62 TVBEurope The Business Case
www.tvbeurope.com August 2012
“Our first key products were targeted towards the Miranda Imagestore range”
Single-handed control
Melanie Dayasena-Lowe met Rascular Technical Director Roddy Pratt to talk about its flagship product Helm — already being used by over 150 broadcasters globally
BRITISH COMPANYRascular might be a well-kept secret to some but not to the 150 broadcasters, such as BSkyB, Discovery Communications Europe, M-Net, Sky Italia and Red Bee Media, who already use its products. So where did it all start? Roddy
Pratt and Ephraim Barrett founded Rascular in 2001. The pair originally met at Oxtel, which was acquired by Miranda Technologies. “Our first key products were targeted towards what we knew — the Miranda Imagestore range,” Pratt explains. Ten years on and Rascular still
has regular conversations with Miranda and still supports their products. “Because of the history it’s one of the products we have the best level of support in but there’s no commercial partnerships. The nature of what we do means we have mutual customers — a customer has [Miranda’s] hardware and our software.” Pratt is quick to point out that
Rascular is not a company trying to sell IT software into broadcast but is indeed a broadcast company with a broadcast background.
It develops software products that allow broadcasters easy access to the complex functionality of third- party devices installed within a broadcast facility. The software allows the broadcaster to control a number of technologies such as routers, servers, branding technology, multiviewers and modular gear from any Windows computer. Its flagship product is Helm,
a user-configurable, PC-based application that provides either mouse-driven or touchscreen control and monitoring via TCP/IP of a wide range of essential broadcast equipment: branding devices, routers, video servers, VTRs, multi-image display processors and modular gear. Operators can use a single, purpose-designed control panel rather than having to access this equipment via the different proprietary systems supplied.
Past evolution The product originally shipped to its first customer, ZDF in Germany, in 2005. “The first versions of Helm were very much
Helm panels are created using a simple drag-and-drop system
like router/multiviewer and server control that we moved into being a serious central point of control for playout environments,” he explains. Since its introduction, Helm has
Roddy Pratt: “We’re starting to see people use Helm on Windows 7 tablets”
Imagestore only, used in channel branding control environments. It was only when we added capabilities
continued to develop and evolve. The latest release, Helm version 4, now supports Snell’s RollCall system for device control, with Helm able to work with any of the company’s products that are RollCall-compatible. “Helm dynamically detects all cards and their capabilities in any Rollcall- enabled frame. This means that any new or updated RollCall cards can be used without updating the Helm software.”
Rascular has also announced
that is working with Ross Video as an openGear partner. By integrating with the openGear platform standard — which is designed from the ground up as an open protocol — Helm now has the potential to control any and all technology that adheres to the openGear standard. In addition, Helm controls/ monitors third-party equipment from Miranda, Evertz, Harris, Pixel Power, Snell, Ross, Nevion, Lynx, Axon, Pro-Bel (router protocol), Quartz, NVision, GVG, Sandar, Omneon as well as VDCP. Pratt believes the ‘unique’
approach of Helm is “the primary breadth of manufacturer support we have. We treat everything equally. That’s the key differentiator”. Helm now also benefits from the inclusion of Lua scripting, the fully-featured, fast programming language used in video games and Adobe Lightroom. It sits alongside — rather than
in between — equipment within a facility. For example, the automation system still interfaces with the branding devices exactly as it did prior to the installation of Helm.
Future control What’s next for Helm? Pratt expects to see a move towards the use of tablet devices for control due to the slick and tactile user interface. “We’re starting to see people use Windows 7 tablets with Helm — a tablet with a hard wire Ethernet connection. Helm runs on Windows systems only so we don’t have an answer for iPad and Android devices yet but we’re looking at it. “We’ve seen manufacturers launch iPad applications. We expect to see devices like tablets fundamentally built into a control surface in front of an operator bolted on to the desk. We’ve seen some customers do something similar such as an installation at RSI in Switzerland, which built desks with 24-inch LCD touchscreens laid flat running Helm on that as their primary control surface for those channels,” he explains. Over the next 12 months
Rascular is focusing on maturity and growth. Things have started to take off for the company over the last two years and it will continue to look at ways of growing organically, getting more people onboard and enhancing support and development.
www.rascular.com
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