Launched in February 2006, Endemol India is the first Asian subsidiary of
Endemol NV. Since its launch, Endemol India has witnessed rapid growth in the
Indian market and has cemented its place in the Indian television industry
through formats like Big Brother, Fear Factor India, and produced local
blockbuster formats like The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, Mission Ustaad,
and The Great Indian Laughter Champions. The content created include scripted,
non-scripted and digital media. After the success of Bigg Boss Season 2,
COLORS entered the prime space with a bang with Bigg Boss Season-3, even
bigger with Amitabh Bachchan playing the role of Pop Philosopher. Bigg Boss
Season-3 had fourteen strangers locked in a house for approximately eighty-five
dayswith thirty-five cameras following their every move 24x7.
Flashback Mode
Big Boss Season-2 faced a host of problems. Highlighting the issues, Deepak
Dhar, MD, Endemol India explains, "The biggest challenge was bandwidth. As Bigg
Boss Season-2 was shot in Lonavala, connectivity was a big issue that we faced
while filming. Getting broadband for data and video communication is very
difficult at such a location. For a show like Bigg Boss that comprises a lot of
online web content, broadband link is of utmost importance. We got a specialized
link from an ISP installed at the location to overcome this challenge."
For a show like Bigg Boss that comprises a lot of online web content, broadband link is of utmost importance |
Deepak Dhar, MD, Endemol India |
The second problem was of video footage storage. Talking more on this issue
Dhar says, "The amount of video data recorded every day requires massive amounts
of storage space. Storing high quality footage was the challenge for instant
retrieval. The other most important factor was data (video) security.
Specialized Apple storage was installed with capacities of almost 80TB so that
we could have footage of almost ten days at instant access on the edit server."
Talking of the other challenges, Dhar talks about prevention of illegal
copying of sensitive footage from the premises. Specialized biometric solutions,
hardware disabling, network monitoring for file copy, etc, were installed to
overcome this challenge.
A Step Ahead
Each season is an improvement over the previous one, Bigg Boss Season-3 was
a reflection of better storage, faster edit systems, precise structures which
enhanced the levels of the previous season. Emphasising on this statement Dhar
adds, "Endemol International developed an upgraded version of META CREATOR
technology, which was deployed in Bigg Boss Season-3 reducing the edit time by
almost 30% by allowing low-resolution on the fly edit, before the final high
resolution lineup. Approximately twenty-four hours of recorded footage could be
easily edited in a span of eight hours and telecast for viewing the following
day."
It was not smooth deploying these high tech IT solutions. "Heavy training
before going live was a challenge before this was implemented," says Dhar.
The network structure of the format in this season remains the same as
Season-2. According to Dhar, this enabled them to monitor the progress of the
telecast content at each level. This structure will evolve into better sections
in the later deployments, but the core structure would remain unchanged in the
next levels also.
Shilpa Shanbhag
shilpas@cybermedia.co.in