Slovenian channel selects Quantel’s Enterprise sQ

Tsmedia – the media arm of Slovenia’s national telecoms provider, Telekom Slovenije – has purchased a Quantel Enterprise sQ fast-turnaround production system. The system will handle all news and sports programme production for Planet TV, the new national commercial TV channel being launched by TSmedia this month.

Representing Telekom Slovenije’s first venture into television, Planet TV is employing a production system featuring 300 hours of HD workspace, with 12 sQ Cut and sQ Edit desktop editors and two Qube craft editors. Three sQ Load applications handle XDCAM/P2 file ingest, with sQ Record for line feeds. Playout is handled by two sQ Play applications.

The system is fully integrated with Planet TV’s Octopus Newsroom computer system; the Quantel sQ Cut editors run inside the Octopus GUI. Users also have instant access to media stored on Planet TV’s Front Porch DIVArchive via Quantel’s new sQ Fileflow application.

Planet TV is launching with a team of 25 journalists and six craft editors who are fully trained on sQ Cut, sQ Edit and Qube.

Maj Jukic, head of graphics editing at Planet TV, remarks: “Quantel is very easy to learn, intuitive and efficient. Almost every editor came from a different background and yet there was no problem quickly getting used to the Quantel interface. The feature we find most useful, alongside FrameMagic [Quantel’s built-in smart media handling technology], is publishing and sharing – you can access any edited sequence from any Quantel seat. It gives us a completely flexible workflow.”

Bine Lebenicnik, TSmedia head of development, adds: “As we’re now fully up and running and very close to go-live, I can say that Quantel is everything we expected, and we’re very happy with our decision. We have installed a system that is working as specified, and the journalists, editors and operators are all very excited about the platform, which has enabled them to spend more time working on stories in the field. We have complete peace of mind that in Quantel we have selected the right platform for Planet TV today and to take us forward in the rapidly evolving new media
landscape.”