Demanding New Facilities from CIAB (Pt 2)

(continued from Part 1)

The launch of GV STRATUS Playout at NAB 14 was aimed at delivering solutions to help broadcasters tap new markets and new sources of revenue.

"The idea of having more localised TV feeds isn't new, but the cost has been prohibitive and a large capital investment to build a play out chain has often blocked projects to launch TV for regions/cities and even communities," said Rose. "With GV STRATUS Playout, the cloud brings real benefit in linking, monitoring and controlling playout which is distributed to many edge locations.

"At the same time, we didn't want to store customers' media in the cloud where security and ownership concerns are commonplace. Our solution allows the customer's media to be stored and replayed from a dedicated edge card (the Densité SSP), and controlled and managed from the cloud," he added.

"A generic cloud play out requires the media to be uploaded or streamed into the cloud to be played out in sequence back to a point of presence. This unnecessarily drives up the cost in ingress/storage and egress from the cloud when media prep and playout already exists on the same network or even in the same building. Serving broadcasters is about utilising technology where it provides real benefit and not just following a trend."

OEM (other vendor) technology is a common factor in CIAB products, so might content owners and movers be better involving a systems integrator, rather than going to any particular vendor?

"Grass Valley iTX technology is not reliant on an OEM relationship or partnership for key components like video server, graphics and automation. It is built from our software technologies without compromise or reinvention," said Rose. "As one of the first in this space, we have discovered that while a partnership or OEM arrangement can get you into the market, keeping partners aligned and focused around what your customers require is difficult. With the pace of change in the broadcast industry we find that being in control of every element is critical when delivering real-time play out carrying millions of dollars of revenue."

Is acquisition a better option than OEM dealing? What has advanced since the acquisition of Softel and the integration of its subtitling and captioning engine?

"We believe that where a technology gap exists, reinventing it and convincing the rightfully cautious broadcast engineers that, for example, a server company has managed to write a graphics engine from scratch, is a long shot," said Rose. "Grass Valley under Belden ownership has brought in 'best of breed' technology such as Softel captioning and integrated this software at the heart of the iTX product. This approach includes integrated Vertigo XG graphics."

The market has now matured into something much bigger and better than CIAB offered even two years ago. What advances have come via codecs in the area of workflows and the movement of content to different viewing environments? Do top broadcasters trust integrated play out at the expense of their SANs?

"We have seen the evolution of CIAB into integrated play out applications. It typically looked at just the server/automation/graphics triangle and sometimes didn't even fully cover those."

"The advances of integrated play out bring monitoring and control into the equation, as well as tools to manage the workflows needed to make running a channel more efficient," said Rose.

"By using iTX multi domain, station groups can ingest in one station and play out from any other, or control all stations from a hub overnight to manage costs. We have recently gone further by helping automate the difficult task of taking in syndicated shows and commercials from the various professional delivery systems and then applying the segmentation rules of the station. By using iTX delivery manager, we see station groups that would repeatedly segment arriving shows manually at each station now sharing this task and automatically applying segmentation based on the electronic cut sheets provided by the delivery service."

We are seeing broadcasters realise that modifying standards to fit previous operations is slowing them down and the adoption of BXF as a schedule format is a good example.

"While BXF can be interpreted to a degree, we are seeing its use spreading as customers want scheduling and as-runs to be a more transactional workflow, often updating in real-time. On the file format side, we also see some of the more unusual or proprietary formats starting to decrease and MXF and essence formats such as AVC Intra and XDCam becoming the norm and allowing media creators and broadcasters to work together at a lower cost," said Rose.

How important is the ability to offer insert editing to facilitate last minute changes within Integrated IT-based play out software? And what other key developments are we waiting for to transition the facilities users can count on?

"Integrated play out when designed to be integrated from day one, does by its very nature allow edits up to the last second. This capability is beyond what can be achieved by a traditional channel chain and is one of the reasons why customers choose iTX," said Rose. "However, a late edit alone isn't a game changer; the ability to take a live show to air, record it at the same time, clean off branding and start to air it on another channel with new branding, all while it's is still being captured, and doing this without external record ports, is something that dramatically reduces the cost of what would have been a complex workflow.

"Looking ahead to key development areas for playout – the adoption of 4K/UHD without compromising key features such as live and branding, the adoption of IP as transport for video both as a source for play outs, and an output for distribution to the multiple platforms broadcasters need to reach while meeting broadcast standards for quality and reliability will be key," he added.

Tom Gittins, the sales director at Pebble Beach Systems, first discussed the viability of CIAB systems to most broadcasters. "CIAB is allowing more channels to be launched at lower cost. It allows broadcasters to experiment with more niche and event-based channels and to offer up more channel variants – especially IPTV," he said. "Broadcasters find the concept attractive because they hope to make cost, space and power savings from a self-contained solution, but it is vital to consider the amount of control flexibility they require on a channel by channel basis, and to establish the level of graphics and audio processing required.

"Will the channel have any live content, and is the schedule subject to late changes? We offer both CIAB and automation based solutions for all channel types, and it's interesting how often we find that what starts as a perceived CIAB requirement quickly becomes more complex," he added.

Where do the appeals of automation-based solutions collide with CIAB?

"Where legacy equipment and third party systems exist, it can be impractical to create a CIAB technology island and in these cases automation-based solutions controlling a blend of technologies can be the most flexible solution," said Gittins. "It is true that integrating different systems can be more expensive and challenging than implementing a single self-contained solution, but if the channel's needs dictate that these systems are required, then discrete systems are the best solution for that customer.

"Users need to select the technology that most closely fits the current specific channel requirements, plus any foreseeable future requirements. CIAB can mean locking your playout future to a single vendor's product roadmap – something that is even more risky because the control layer can only control the specific vendor's technology," he added.