NBC-affiliate WYFF has been serving the North and South Carolina regions for nearly 60 years. It has numerous Southeast Regional Emmy awards and a National Peabody award to its credit and was named Television Station of the Year by the South Carolina Broadcasters Association.

Always trying to be on the cutting edge of news, WYFF recently launched “Next Generation News” which consists primarily of streaming live video from the scene of a news event using cell phones and the internet. This presented an overwhelming opportunity but came with an unexpected problem. “We needed to find a way to take this video from a PC and integrate it seamlessly into our newscast,” said Douglas Durkee, Director of Broadcast Operations.

That’s when Durkee discovered Matrox Convert DVI. “Convert DVI provided the video and audio conversion and the genlock capability to allow us to use the computer generated video and audio in our broadcast system. Matrox Convert DVI is a very cost effective scan converter with excellent conversion quality that also allows us to benefit from embedded audio,” said Durkee.

“Being able to incorporate these videos into our regular broadcast has given us a real edge. For instance, on primary election night this past June, we went live from multiple candidates’ headquarters using the Next Generation News technology. On a normal night, with three ENG vans and one SNG truck, our live remote capability is adequate, but not on an election day. The Next Generation News equipment including Matrox Convert DVI enabled us to cover five additional candidates’ locations live, far outdistancing our competition with live coverage.”

WYFF also has plans to use Matrox Convert DVI in the future. “Last year, we converted our master control to HD but have continued to use an old SD stillstore when we need a station ID or an emergency slide. Instead of incurring yet another expense to upgrade our still storage, we plan to take advantage of Matrox Convert DVI’s excellent quality conversion capability. We’ll output 1920×1080 stills from the computer to a genlocked HD-SDI signal of the same resolution that we can use directly on-air.”

“For less than $1000, Convert DVI has really simplified our workflow – we never anticipated getting so much bang for our buck!”