Sony Professional Middle East to provide world-class production and post-production facilities to Twofour54 Abu Dhabi

The deal, to be delivered from Sony's offices in the UAE, is to deliver production facilities, infrastructure and training to the newly created media content creation brand which aims to develop compelling content for a 300 million-strong Arab speaking audience.

"Delivering a world-class facility requires the best products, complex software integration and a proven ability to understand and implement the optimum in media production workflows," says Hideaki Nakamura, Regional Director, Sony Professional Middle East. "We believe that our strong local capability coupled with our global heritage in the broadcast industry makes us unique. We are ideally placed to fulfil the requirements for professional media production - from live studio operations through to post production and content archiving."

Representing the geographical co-ordinates of Abu Dhabi, Twofour54 aims to establish the city as a centre of excellence for Arabic content creation that is internationally renowned. It creates a new industry opportunity for the region by providing a collaborative and fully-equipped centre that brings together local, regional and international content creation companies from across the breadth of the film, broadcast, digital, publishing and music industries.

"Twofour54 Abu Dhabi will offer unrivalled, world-class production and post-production facilities," says Tony Orsten, chief executive officer of Twofour54. "Sony offered us the best of both worlds. The mix of local knowledge and its global expertise and experience, coupled with its flexible partnership approach gave us every confidence in the success of the implementation."

Sony will deliver products and services from over 50 industry partners. The final system was specified in close collaboration with the Twofour54 team in Abu Dhabi. Flexibility and ease of configuration were key pre-requisites in the design of the facilities.

Twofour54 consists of two discrete sites which are linked to provide seamless HD and file-based operations. Any media source, live or otherwise, can be captured directly into central file storage of the post-production systems. Omneon Spectrum provides the gateway to Apple Final Cut Pro editing and Avid Airspeeds for Avid Unity ISIS networked production.

Post facilities are also available for dedicated audio and graphics editing or creation. A full Avid newsroom production system will also be provided - as an option for news clients.

The four main television studios are equipped with Sony HDC-1500 cameras, MVS-8000 switchers and Calrec audio consoles. Each studio can be quickly reconfigured based upon specific client needs using the automation system.

All media sources are ingested, moved and managed under control of the Pharos automation and content management system. Archiving of content to the Sony Petasite data libraries is under the auspices of Front Porch Digital DIVArchive.

All areas are equipped with Sony LMD production monitors for professional monitoring and Sony BVM monitors for reference grade monitoring. There is support for all popular professional and broadcast formats including; - HDCAM SR, HDCAM, XDCAM MPEGHD422, Digital Betacam, HDV, DVCAM and D5.

Recognising the need to develop talent in the Arab world, Twofour54 Abu Dhabi also offers the region's premier media and content training academy geared to develop, up-skill and re-train across a comprehensive range of media and content industry disciplines. The Academy facilities will include a television studio and news production facilities - with XDCAM HD422 ENG kits used for news gathering.

Twofour54 has already attracted several of the largest and most influential content creation companies worldwide, including CNN, BBC, Thomson Foundation, Random House, Harper Collins, Rotana Studios, Financial Times, Abu Dhabi Media Company, C Sky Pictures and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.