Sundance Digital advances broadcast automation and workflow at NAB 2006

With an aim to "ease", Sundance Digital will introduce a variety of new and enhanced software products at NAB 2006 aimed at simplifying the complexities of master control operations, news programming, and digital workflow/task management.
FlexEvents enable complex secondary event command sets to be organized into named macros placed within the station's traffic log for auto-execution within the Titan or FastBreak NXT on-air playlist.
FastBreak NXT XPress, Sundance Digital's next generation, upgradeable package offers a cost-effective automation solution ideal for operator supervised program playback and spot insertion. XPress adds numerous features, such as switch events, clock triggers, and automatic or manual Join-in-Progress (JIP) cues. The base configuration provides two Sundance workstations - Media Prep for ingest and content management and Air Control to supervise the actual playout. All the company's workstation computers are heavy duty, "enterprise-grade" rack-mountable machines delivered with multiple cooling fans, dual RAID-1 hard drives, and independent, hot-swappable power supplies. FastBreak XPress is upgradeable to Sundance Digital's popular FastBreak NXT and Titan Automation as facility needs grow.
Sundance Digital's Web Inventory has undergone a compete overhaul with a new user interface based on Microsoft's .Net technology. The application, which comes with the company's optional SQL DataServer, lets authorized users access and view active Titan and FastBreak NXT playlists, server and/or tape inventory database information, Intelli-Sat schedules, and Lo-Resolution browse copies of server content, if available, on internal or secure private networks.
Redundancy options are being added as a standard feature of Titan and FastBreak NXT series systems with the introduction of N+1 capability. Unlike Sundance Digital's full "N+N" TitanSync or ListSync configurations, the new N+1 is a middle-ground solution that utilizes one (or more, but not one per channel) spare server outputs in the event of a playout port failure. The automation automatically senses any sudden absence of status, cues the spare server port and performs an "Auto-JIP" to join the playback stream on-the-fly within 15-20 seconds.
NAS - "Network Attached Storage" - provides an economical near-line spinning-disk based storage solution as a cost-effective alternative to more costly on-line server storage. Offered in a range of standard RAID configurations and capacities, NAS bundles include both the storage, and disk/archive management applications.
See Sundance Digital at NAB 2006 at Booth No. SU 1425.
(SP)