Sky Deutschland selects Venice and SpycerNode for sport

The broadcaster has invested in six new Venice units, along with a new SpycerNode, delivering a total of 24 channels of scalable centralised and external storage capability as well as support for UHDp50.

The new workflow uses Venice for ingest and transfers files directly into SpycerNode, allowing the Sky Deutschland team to access and edit growing files, pull out clips for highlights packages and playout directly. Venice also ensures correct flagging and handling of UHD and HDR material, eliminating errors in the delivery chain without the need for external third-party systems.

Christian Barth, director of production platforms & playout, Sky Deutschland, said: “As we meet our viewers’ demands for higher volumes of richer content, having a rock-solid 24/7 channel playout workflow that can meet our evolving needs is a must-have. With this new generation of Venice and SpycerNode we have all the scalability we need now, and in the future. This upgrade also gives us the redundancy necessary in our playout environment.”

Venice supports group ingest and playout to studio and master control, managing complex signal processing and storage requirements. It provides scheduled recording, clip transforms and playout, integrating with Rohde & Schwarz shared storage, SpycerNode, and certified third-party systems. It supports UHD using either single link 12G-SDI or quad link 3G-SDI (including a 2SI option), plus SMPTE ST-2110.

SpycerNode leverages High Performance Computing file systems for high scalability and full redundancy, offering shared storage to support fast turnaround workflows.

Rohde & Schwarz VSA (Virtual Storage Access) technology is also being deployed at Sky Deutschland to provide maximum fail safety and seamless redundancy for all R&S applications for ingest and playout.