In the ever-evolving broadcast industry, choosing the right playout automation provider is crucial. Sally Wallington, Pebble SVP of Sales, shares her expertise on what broadcasters must consider to ensure they select a system that truly fits their needs.
A quarter of a century ago, playout automation was already a well-established technology, but it looked very different from today’s sophisticated systems. Back then, automation was primarily about device control – dedicated real-time hardware sending commands over serial busses to a variety of devices, many of which had only limited functionality.
Virtually all content was on tapes inside robot libraries, so the automation had to be constantly looking ahead to ensure the right tapes were loaded into the players and calculating pre-rolls. For economy, some broadcasters put multiple spots on each tape, which meant the automation had to compile breaks during the previous programme segment. It was all very exciting.
One could argue that today’s playout automation – dealing with networked devices and servers which provide instant start to all the content required – is much simpler. But other challenges have arisen: where the turn of the century playout system would handle a single channel, now the expectation is for multiple variants of each service, to meet localisation needs and international legal variations. Individual operations have been replaced in many cases by playout centres handling hundreds of channels.
Pebble’s founders had already been deeply involved in playout automation for years, shaping earlier generations of the technology. They knew what was really important for users, and when they started the business they established a set of principles for excellence. Those same guidelines continue to drive Pebble’s approach today, ensuring its solutions evolve to meet the demands of modern playout.
Playout automation is mission-critical. If a broadcaster cannot deliver programmes it has no audience; if it cannot deliver commercials it has no revenue. Interruptions to programmes cause reputational damage; dropping commercial spots means no income. Together, they pose a serious risk to a broadcaster’s success.
So in choosing an automation supplier, a broadcaster must first of all identify the vendor who understands the issues involved, can demonstrate proven solutions, and, perhaps most important, can develop long-term relationships to ensure that support will always be there, whatever the future challenges.
What are the issues for playout systems? Most important is reliability. In the modern, software-centric environment five nines reliability – 99.999 per cent up time – is the absolute minimum expectation, and six nines should probably be the goal.
That means stable software on redundant hardware and communications networks, with no single point of failure and large margins of excess processor power, network capacity and storage space.
Second, agility. No two workflows are the same, and the playout vendor should not be dictating how a broadcaster works. The software should adapt readily to the best configuration for the application. Completely flexible and reliable interfaces, preferably based on open standards, should allow for connection to best of breed devices from any other vendor where required. Integrated channel platforms still need ready integration, to storage networks and to planning and monitoring systems.
Third, the system should be supportive. Where operator interventions are required, they must be intuitive and logical. Above all, it should be impossible to do something wrong. Anyone in the broadcast industry will be familiar with disastrous mistakes in the playout suite, where the output has been switched at a critical moment. Your networks should never be subject to such dangers.
Finally, it must be secure. Cyberthreats are the modern world’s nightmare, and any mission-critical technology must be hardened against challenges, with protections continually updated as the bad guys come up with fresh ideas.
Pebble was founded in 2000 on the basis of delivering the most trusted, reliable and feature-rich playout technology. That remains true today.
This article was originally published in TVBEurope.
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