG contents can be directly defined to each script or be attached to the news.

Studio Automation

All produced scripts alongside the attached movies are placed in the playout Rundown, which includes all the ready stories respecting their orders. Each news story consists of the news script and attached sounds, movies, graphics, and their orders for playing. Related studio devices such as teleprompter, CG, and playout automatically receive the playlist with the recent news editions. The Rundown is editable and can be upgraded at any step of broadcast and before starting the playback of each item.

Regarding the variety of producers of studio devices and news systems, it is essential to follow interaction standards in implementing news related systems. MOS is considered a universal standard for this purpose. It is the same standard we have used to have teleprompters, CGs, and playout systems produced by different companies working correctly by SINA News Automation.