Montreal: The work of building and wiring two new studios, and installing the various shared networks at MusiquePlus and new specialty sister channel MusiMax has to be completed 10 days to two weeks before MusiMax’s Sept. 8 startup date. And because of a one-month delay in construction, Alain Charest, director of engineering for both services, says the push is on.

The new MusiquePlus/MusiMax building is located in downtown Montreal at the corner of Ste-Catherine and Bleury Streets.

More than $3 million has been invested in new equipment for both MusiquePlus and MusiMax.

MusiMax has a 3,000-square-foot studio/environment split on two levels, while the main MusiquePlus environment (in chum parlance it’s not called a studio) is 5,550 square feet and is open to the street.

While the control and audio rooms have been moved in whole from the old location, an older Betacart setup is being replaced by an ASC VR-3000 video server, says Charest, who directs a technical team of about 10 broadcast engineers and computer programmers.

The new asc server has six input/output video channels and can handle up to 38 hours of tape.

‘Both stations will use it. We’ll place all of the commercials on it and most of the videos, at least the ones that run on rotation. We’ll use it as a big vcr, in that it is replacing the Betacart.’

MusiMax, an adult contemporary music service, and MusiquePlus will share a good deal of equipment, including a central patch, a Philips matrix 80 X 64 analog/digital routing switcher and intercom systems, says Charest.

MusiMax decided to buy second-hand Sony cameras, while Charest says MusiquePlus uses analog Sony cameras except for Digital BVP 550 cameras, which are used on the road. However, recording is still done in analog, he says.

‘Master control will be fully digital for both stations starting in September. We’re using Betacam sx technology which has a tape capacity of about three hours, which is pretty good for us because MusiquePlus’ original programming is a block of eight hours. So to repeat it we only need three tapes.’

Charest, a regular at nab, says he eventually wants to eliminate the use of videotape.

‘I mostly look at the integration between editing room and on-air. We want to be able to share material on a network that would probably be a fiber channel or something like that. The idea would be that people could edit something on the video server and put it directly on air.’

Charest says the 27,000 video library (matched by a similar library of interviews and other materials) is a big problem for MusiquePlus, not only because of high storage costs but because tape has an average life expectancy of 12 years. And MusiquePlus is soon going to be 11.

‘We want to find a technology that will enable us to either dump (the videotapes) on cd-rom or dvd digital format. There were prototypes that were shown at nab this year that were quite interesting where they were using dvd technology,’ says Charest. ‘We’re seeing a merging between video and computer technology. That server is just a big computer.’