FOR-A Delivers Charisma’s First Post-COVID Studio
Once logged in you can set content preferences to let us know what you are interested in and whether you want to receive email from us.
Already Registered? Login
FOR-A HVS-2000 video switcher.
Charisma Group is one of the largest and most successful production companies in the Middle East, and its success meant that it needed to add studio capacity quickly. Last March they chose an end-to-end system from FOR-A.
Charisma has production capabilities across the Middle East, and works with international broadcasters like NBC Universal, Warner Brothers, ViacomCBS. As the COVID lockdown eased, the company needed to ramp up productions very quickly, and looked to expand. It elected to build a new facility in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to cope with the unprecedented demand for entertainment and events. Since the studios had to go live quickly, and the project had limited manpower, Charisma needed a strong, trusted, local technology partner. Charisma brought in Ideas Concepts as a system integrator who has experience in fast-track project delivery.
The production system installed at the new Charisma facility includes the FOR-A HVS-2000 production switcher, MFR-3000 router, FA-9600 multi-purpose audio and video processor, ClassX dual channel graphics generator and InSight production servers. FOR-A also provided monitors and sync pulse generators from LEADER.
“Through detailed discussions with the Charisma team, we understood their clear vision of what they want to achieve now and how they will expand it in the future, including the prospect of scaling to 4k Ultra HD” said Khalid Sweidan, senior sales manager of FOR-A in the Middle East. “As a result, we were able to realise their vision with a system that guarantees efficiency, reliability, time savings and exceptional quality.”
FOR-A, Ideas Concept and Charisma engineers worked collaboratively on installation, commissioning and training. The system was completed within 60 days and went live on 1 September 2021. Since then, the studio is in use for as much as 12 hours a day to meet the ever-growing demand for Charisma-produced content from the major broadcasters in the region, including MBC, Saudi Broadcast Authority (SBA), Rotana and Dubai Media Inc.
“It has been a great pleasure to work with the Charisma team in Saudi Arabia during these challenging times,” said Khalid Sweidan. “They have been extremely co-operative before, during and after the installation. We are all proud of our work on this remarkable production facility, delivered in a very tight timeframe.”
You might also like...
The Meaning Of Metadata
Metadata is increasingly used to automate media management, from creation and acquisition to increasingly granular delivery channels and everything in-between. There’s nothing much new about metadata—it predated digital media by decades—but it is poised to become pivotal in …
Designing IP Broadcast Systems: Remote Control
Why mixing video and audio UDP/IP streams alongside time sensitive TCP/IP flows can cause many challenges for remote control applications such as a camera OCP, as the switches may be configured to prioritize the UDP feeds, or vice…
AI In The Content Lifecycle: Part 2 - Gen AI In TV Production
This series takes a practical, no-hype look at the role of Generative AI technology in the various steps in the broadcast content lifecycle – from pre-production through production, post, delivery and in regulation/ethics. Here we examine how Generative AI is b…
Managing Paradigm Change
When disruptive technologies transform how we do things it can be a shock to the system that feels like sudden and sometimes daunting change – managing that change is a little easier when viewed through the lens of modular, incremental, and c…
AI In The Content Lifecycle: Part 1 - Pre-Production
This is the first of a new series taking a practical, no-hype look at the role of Generative AI technology in the various steps in the broadcast content lifecycle – from pre-production through production, post, delivery and in regulation/ethics. Here w…