News, Newsno |

13 dicembre 2018

CASE STUDY: University of Gdansk (Poland)

Among the several projects deployed in 2018, surely the end-to-end workflow provided to the University of Gdansk, (Poland), occupies a special place of honor.

In May 2018, SI Media’s official partner in Poland, 4Vision (Warsaw), has been officially awarded and requested to design a workflow able to cover all aspects of television broadcast, in order to create an integrated environment capable of training the students in all the processes around a modern television channel. 4Vision designed and built the virtual studio, the master control room, the editing stations and the production control room, and all the equipment involved, while SI Media has taken care of providing a turnkey solution for the software, a strategic and extremely successful educational project in the heart of UE.System has been supplied and got final commissioning in less than one month between the end of august and the beginning of the academic year, thanks to the great effort of all players involved.

Master Control Room at Gdansk University

Key Points:

-1+1 automation channels fully mirrored, channel branding included

-Base band and file ingest

-Client-server architecture, no kvm involved

-Integration with ChyronHego for live studio graphics

-MAM fully integrated with EdiusPro 9

-NRCS system workflow with integration via MOS with Autoscript Teleprompter

News, Newsno |

13 dicembre 2018

| by SiMedia

CASE STUDY: Tbc (Tanzania)

In 2018 TBC (Tanzanian Broadcasting Corporation) selected SI Media and Onset Systems to implement the new project for production and transmission.

The project started in early September with remote configuration in Tel Aviv and has been successfully completed in November with onsite installation and training in Dar es Salaam. In the same period, Utalii Tanzania (the Tourism Confederation of Tanzania), decided to start its own television channel to promote the natural and cultural beauties of this wonderful country in the heart of Africa.Also in this case SI Media and Onset Systems have been awarded to provide the solution for continuity transmission (main and backup) of its thematic channel.

SI Media performing training at TBC

During 2018, East Africa has been, once again, one of the key regions for SI Media, a region which is investing a lot in television and digital media production, with a particular attention to the integration with Social Medias of the news production workflow. SI Media’s platform goes perfectly with these demands and its result is the growing list of customers in the region.

Coming back to TBC, the new system will cover MCR automation workflow, media asset management and production for 2 live studios.

TBC Master Control Room

Key Points:

2+2 automation channels fully mirrored
Client-server architecture, no kvm involved
External dedicated character generator engine
Device controller to control A\v Router and Master Control from Ross Video
2 live studios
Central Archive provided by GBLabs and library from Qualstar fully integrated in SI Media MAM workflow
Traffic\scheduling solution for the 2 continuity channels
4 base band ingest channels

News, Newsno |

13 dicembre 2018

| by SiMedia

INTERVIEW : Cristiano Brion, SI Media Project Manager

Cristiano, 2018 is about to end, how would you summarize it, mostly referring to the delivered projects?

This closing year has been the harbinger of several interesting projects. As project manager, I had the chance to personally follow many of them. I’ve started in January, with a trip to Benin to upgrade the automation system of the national television ORTB. Then in March I’ve proceeded with a new installation (for MCR and NRCS) in Panama at HosannaTV. In May, we’ve started the major onsite installation of the biggest project ever delivered by SI Media, the end-to-end workflow (automation, NRCS, MAM) of the national television of Uzbekistan, NTRK (Tashkent). The onsite installation was the second stage of a process begun at the end of 2017 with the remote installation and configuration in Mainz, at BFE (our partner and systems integrator for this project).Between July and August, I’ve followed an important installation in Italy, namely the fusion of Telereggio and TRC Modena, historical broadcasters from Emilia Romagna. Last but not least, in November a new and important trip as project manager, this time to TBC, the national broadcaster of Tanzania.

A real “tour de force”, around 4 continents.

Which are the feelings you get exporting all over the world a fully Italian brand?

Bringing our products and our vision to so many different countries and cultures… it is a great feeling. Personally I always try to establish professional and human relations as well, and this has always allowed me to face the challenges with awareness. Having a good relation with the customer ensures cooperation and respect when it’s time to face the unavoidable issues that our market present every day.

Before you have introduced the topic of the systems integrator. I assume you do not work alone usually. How are the relations with your partners?

Regarding partners, it is extremely important to cooperate at best to reach a common goal, trying to pursue it sharing our wealth of experience, improving and optimizing all the processes of the deployment of a system. We at SI Media provide complex and comprehensive workflows, which makes extremely important to have lasting and satisfying relations with our partners.

Changing topic, it’s never easy to stay abroad so often and for so long…

I would say that after 20 years in this business I’ve found my balance. It’s still not easy and sometimes stressful. However the possibility to have a job that brings me around the world, meeting new people and seeing new places, it’s worth. Following a project and successfully completing its delivery is still, as the first day, a great satisfaction that I can bring with joy to my private life as well.

What about the next challenges?

Personally, keeping improving my skills to follow the new projects with more and more technological know-how. From SI Media’s side, expand the range of solutions for our customers, especially towards the cloud and the web.

