MetLife
1095 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY
| Awarded: |
July 2008 |
| Completed |
March 2009 |
| Project Value: |
$1 Million |
Challenge: Relocate and provide "turn key" media center integration for offices in MetLife's Midtown Manhattan facility.
Solution: Engineer designs, plans, and systems to relocate existing video components and add new functionality to MetLife's broadcast studio.
Results: A state-of-the-art "turn key" facility providint MetLife with the functionality and ease of use required for their day-to-day video production requirements.
Organization
MetLife is the largest life insurer in the United States with $3.3 Trillion dollars in policies for 2009. Founded in 1869, MetLife provides services for 90 of the largest Fortune 100 companies and serves a large global market in 12 countries.
Challenge
VCA was chosen to relocate, design, plan, and build a full state-of-the-art production studio for MetLife’s Midtown Manhattan location. Awarded the contract in July 2008, VCA was tasked with building and installing a broadcast studio with designs from consultant, CMS. Requirements for this job included integrating existing customer supplied equipment with new components from VCA along with designing and building a “turn key” state-of-the-art production studio for MetLife’s production and post-production needs.
MetLife’s Media Center at their Avenue of the Americas’ facility was built around an SDI Grass Valley Kayak SD switcher and Harris/Leitch multi-format 32 x 32 matrix routers. A Sony 3-camera setup with triax CCUs provides the main video capture for the studio, with various format media decks capable of recording content or distributing video through the system. All cameras are mounted on Vinten pedestals with full studio control kits and an intercom / IFB system from RTS connects the talent and production crew in the studio with the master control room. In addition to the production capabilities of the studio, post-production rooms were also built to provide finishing services prior to content distribution. The MetLife post-production facilities include Apple Final Cut Pro workstations with AJA Kona I/O HD interfaces to handle the SDI workflow of the studio. A Rorke Data fiber channel drive array provides storage for the video editing systems while an Apple Xserve video server handles distribution of content for MetLife. The media center at MetLife is capable of streaming the content created there in addition to creating traditional tape and DVD based media components.
Since becoming fully functional in March of 2009, the Media Center at MetLife’s Avenue of the Americas’ facility has proved to be a valuable resource for the production needs of the company. VCA delivered the requested “turn key” configurations required by MetLife and successfully relocated and integrated all of the customer supplied components and new gear necessary for MetLife to continue to produce the content they need for their operations. The VCA built facility provides a solution to the production and post production needs of MetLife and it’s ease of use contributes to the high-quality / time-efficient workflow enjoyed in this new facility.