Workstations for on-line environments

Television news production is perhaps the ultimate on-line environment where most material is prepared under considerable time pressure even whilst on-air. It is played into an unrehearsed programme controlled by a studio team who have rarely seen the material previously. In these situations the new disk based computer production tools are going to provide advantages of greater speed and flexibility, but how are future technicians and journalists going to interface with this technology to ensure they can exploit these advantages to the full? The answer is by using intelligently designed workstations which have been specifically tailored for this pressured on-line operation. It is not simply a case of replacing a newsroom computer terminal or a conventional edit controller with a powerful desktop computer and running some non-linear editing package. A much more integrated approach is needed which puts as much functionality as possible in front of the operators to enable them to undertake a variety of tasks in an environment which promotes creativity. At ITN the author discusses how this varied functionality should be presented. The author considers two workstation applications which will form the core of any future news operation: the journalist´s newsroom workstation and the post-production workstation