04 Aug 2008
Pebble Beach IBC2008 Product Preview
At IBC2008, Pebble Beach Systems (stand 8.B50) will be demonstrating new and enhanced features to its range of automation solutions. These features include even greater scalability, an ingest resource timeline, integration with Rhozet transcoders a host of new drivers, a random access news list for easy control of news playout and secondary templates, which enable users to group frequently used secondary sequences for easy recall at a future time.
The Pebble Beach Systems News list has been developed to allow broadcasters rapid control over dynamic content, such as live and breaking news, that is played to air from a news room studio environment. The news list provides the operator with a list of playout material provided from the News Room (via industry standard MOS) and the ability to play the content out in a completely random order via an intuitive and responsive user interface.
To make the News List as responsive as possible Pebble Beach Systems has 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.
Ingest Resource Timeline
Pebble Beach Systems has introduced The Ingest Resource Timeline, which provides a graphical view of devices used for ingest within the system, where users are able to monitor running and scheduled ingest jobs and resources. Within the timeline, a running or scheduled ingest job is shown as a timeblock. A toolbar is provided to zoom, focus and move the timeline. To the left of the timeline is a list of devices and their encoders. Users can configure specific devices and/or encoders to be displayed and any ingest jobs that may have a conflict of resources are clearly indicated.
A yellow line indicates the current time position with the timecode displayed above it. By dragging the line left or right the user can navigate within the timeline window. The Day Bar at the bottom of the timeline provides an overview of ingest jobs for the day.
Secondary Templates
Secondary templates enable users to configure a number of secondaries to be inserted by default whenever a new live or media event is inserted into the list. Secondaries are created in the same way as in the secondary Properties panel within the list itself.
Users can select a list from the pull down menu of which secondaries will be applied and choose a default template live event. Alternatively, users can select these options using the keyboard shortcuts to define whether settings will be applied to a media or INS or DEL. The start and stop commands for the secondary are user definable and depending on the secondary type, an event editor is provided for users to enter more detailed information.
Content Ingest Options Expanded
A new driver is available to work specifically with Rapid StreamZ encoders from Digital Rapids. Bringing together Neptune's comprehensive features for acquiring baseband content into a facility and Anchor Media Management file based workflow management tools, this new driver offers customers the ability to build large scale ingest systems encoding content directly using lower cost encoding and storage solutions. Once encoded, Anchor can be employed to intelligently move content through a facility based upon rules specifically tailored to the workflow of the customer.
Anchor Media Manager Receives New Features
Already in use at many playout facilities world wide, Anchor Media Manager provides deep storage management as part of its playout automation solution, This tool is continually developed and enhanced and is now offered with. data tape defragmentation and integration with higher capacity LTO4 drives. The system is also integrated with a range of transcoder engines from Rhozet, IPV and Telestream. Customers now have a wider choice than ever of transcoders knowing that Anchor will integrate them into their workflows and deliver low resolution browse tools to deliver operational efficiencies.
A Host of New Drivers
The range of drivers available for Neptune grows almost daily in response to the many projects that Pebble Beach is undertaking. In recent months Neptune has developed drivers for direct control of a range of Axon interface cards via their Synapse control system. Drivers for Eyeheights ARC products are now available and the Aurora control protocol from Pro-Bel is offered as yet another option in the range of router control drivers.
Larger Capacity Device Controllers
For larger systems Pebble Beach has extended the capacity of its device controllers to allow control of 64 serial devices as well as GPI and Network control of other devices. The controllers can host up to 16 on air playlists as well as multiple ingest lists and media movers.
