Omneon Video Networks today announced that the Omneon Spectrum™ media server system is being employed by the Australian Caption Centre, Australia's leading media access organization and one of the largest captioning companies in the world, to support flexible media ingest and storage for restoration, captioning, and remastering of tape-based video.

"The Omneon Spectrum media server system proved to be the most robust and flexible solution for supporting the growing volume of video we work with every day," said Robert Scott, Australian Caption Centre CEO. "Because it's engineered as a broadcast server, it's incredibly robust and reliable, and it integrates well with applications such as Final Cut Pro, one of the tools we use for restoration work. The Omneon Spectrum system's modular design also enables easy and cost-effective expansion, which will allow us to scale the server to match our business needs."

The Australian Caption Centre has integrated its Omneon Spectrum server system as a production server in its Shine Sound and Pictures business unit. It is used first to perform an initial uncompressed ingest off of tape -- typically older one-inch tape provided by restoration clients in the television industry, as well as from theaters, hospitals, hotels, and cinemas. By digitizing this sometimes delicate media, editors can play out video repeatedly from the server system as they work without causing further degradation of the tape. During restoration work, editors simply open, modify, and save content on the Omneon file system through standard Final Cut Pro protocols.

For the company's captioning business, the Omneon Spectrum is used to play material to a teletext inserter, which records teletext captions in the vertical blanking interval. The captioned material is then recorded as transmission-quality masters on Digital Betacam and delivered to the client. Future additions to the Omneon Spectrum server system may include the Omneon ProBrowse product for creating low-res proxies, which the Australian Caption Centre could then integrate with software from third-party suppliers to enable direct insertion of teletext directly into the video file on the Omneon system.

The Australian Caption Centre is currently working with a 2-TB Omneon Spectrum media server system configured with two uncompressed media ports and two MPEG/DV media ports. More information about Omneon's server solutions is available at www.omneon.com.

About Omneon
Omneon is a leading provider of flexible media server and active storage systems that optimize workflow productivity and on-air reliability for the production, distribution, and management of digital media. Omneon is a pioneer in the use of advanced IT technologies and open systems for broadcast applications, producing a modular and expandable video server architecture in the Omneon Spectrum. The company's MediaGrid active storage system delivers centralized content storage that is scalable in capacity, bandwidth, and media-processing power. The company has an extensive global presence with customers in 45 countries on six continents. Omneon is on the Web at www.Omneon.com.

About the Australian Caption Centre
Established in 1982, the Australian Caption Centre is Australia's leading media access organization and one of the largest captioning companies in the world. The company provides captioning services for the major television networks Nine, SBS, and Network Ten; major advertisers and their agencies; video and DVD distributors; subscription television channels; and conferences in Australia and overseas. The Australian Caption Centre has approximately 130 staff members who are located in Sydney (company head office), Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth. These locations provide the flexibility to undertake a wide range of work, including servicing a client's national requirements as well as live-to-air.

The Australian Caption Centre's captioning work is not limited to Australia. For many years the company has been providing captioning services to clients in North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania, delivering work in a range of formats and to the differing standards required in each market. As a national not-for-profit, public benevolent institution, quality and client service are its major priorities. The company also provides extensive information about captioning to the general public, industry, and government, and its commitment to the expansion of captioning in all areas includes major innovations in the area of theatre captioning, captions in hospitals and hotels, and in cinemas. Visit the Australian Caption Centre online at www.auscap.com.au.

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