CH Media breaks the news faster with Sony C3 Portal
Our camera-to-cloud portal lets journalists send footage wirelessly from the field back to Swiss broadcaster’s studio – and save hours getting news stories to air across multiple platforms.
- Swiss media group needed to make material available rapidly across multiple news channels
- Bringing shots back to the studio on physical media card typically introduced delays of several hours in getting breaking stories to air
- Sony C3 Portal links journalists’ cameras in the field with the cloud
- Studio-based news teams can instantly access streaming video, high-resolution video and metadata captured by cameras in the field
- Significant time savings for editorial teams in producing news stories and getting them to air
- Cost optimisation, with fewer journalists and cameras needed to create quality news content for multiple platforms
The major advantage is really that we have the images much, much faster than before.
Silja Hänggi, CH Media
Creating quality news content for multiple platforms
Headquartered in Lucerne, Switzerland, CH Media owns and operators a wide portfolio of over 80 media brands, including national and regional TV channels as well as online news platforms.
Following the merger of five regional channels as well as integration of its radio stations and their ‘Today’ platforms, CH Media was presented with a new challenge, as Head of Technology Peter Plüss explains: “Material needed to made available to all platforms as quickly as possible. We already had the possibility of playing out images in HD SDI using our ‘broadcasting backpack’. But it was only available in one location, and had to be circulated to different locations afterwards.”
Connecting cameras with the cloud
The efficiency of its newsgathering and production operations has been transformed with CH Media’s adoption of Sony’s C3 Portal – previously known as XDCAM air – that links editorial teams back at base via the cloud to journalists’ cameras in the field.
“In the past video journalists would go out, film something, create their report, and then maybe come back to the office at around five in the evening” explains Silja Hänggi, Head of CH Media’s Video Unit. “Now we can actually see the images live in real time while the journalists are out filming, and we can download them and create a report out of them. That means we have an enormous time advantage, because we used to have to wait for hours to get the images, and now we can simply pick them out for ourselves.”
Saving hours creating every story
As Silja confirms, moving to C3 has generated big workflow efficiencies for CH Medias news teams: “The major advantage is really that we have the images much, much faster than before. Previously we had to bring them back to the office physically. If there was an incident in the evening, then the journalist had to make an extra trip to come here, and leave the memory card on the the desk for us, so that we had something to prepare in the morning. And with [XDCAM air] this is no longer a problem.”
Content instantly available everywhere
As Peter Plüss explains, cost optimisation was a further critical factor in CH Media’s decision to embrace C3: “For the European football championships, for example, we were able to adopt the solution of sending just one journalist with a camera to a match – and that material was available to everyone, whenever it was needed. We can access the platform from all of our locations, and the material is available anywhere.”
Make the news faster with C3
Sony’s cloud-based C3 Portal service connects camcorders to the cloud, allowing teams produce news faster on every platform. Wherever they’re working, C3 lets journalists edit, share and stream footage directly from the field to the cloud. News teams back at base can retrieve live video, high-resolution files and metadata – and start editing immediately while reporters are still out in the field.