Channel One Russia turns to AmberFin

AmberFin has snagged a major contract with Channel One Russia, which will see systems integrator Okno-TV install its iCR intelligent content ingest and transcoding system at Channel One Russia’s production headquarters in Moscow.

The investment will enable the former state broadcaster to migrate to file-based workflows without the need for extensive investment in baseband video transcoders and processors.

Currently, Channel One Russia acquires content from numerous international suppliers, many operating in the US, Asian and European markets. Consequently, material arrives at its broadcast operations centre in a broad range of formats, many on tape, so prior to post production and prime time playout, all the material needs be ingested and transcoded into a single common file format.

After extensive evaluation of market options, Channel One Russia selected AmberFin iCR as the most efficient and effective solution to its file-based workflow challenge. “We were attracted to iCR because of the system’s high quality file conversion capabilities combined with an intuitive GUI that will help our operators in their day-to-day operations,” commented Igor Yadykin, Deputy Chief of Technical Department at Channel One Russia. “To provide such a sophisticated migration route to harmonised file-based workflows is great: to achieve it without major new investment in transcoding and processing infrastructure is fantastic.”

Initially, Channel One Russia has been running an evaluation project with AmberFin iCR operating on two workstations – one providing file-based transcoding facilities and another enabling SDI content ingest and transcoding operations. With this trial successfully completed, the broadcaster plans to integrate iCR into a corporate transcoding facility with a greatly increased number of servers used.

In winning this major contract, AmberFin and Okno-TV beat off stern competition from rival technology suppliers. Mikhail Kalanchekaev, Head of Broadcast IT at Okno-TV believes that this contract marks an exciting period for them in the Russian market. “iCR has proved to be a powerful and versatile file-based workflow solution at Channel One Russia: already we are in discussions with the customer about how they can extend their investment in this exciting technology. Russia is a dynamic, fast growing market and we see great potential for our partnership with AmberFin in the future.”