CIVI-TV, the home of The New VI television channel, located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, started its operation in a recently renovated, 95-year old heritage site on Vancouver Island. The site offered a good location and unique surroundings for the TV operations but also presented some challenges.
Tape storage in any station presents storage concerns, but in this particular instance, the building had some limitations. The building structure could not be altered in order to maintain its original historical character so all of the TV operations had to be outfitted within the limited space available. To conserve space and make more room for operations, the architect planned for high-density mobile storage to store both active and archived videotapes.
“We were fortunate to have acquired a historical building, however we could not add to the building so we had to make the most effective use of the space we had,” explained Bill Gagne, building supervisor. “By utilizing high-density storage we were able to reduce our storage space requirements and free space for equipment and people.”
Gagne explained that the building is really an architectural masterpiece and has, in fact, won several architectural awards. The local Spacesaver representative worked with an architect out of Toronto to design a system that fit with the building specifications.
Seismic concerns also had to be addressed. Anti-tip rails and carriages were used to provide the necessary stability for the narrow carriages. CIVI is known as being one of the ten most technologically advanced TV stations in the world, with a 99-percent digital format. Although it is a trend throughout the industry, many stations are only beginning the process of converting to digital.
Producers and support staff are in constant need to access tapes for use in the master control room. High-use tapes, including active commercials, news clips and TV shows are easily accessible in the mobile system, which was able to condense over 4000 digital tapes and locate them very small space adjacent to the control room.
“The Spacesaver mobile system is fantastic,” said Gagne. “The master control room is a very busy place and there is a lot of traffic in and out of the mobile system accessing the tapes. The system keeps everything in one place and nearby.” A second mobile system was installed in a fireproof and locked vault for storing archive and highly sensitive tapes.
