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Feb 14, 2008
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IRS Upgrade
Taxation gets digital video representation
by Nancy Caronia
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In 1996, when the IRS moved into its building in New Carrollton, MD, the production facility had been designed specifically for the space. Anyone that works in the public sector knows what a rarity that is. Often, studios are put together from existing spaces that were never meant to house them.
"People are always very impressed, but the only way we would have gotten a facility like this is due to the fact that it was designed to work this way from the beginning," said Dianne White, chief corporate television, IRS.
While everything, including the studios and control room, was state-of-the-art 11 years ago, it was also completely analog. And although the equipment had performed admirably, the last few years had seen equipment failures and breakdowns. The staff took a hard look at other options and, according to White, "it made sense to do an upgrade since everything was going digital."
Live training and information sessions comprise 62 percent of the facility's broadcasting output. This makes for a 10:1 return on any investments in the studio, because IRS employees don't need to travel to Washington, DC, or regional facilities for training.
The IRS's nationwide satellite distribution system has two secure satellite channels that enable employees to view productions in real time from their remote facilities. "We never use live taxpayer information and ... we broadcast through a secure signal where specific decoders at the downlink are needed. Nothing is ever put on video, even for DVD distribution, that is sensitive," said White.
Making Plans
The decision to go forward with a complete revamping of the facility began in 2005, although a Grass Valley Concerto digital video and analog routing switcher as well as a Chyron HyperX graphic machine had been previously purchased with the knowledge that the gear would be incorporated into a complete upgrading of the facility.
For the upgrade, an engineering study was done to ascertain what would be necessary for a complete conversion -- and in the last two years, 95 percent of the gear has been upgraded.
In addition to White, the facility has three full-time studio engineers and eight producer/directors. The third studio engineer was added most recently when a producer/director retired and an applicant, who had gone through a similar digital transition with the U.S. Air Force, was found. All other crew members (including camera, prompter, and graphics) are hired on a part-time contractor basis.
Because the IRS is divided into business units, the production/directors, for the most part, have ongoing clients with which they work. "You develop a relationship and know what they're looking for, the feel, by working closely with a client," said White.
However, sometimes necessity dictates that the workload be distributed according to who has the time to work on a certain project. A Web site within the IRS intranet has the production facility's calendar as well as online project agreements that clients fill in to let White and her staff know what kind of product they need and when they need it.
"We get in touch with the client and find out what their budget is," said White. "Each production must come out of their budget. Every once in a while we have a high level emergency, but we have been doing it long enough and have a good sense of communication so that everyone knows what our timelines are like."
Quick Transition
Once the equipment needed for the digital upgrade was determined, the phases of development were mapped. "We needed to let the crew know and since we use many of the same crew members, we put feelers out for people who were familiar with the equipment we were going to use," said White. As the upgrade neared its completion, there were training sessions for both employees and contractors.
The IRS was able to obtain the necessary funding to execute the upgrade all at once -- and in the spring of 2006, Professional Products, Inc. took four weeks to perform the install at the IRS studios. The schedule at the IRS production facility is tight, and only a month of down time was booked to run the cables, install equipment and gear, and train personnel so as not to interrupt or reschedule any productions. "It was an aggressive schedule," admitted Chuck Heffner, senior applications engineer, PPI.
The studios each have three Hitachi SK-900s cameras (with Autoscript 17-inch prompters), which are connected to the control room through triax rather than multi-core cable. "The technical equipment core has the ability to control any of the cameras from a single location," Heffner explained. "We added a master control camera plan to allow the technical operators to control any of the six cameras installed in the system as mandated by the client, because sometimes they will roll all six cameras into one studio."
In the control room, traditional monitors were replaced with a virtual monitoring system based around an Evertz MVP 3000 series multi-image processor, which offers 32 inputs and four outputs. Via fiber, outputs are sent to each of the control rooms and mapped through four Clarity 46-inch Bay Cat X LCD monitors (now part of Planar). The monitors are arranged in a 2x2 configuration, but can be customized and changed.
A ClearCom Eclipse digital intercom system allows communication between directors and the entire crew as well as IFB interrupted feedback communication from the control room to the talent's ear set. The TD works a Ross Synergy 3 digital switcher. There is a Wheatstone D-7 audio console in each control room as well, plus a scan converter to convert PowerPoint presentations for use in live productions.
"We have a series of tax law topics. Mostly it's aimed at attorneys and it's almost always a talking head," said White. "By having the graphics and the digital, we can do split screens and show forms and keep the audience more engaged compared to what we could do with the analog."
A Hewlett-Packard ProCurve Ethernet switcher is used to integrate all the controls in the production control rooms. Crew members don't need to go to each individual product for start up or a check on status. One central engineering point on a computer terminal has software applications from various manufacturers that "talk" to each piece of equipment through the Ethernet switcher in order to do monitoring and adjustments. "Control of the routing switcher, the control of the monitor and monitoring system, and the intercom system was all done over IP," said Heffner.
Each live broadcast is recorded to one of six Sony DSR-2000 DVCAM VTRs and a Grass Valley Profile video server. "For the most part, they'll use the tape for archiving purposes and the Grass Valley for re-transmission," Heffner explained. "It's a more efficient way to go. The cost of online storage is astronomical compared to saving to tape. They have hours of productions in the course of a fiscal year to store.
"For the long term, archive on tape is more efficient and cost efficient, especially if there is a short-term turnaround for transmission. It's more cost effective to record off tape and ingest it back into the server."
White said the move to digital has resulted in smaller storage tapes, which has helped dramatically with storage, given that the IRS has an archive that dates back to the 1960s. But don't look for IRS HD anytime soon. "We just went to digital, not HD," she said. "I don't need to provide HD television on the government's dime."
MORE INFO
Autoscript autoscript.tv
Chyron chyron.com
ClearComclearcom.com
Evertz evertz.com
Grass Valley thomsongrassvalley.com
Hewlett-Packard hp.com
Hitachi hitachi.com
IRS irs.gov
Planar planar.com
Professional Products, Inc. ppionline.com
Sony sony.com/government
Wheatstone wheatstone.com
FAST FACTS
In the last fiscal year, the two broadcast studios and one taping and rehearsal studio facilitated 97 live broadcasts. The production facility stays busy because it serves 100,000 IRS employees located within the United States and Puerto Rico.
Why use part-time contractors?
"It would be cost prohibitive to hire the crew full time because we do not do productions each day," explained Dianne White, chief corporate television, IRS. "There is a lot of planning that goes into each show, but the crew is not necessary for that time."
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