USER REPORT ///


BUYERS GUIDE: AUTOMATION, MAM, DAM; RECORDING & STORAGE


Smoothing SiA Playout


/// By Rodrigo Sternberg


iA (Skynet iMotion Activities) is a wholly- owned subsidiary of the largest


telecommunications


company in Belgium, the Belgacom Group. It creates, produces, purchases and exploits audiovisual content that is offered on Belgacom TV and broadcast on its own channels, which are exclusive to the Belgacom TV platform. SiA currently broadcasts


more than 700 live sports events per year and broadcasts on three linear TV channels (Belgacom Zoom/11, Belgacom 11+ and Belgacom 5) in both Dutch and French. It specialises in the coverage of football and basketball. When we began planning for the launch of these new sports


channels, we made the decision to transfer our playout operations in-house and away from the managed service we had previously been using. We were running a combination of best-of-breed devices and a less technically advanced automation solution, so a key requirement was the need to upgrade. Each of our channels is


broadcast in two languages. The high proportion of live content places particularly heavy demands on our graphics devices, so the selection of the playout automation solution needed to take these requirements into account. When we came to evaluate


what was on the market, Pebble Beach Systems' Marina solution stood out as a highly flexible


INTEGRATED PLAYOUT WITH ADOBE GRAPHICS


and advanced system that was also price-competitive. It is particularly easy to configure, and can adapt to our changing requirements. Furthermore, the Marina GUI


can be configured to suit the way individual users want to work, which makes it particularly popular with our operational staff. The playout operators can easily follow exactly what is going on or about to happen very easily and intuitively, at various levels on all channels or even to the detail of the value of the queued items for graphics. With each of our channels


broadcast in both the French and Dutch language, each language version is, in effect, handled as a separate entity; with different voiceovers and graphics. We took the new


automation system on air in July, 2012, following an aggressive plan from purchase order signature to live in just four months, with Marina controlling our EVS server system and Miranda Vertigo graphics. It also interfaces to a Front Porch Digital DIVA archive and provides paid "red button" interactivity, allowing people at home to go from a trailer to a VOD item in one click. The system incorporates


Miranda’s ITX integrated playout platform saw several new enhancements last year, including version 1.1 of iTX Render Service for Adobe After Effects CS6 software. iTX Render Service automates and manages fully rendered After Effects graphics, making them immediately ready for playout from either the iTX platform or Miranda’s Vertigo Suite of graphics automation and asset management tools. Also new and part of iTX’s version 2.3 SP3 is iTX Master Control, an integrated playout solution that combines playout automation with live event functionality using hardware control panels that can be seamlessly switched to, and from, as required throughout a live broadcast. www.miranda.com


////////////////18 TV Technology Europe I February-March 2014


varying levels of redundancy, with full Air Protect on the two football channels, and an additional level of redundancy for the graphics, which switches to the backup graphics device using Marina's routing if the main graphics should fail. Pebble Beach Systems


developed their ‘Auto Promo Generation' feature to meet our requirements. This safeguards the integrity of channel information graphics when we need to manage late breaking changes. Immediately prior to a


graphic going on air, Marina dynamically sources data from


Caption: Rodrigo Sternberg


multiple playlists at the same time, extracting the most up-to- date program information. Configurable templates are then populated with accurate start times, titles, preview clips and images as required, so that last minute schedule changes can be displayed without the need to manually generate new graphics. The playout system has


become one of our showcase solutions, and since its introduction we have added a technical "loop" channel. There are projects underway to exploit these further and to add new channels following business demands. ///


Rodrigo Sternberg is Technical Director at SiA.


Contacts: www.pebble.tv


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