News pIayout
Customers can integrate their standard programme playout and news playout under the same control system. Users can exploit Neptune's highly configurable user interface to suit their requirements and switch quickly between control of standard and news style programming.
FOX, USA
Celebrating its 10 year anniversary in 2005, FOX chose to invest in an entirely end-to-end tapeless workflow for its News and Business channels. IBM was chosen to architect the new tapeless system, tasking them with the responsibility for the system integration, storage servers and software infrastructure. A key requirement throughout the project was to ensure that each vendor chosen could deliver a system that was open enough to enable FOX to utilize them in various ways throughout the system. FOX saw that the advantages of using a multi-vendor system outweighed the risk of using a system from a single supplier. Any aspect of the system could be easily removed should it become obsolete and also allows FOX to chose specific features they wanted to fit in to the system.
Pebble Beach Systems Neptune automation was selected by Fox News to control the playout of their new Business channel, which provides up to date financial information to an estimated 30 million subscribers. The channel is played out from new studios equipped with Neptune Lite systems. These systems interface to Fox's iNews system via MOS and feature full redundancy. Fox makes use of the Pebble Beach Systems News List, a playlist designed specifically for News and Sports playout. Unlike the typical sequential playlists, the News List gives operators the freedom to play events in any order and in parallel if required.
To make the News List as responsive as possible Pebble Beach Systems developed an interface to DNF control panels. This allows the operator to select any decoder to play at the press of a single button, as well as control ingest, quick turn recordings, material preview and basic editing/trimming from a single GUI.
CNBC, Africa
Following the successful installations at CNBC Pakistan and Europe, a Neptune system was deployed at CNBC Africa to automate two channels. CNBC Africa required a dynamic system which could manage a 24 hour global channel and a second channel supporting local productions covering regional affairs. The local news channel integrates to CNBC's ENPS newsroom system via MOS interface to automatically convert schedules into playlists. The system is linked to Apple Final Cut Pro editors which publish Rushes tapes directly to an Omneon server. Neptune's database receives a notice that new clips are available and automatically sets them up for playout where needed. As well as ingest from VTRs, the system also uses a record list for automatic ingest of scheduled live feeds.
DUNYA, Pakistan
Pebble Beach Systems automation was chosen by Dunya TV to automate two channels, Dunya Entertainment and Dunya News. The system was required to have the flexibility to integrate various workflows for news production, as well as general channel playout. The system uses a low resolution browse workflow to support content production for a dynamic news workflow. Ingested content is simultaneously routed to IPV Spectreview encoders to create browse clips. These browse clips can be viewed by Pebble Beach Systems' Razorfish application on a number of clients to provide easy review for quality control purposes and for cuts editing. More complex edits are done using Apple Final Cut Pro editors, using XML information passed by Razorfish. Material edited by Apple FCP Editors and saved to an Apple Xsan server is automatically detected by Neptune. Media movement is handled by Anchor Media Manager, which automatically transfers ingested, edited, quality controlled and archived content throughout the system. News lists are managed by an ENPS newsroom system which connects to the Neptune playlists via MOS.
RTL NORD, Germany
At the end of 2003, the RTL group approached AZ Media, a leading supplier of production, post and broadcast services in Germany, to build a facility which would provide breakout content for five regional services of RTL Nord. The new facility, designed and built in Hamburg, required the production and playout operations to be highly automated and extremely reliable.
The system has been recently updated from a Pinnacle news room system, which controlled ingest playout and editing. The system now uses an Omneon Spectrum server to provide playout, backed up by an Omneon MediaDeck. The system has 18 channels, 9 ingest stations, 40 editors and 4 studios where programmes are played out in parallel from the servers under the control of the Neptune system and are broadcast via ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) to the respective broadcast stations. This enables AZ Media to broadcast the RTL regional programmes more rapidly and efficiently and at lower production costs.
The Neptune system works alongside a news-edit workflow, controlling material that is being recorded onto a second Spectrum server from VTRs and live sources, using timed record lists or manual control panels. Final Cut Pro editing workstations connected to the system create programme clips, which are picked up by the automation once published and set as ready to air in the Pebble Beach Systems GUI.
Any pre-scheduled items are highlighted as red in the Neptune rundowns until they are published, where the correct duration is updated in the database and the playlist. This dynamic workflow allows late breaking items to be delivered to the playlist up to the last moment, with the confidence that they will be transmitted securely.
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