EditShare tackles reality TV in India

Miditech, one of Asia’s leading independent production companies is no stranger to rigorous production demands, but they had to surmount some unusual hurdles for the reality series “Sarkar Ki Duniya.”

The series is described as a cross between “Survivor” and “Big Boss” but with its own distinctive twists. Eighteen contestants were shipped off to a remote island in the Kalinadi River, a two-hour drive south of Goa on India’s west coast to battle it out in a series of challenges and eliminations.

The Miditech production team faced the unenviable task of shooting on a 13.5 acre island surrounded by a string on mangroves and accessible only by boat or raft.

The venue had no onsite electrical power or communications and all materials had to be shipped in. It took a team of 115 people working around the clock for 56 days to complete the set, the biggest ever created in the history of Indian television.

The 250 member crew also face obstacles in the production chain as they work over a 4-month period to complete the series - extremely tight deadlines; multiple cameras requirements to shadow each participant; and fast turnarounds for on-location editing to complete each episode.

“We needed to streamline the workflow,” said Shailesh Parab, project leader and director of Cineom Broadcast Pvt., who designed the production system for Miditech. “We have very tough production schedules and were shooting many hours per day and editing the video onsite. We wanted to have multiple editors working at the same time and we can’t have any delays.”

To meet the unique requirements of the “Sarkar” series, Cineom developed a production workflow for Miditech built around the EditShare ingest and shared storage solution. An EditShare server with 30TB of storage formed the nucleus of the production system which was rafted across a wide river to the island.

EditShare is a NAS-system of hardware and software that is optimised for video collaboration. Editors and compositors connected to an EditShare network seamlessly access and share in real-time from a common pool of media files.

Regardless of application or platform, source material, work in progress and finished packages are shared and instantly available to all users on the EditShare network. The EditShare shared storage solution supports true project sharing for both Avid and Final Cut Pro editing workgroups.

Miditech also relied on the fully integrated EditShare FLOW Ingest to help speed production. FLOW Ingest acquisition solution captures up to four channels of media and related metadata in just about any format and simultaneously outputs to three formats, including multiple Avid and Apple formats plus a low proxy format.

The Workflow

On the island’s makeshift production centre, the EditShare was connected to six Apple Final Cut Pro editing systems. Once shooting began, as many as 18 cameras rolled 12 hours a day, seven days a week generating enormous amounts of video footage capturing the contestants through the triumph and heartbreak of the competitions and political infighting.

To facilitate the production chain, EditShare FLOW Ingest was used to capture four live channels of DV25 material at a time. Video segments were “chunked” so that after an hour, editors could start editing while subsequent chunks were continually being recorded. Simultaneous timecode was used during the shoots making it easier for editors to synch and edit the four video streams.

This all-digital workflow enabled Miditech to meet tight deadlines and deliver high production values even while producing in the field. “In previous shows we were restrained in what we could do and how much effort we could put into the finished program,” said Parab. “With this new digital workflow, we are ingesting multiple video streams live and editing simultaneously to produce the episodes much faster.”

Benefits

EditShare’s reliability and high performance, even in challenging field conditions was essential for Miditech to meet the tight deadlines of each episode. The integrated FLOW ingest gave editors additional time savings as they had immediate access to large quantities of video that they could work on simultaneously over a simple Gigabit network.

Impressed with the format flexibility, media protections and capabilities demonstrated by EditShare’s Complete Collaboration line of products, Miditech has now secured EditShare systems for its facilities in both Mumbai and Gurgoan (New Delhi). ASIAIMAGE

Specifications: • EditShare FLOW Ingest - 4 channel capture DV25 resolution • Rack-mounted 8RU EditShare, 30 TB storage with RAID5 • Connected to EditShare via 1 Gb Ethernet connections • 6 Apple Final Cut Pro editing systems