Inside the Jokes: TV Search Technology Yields Creative, Comedic Screenwriting

Problem Statement: — “We need a better, less expensive way to monitor TV.” Those were the very words expressed by the writers and producers at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report to summarize the pain points of archiving and finding clips in television shows. — The two popular Comedy Central programs began airing in HD on January 4, 2010, one year after the launch of Comedy Central HD. The conversion to HD achieved a significant broadcast milestone but also brought new workflow challenges for the engineering teams. — A vital part of this new workflow would be inventing a new way to record, archive, and search traditional television for clips, clips which serve both shows' media commentary and witticisms. The shows had previously relied on analog consumer-grade DVRs and low-quality and expensive outside clipping services for their TV clips. After a rigorous evaluation process, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report formed a partnership with SnapStream to meet their TV recording and search needs. — Objectives & Methods: • Recording traditional TV in HD using a custom in-house QAM plant • Enabling keyword search over TV shows, using closed-captioned and program guide data. • Integration with Avid and Final Cut Pro, using both file-based and SDI-playout workflows. • Archiving of TV recordings for potentially multiple years using petabyte-scale storage — Quantitative Results: • Implemented possibly the world's largest high-definition DVR, with the ability to record a total of 30 channels of TV, split between The Daily Show and The Colbert Report • Each show has its own SnapStream storage to save two to three weeks of most recent television recordings. • Integrated with HP's storage solution to create a single video library, currently using 500 terabytes with room to grow into the petabytes. — Findings Significance: — Archiving a large body of searchable, indexed television, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have carved a new benchmark in the process of creating high-quality, responsive-style entertainment programming. The pioneering architecture and technical workflow created with SnapStream has greatly reduced post-production time and optimized creative collaboration.

Published

2010-10

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

television search technology, media monitoring, TV monitoring, DVR, enterprise DVR, closed captioning, clipping television, news monitoring, clipping service, QAM recording, digital video archive, TV Aircheck, TV editing, software, media server, storage, streaming

DOI

10.5594/M001392

ISBN

978-1-61482-944-7