Full service engineering company Finer Associates specializes in the maintenance and integration of broadcast technology. With over 2five years of experience, the Massachusetts-based company led by Steve Finer works with clients to design, install and service broadcast solutions. When Capitol Television in Rhode Island enlisted Finer Associates to upgrade its facility, the company integrated the AJA KONA LHe Plus I/O card with AJA Control Room software into five, custom-built record and playback servers, a move that provided the customer with a robust and reliable broadcast workflow solution at six-figure savings. 

“The KONA cards and AJA Control Room software make the whole Capitol Television setup click; without them, you couldn’t provide a real time broadcast feed in this scenario without spending at least another $120K,” said Finer. “AJA Control Room features like clip thumbnails make it very user-friendly, which was key for Capitol Television, where reliability of equipment and ease of use is paramount.”

Capitol Television records and broadcasts Senate and House chamber meetings throughout Rhode Island on the state’s cable system. Filming is conducted via eight Sony HDC-P1 HD cameras. Four cameras are positioned in each of the two main chambers and three other meeting rooms are outfitted with Sony BRCH900 robotic cameras for additional footage. Every camera feeds to a Ross Video Carbonite production switcher and through a Ross Video router, where the feed is offloaded to any one of the five playback and record servers. The SDI signal is then sent to the KONA LHe Plus I/O card in the server and back through the router. All recorded, converted or compressed data is stored on a 36 TB RAID system that was built using off-the-shelf enterprise components. Telestream’s Episode Engine software converts the DVCPro HD output of the KONA cards to H.264 or MPEG-2 for the on-air server. All captured footage is archived on LTO tape. SAN sharing program Metasan allows all five playback and control servers to communicate with storage, and a sixth server houses the RAID.

“Capitol Television needed to be able to playback, record, name and archive files. AJA’s KONA cards and Control Room software enabled us to develop a very clean and elegant solution, with AJA Control Room as the glue connecting all six servers and allowing the workflow to operate seamlessly,” Finer concluded. “Other popular solutions that offer the same functionality would have more than doubled our client’s cost and been overkill for their needs.”

About AJA Video Systems, Inc.

Since 1993, AJA Video has been a leading manufacturer of high-quality and cost-effective digital video interface, conversion, acquisition and desktop solutions supporting the professional broadcast and post- production markets. With headquarters in Grass Valley, California, AJA maintains an extensive sales channel of dealers and systems integrators around the world. For further information visit www.aja.com.