Challenge
In holding the rights to the US Open, SuperTennis needed to provide comprehensive coverage, reflecting both live action and packaged programmes to accommodate the six-hour time difference between New York and Italy. This meant managing multiple simultaneous live feeds and coordinating them with live reports from correspondents in New York and the studio presentation from Rome. All this had to be achieved to the highest technical standards, without interruption, and reducing latency to the lowest possible.
Solution
SuperTennis sought a solution that would provide automation support for multi-channel playout across terrestrial, satellite, streaming and smart TV services. It needed to be instantly flexible to provide for peaks in coverage when multiple courts were in action, and to provide seamless integration with existing editorial and production systems, minimising risk and simplifying workflows.
Pebble Automation, working in tandem with multiple instances of the Pebble Integrated Channel playout engine, provided the flexible and resilient foundation SuperTennis required to manage its extensive US Open coverage. The system was developed and delivered by CVE, leading Italian systems integrator and Pebble partner in the region.
Pebble Automation draws on extensive experience and is now one of the most highly regarded playout platforms available. It gives users a stable and highly configurable environment, built around the key expectations of high resilience and security. Integrated Channel incorporates sophisticated signal processing capabilities, mixing sources in multiple formats and adding high quality dynamic graphics, all while maintaining seamless, frame-accurate outputs.
For SuperTennis, this meant precise control of live and recorded feeds, as well as managing ingest of unpredictable content. The intuitive user interface greatly simplified both asset management and the construction of playlists, which of necessity could only be compiled close to transmission time.
CVE coordinated the integration between Pebble systems and the existing infrastructure at SuperTennis, ensuring both technical compatibility and optimized workflows. The collaboration of Pebble, CVE and SuperTennis teams ensured a highly efficient project delivery.
Result
Providing coverage of the US Open was a very high profile time for SuperTennis: the audience expectation was high. Implementing automation from Pebble greatly simplified content management, reduced operator interventions and increased precision, which in turn boosted audience confidence and reliance on the output.
CVE and Pebble ensured a timely implementation without disrupting the other work of the broadcaster. Commissioning the new technology in plenty of time allowed SuperTennis to complete its preparations, and work through tests and simulations as well as rehearsing with the full crew. The powerful support of Pebble Automation allowed SuperTennis to focus on editorial quality, confident of the stability and reliability of the playout platform.
In summary, the new installation allowed SuperTennis to deliver a better product to its demanding audience.
The output was smooth and uninterrupted, even in complex interchanges between multiple locations and when creating multiple outputs for different platforms. Italian audiences enjoyed uninterrupted coverage that captured the full drama of the tournament from start to finish.