SI Media working in Mainz with BFE for Mtrk (Uzbekistan)

Newsno |

21 giugno 2018

| by SiMedia

INTERVIEW: Davide Sabbion, SI Media pre-sales manager for APAC

BroadcastAsia exhibition is around the corner so we take this occasion to talk about Asian market with Davide Sabbion, SI Media pre-sales manager for APAC, in charge of SI Media branch offices in Singapore and Bangkok.

Q: This is a special year for SI Media, isn’t it?

A: Yes, absolutely! We are proud to say that this year we celebrate our 40th anniversary, 40 years of experience, innovations and successful stories. Growing year by year, SI Media is now one of the few companies able to provide an End-to-End software solution (NRCS-MAM-Automation-BMS), with installations in every corner of the planet, from Europe, to Africa, South East Asia, Japan, Russia, Caribbean and Central America. Speaking about APAC, we have to mention also the new branch office in Thailand: it’s a matter of fact that a customer is more confident when sales and support services can be provided locally, that’s why the new office is a key-point for the business in Southeast Asian Indochinese peninsula.

Q: What are you showcasing at this year exhibition?

A: We are proud to show the results of the OEM agreement between us and Harmonic Inc.: Neva, our video-server powered by Harmonic and controlled via proprietary API by SI Media automation system. Besides that, during BroadcastAsia we will present the latest news of our turnkey solution, such as the Web Proxy Editor and the integration of SI Media MAM with AI (Artificial Intelligence), useful, for instance, to analyze and convert audio into a subtitle or to recognize explicit contents. I’m sure that this integration will be very useful here, into APAC area, where broadcasters have to daily work with censure and profanity.

Q: Are there some specific requests from Asian customers?

A: Here in Asia the market is heavily pushing towards 4k contents management and IP transmission, more than other regions. For instance, it’s not news that Japan has announced its intent to broadcast 8K by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Furthermore, speaking about IP transmission, almost all the countries here already have a high-quality mobile network, this means that the broadcasters and telco operators are ready to invest since also the audience is there, on-the-go. This is true also for silver surfers, not only for kids! An important topic related to IP is the Cloud: SI Media, besides being one of the few software house able to provide and end-to-end IP workflow, is natively ready for the virtualization and for the cloud. Finally, the experience gained with the social media allow our automation playouts to be multiple endpoints, both towards classic media and new media such as Facebook and Twitter Live, YouTube, Livestream and many more. Last but not least, thanks to our customer’s feedback, we have improved and updated our censor module, a specific tool created for Asian market, fully integrated with our MAM and Traffic system.

Q: And regarding next steps?

A: Broadcasting market is rapidly changing: we have to continue the development of our platform, in order to maintain our high-technology standards, adding all the features needed to offer a complete and updated platform to our customers. Now, with stable and well known references inside the APAC area we are ready to land to other countries, such as Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Taiwan and Hong Kong, countries where we are already in touch with local distributors and system integrators.

… because this year we celebrate the 40th anniversary but we look forward to the next 40!

See you next week, in Singapore.

Newsno |

19 giugno 2018

| by SiMedia

CASE STUDY : Hosanna Vision (Panama)

First half of 2018 has been very productive for SI Media. Several installations have been deployed around the world and many will come in the second semester as well. Among the projects we have completed in this period, one of the most significant has been Hosanna Vision in Panama.

Hosanna Vision is a Christian Television Channel, a benchmark for all the Caribbean for its infrastructure and the quality of its contents. Hosanna Vision chose SI Media as unique provider of traffic and automation system for its main channel.

All the servers have been installed, configured and shipped from Italy including storage and library, and this has optimized at best the deployment time in Panama. In less than 6 weeks the installation has been completed, staff trained and the channel officially launched on air.

Which are the peculiarities of this installation for SI Media?

First of all, SI Media has taken care also of the system integration, providing a fully redundant network infrastructure based on Aruba, dealing with its installation, configuration, cabling and testing.

1) In terms of workflow, SI Media provided an end-to-end solution, including:

-4 ingest channels to generate contents from satellites, studio and vtr

-file ingest from drop folders, P2\XDCam

-media asset management, including workflow manager, proxy generator, transcoder, quality check and integration via plug-in with Adobe Premiere Pro

-traffic\scheduling and advertising management to generate daily playlist

-redundant automation channel with dedicated character generator

– Studio playout for live productions and news

2) Integrated devices\storages

The proposed automation system is based on SI Media controlling via API 2x Belden\Grass Valley K2 for automation (main\bk), studio playout and base band ingest. SI Media provided and integrated in its workflow a GBLabs 96TB storage, FAST NAS F16 NITRO, as central archive.

As deep archive, SI Media is controlling a SONY ODS M30 with a dedicated SI Media plug-in which allows to archive, retrieve and perform partial restoring.

Finally, to automate the controlling of the sources, SI Media has interfaced a EVERTZ XENON 128×128 A/V Router.