Month: September 2019

Company reports further increases in revenues, order book and EBITDA, together with improved profitability and cash flow.
Pebble Beach Systems, a leading automation, content management and integrated channel specialist, released a highly positive set of results for the first six months of 2019 today.
The company reported revenues of £5.6m, a 51% increase compared to 2018’s figures for January to June, together with a 23% increase in the value of orders received for the same period. It also reports before tax profits of £0.7m, compared to a loss of £0.9m in the first six months of 2018, and a significant increase in adjusted EBITDA from £0.6m to £2.0m.
Pebble CEO Peter Mayhead said:

“I’m proud to go into this year’s IBC show with such a great set of results. It’s clear to me that following the successful restructuring we went through over the last couple of years, we are now recognized as one of the very few remaining independent specialist vendors in playout. In a turbulent market that is plagued by consolidation, we are growing and generating significant profits which allows us to make continued investments in our R&D. We are small and agile and uniquely placed to help define the future of this vital area of the broadcast industry.”

John Varney, Non-Executive Chairman of Pebble Beach Systems Group plc, said:

“We are greatly encouraged with the results for the first half of 2019. At the start of 2018, the Board put in place an aggressive plan to turn the Company around. The work that was done during 2018 was both necessary and detailed but, as is normal in turnaround situations, the numbers that we produced at the end of the year, whilst encouraging, did not reflect the scale of the progress we had made. It is therefore very pleasing indeed to be able to report such an impressive set of results for the first half of 2019. These are a huge testament to both the quality and hard work of the people within the business. Whilst the first part of the turnaround is complete, the marketplace in which we operate is fast moving and competitive and whilst we have improved our reputation and our market position, there is still a lot to do.
Looking into the second half of 2019 and beyond our focus is to continue to build on the trading performance improvements delivered in 2018 and capitalise on the opportunities presented by the changes in the broadcast market.”

Pebble Beach Systems will be exhibiting on Stand 8.B68 at IBC, and also participating in the IP Showcase in Rooms E106/107 at the RAI. Full details of the Half-year Report can be found here.
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Delivers immediate cost savings and simplifies graphics workflows for thematic channels by reducing dependencies on discrete graphics platforms
Weybridge, UK, September 3rd, 2019 – At IBC 2019, on stand 8.B68, Pebble Beach Systems, a leading automation, content management and integrated channel specialist, will demonstrate a new Adobe^® After Effects^® integration, incorporating a plugin and pre-render workflow, which is designed to simplify graphics and promo production. Working in conjunction with Pebble Beach Systems’ Dolphin integrated channel device under Marina automation control, this new integration manages the process of automatically rendering After Effects templates and delivering them straight to playout. By removing the need to convert Adobe graphics into vendor-specific formats, the plugin gives graphics designers the creative freedom to use any feature supported in After Effects for on-air graphics, and eliminates the sometimes laborious task of individually rendering many different versions of a promo or graphic.
Many broadcasters deploy discrete graphics platforms for playout of their high value channels. These systems offer complex real time graphics overlaid onto live and recorded sources, handling last minute schedule changes on the fly with advanced manual control. But they come at a high price point and may require extensive training. However, this is often the best approach, and with its wide range of broadcast graphics drivers, Pebble’s Marina automation can control the majority of market-leading broadcast graphics devices available today. Some thematic channels are a lot less dynamic and the cost of incorporating a full graphics engine in the playout chain cannot be justified. This new Adobe integration takes a different approach, rendering out a complex graphic template to a single media asset ahead of time so that the playout engine load is reduced without compromising the quality of graphics and branding for the channel.
Any After Effects project can be converted into a pre-render template via the new plugin. The designer simply selects which part(s) of their project will be ‘dynamic’. These dynamic elements will subsequently be populated by content from the Marina playlist at render time, allowing the relevant text, video, images, and / or audio to be inserted.
Once the template is prepared, they publish it to the Pebble Template Service (PTS) and the designer’s job is complete. The Marina automation system monitors the PTS and builds a list of available templates, which the playout operator can manually schedule or which can be automatically scheduled by a traffic system.
So, when an event in the playlist requires a graphic, a request is sent to render the relevant combination of template and dynamic content. Rendering in advance allows each graphic to be reviewed before going to air so any changes can be made if required. If there are changes to the dynamic content in the playlist, Marina will request a new version of the graphic. Renders are prioritised by their required on-air time, ensuring the timely delivery of graphics assets.

“The ability to pre-render graphics created in After Effects gives the designer full creative freedom by removing the need to compromise the look of the graphics during any format conversion process. Graphics designers want to concentrate on building stunning graphics and don’t want to be limited by the toolset. They also don’t want to be doing repetitive tasks such as rendering out an After Effects project 50 times for each version. With this integration, Pebble have automated that process, saving time and money,” said Stuart Wood, Product Owner at Pebble Beach Systems.
“Many networks, television stations and multichannel service providers are also looking for ways to deploy playout servers without the need to provision GPUs for real-time graphics processing power, especially when we talk about virtualised environments or the cloud as this is can be much more expensive,” he confirmed.

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About Pebble Beach Systems  
Pebble Beach Systems is a world leader in automation, channel in a box, integrated and virtualised playout technology, with scalable products designed for highly efficient multichannel transmission as well as complex news and sports television. Installed in more than 70 countries and with proven systems ranging from single up to over 150 channels in operation, Pebble Beach Systems offers open, flexible systems, which encompass ingest and playout automation, and complex file-based workflows. The company trades in the US as Pebble Broadcast Systems.