The Turnkey Broadcasting Solutions

Tag Archives: traffic

Newsno |

19 giugno 2018

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.

Newsno |

16 marzo 2017

| by SiMedia

SOFTWARE APPLICATION: Media Cloud

SI Media announces Media Cloud, the first end-to-end broadcast software-defined solution available on the Cloud!

IP and IT have become a must in the broadcast market lately and the media workflow needs to become more and more agile and dynamic.

Contents are required from multiple viewing platforms, in a competitive scenario where it’s mandatory to have flexible and cost-effective architectures.

What is more flexible and scalable than a complete suite of virtualized services to manage all the processes from ingest to delivery?

SI Media provides an end-to-end solution starting from ingest and going through quality check, proxy generation and transcode to the desired format to any destination.

Always operating remotely, via Web interface, users can access the contents, search&browse, edit, insert them on bulletins (NRCS) and playlists (Traffic/BMS) by means of SI Media Web client.

A separated application allows to remotely control the player which is streaming a DVB-IP flow (usually an H-264) ready to be sent to the distribution service/department (multiplexer, teleport..).

With the generation of the as-run log, SI Media completes the end-to-end workflow on the Cloud. This solution allows deploying SI Media modules on 3^rd party digital platforms.

Virtualized services mean reduced TCO’s, an increased capability to scale and change on the fly, allowing the customers to be more flexible and adaptive to the requests of the broadcast market.

Besides this, a workflow based on these premises, allows to easily build a cross-platform service, reaching more and more audiences and, consequently, optimizing the revenue of each content.

Scheduling system VS BMS: What is the right choice for you?

Posted in Newsno |

10 dicembre 2015

| by SiMedia

What is the difference between a scheduling system and a Business Management system? Which one should you choose and why one is more expensive than the other? In this article, we will try to answer these commonly asked questions keeping the tone simple and non-technical.

The best way to start is by describing what the two system does:

A scheduling system is a software used to create a daily 24 hours playlist or a non-linear playlist starting from programs (movies, TV Series, live events and others).
A Business Management System (BMS) is a software used to handle a daily 24 hours playlist or a non-linear playlist starting from the rights and contracts linked with specific content (movies, TV Series, live events and others).

The ultimate goal of the 2 systems is the same: send a playlist to a playout system or for online distribution.

The main differences between these systems are 2:

The trigger point: The scheduling system is content driven, while the BMS is driven by deals. This is the main and most important difference: does your company have agents and a sales group to handle contract linked to the content you broadcast? Yes? Then probably you need a BMS. On the other hand, if your content is mainly self-produced it might be enough for you a simple scheduling system that permits to slot the content in a 24 hours timeline or in a list ready for OTT (Over The Top) platforms.

The planning needs: How do you plan your playlist and what is the timeframe? Do you define a playlist monthly or quarterly by knowing what is the exact content that will be on air (e.g. The Avengers, Arrow)? In this case might be enough a scheduling system.

On the other hand, if you have 2 different teams, one normally planning quarterly or yearly by category (e.g. Movie. TV series) and not by exact content and the other team (frequently called Traffic team) taking care of the content only on a later stage, then you need a BMS.

To conclude, we can see a Scheduling system normally used in small-medium entities, were the Traffic team is the one taking care of the entire daily playlist. A scheduling system is standard and does not differ much in functionalities comparing different broadcasters.

A BMS is normally necessary in bigger entities, where there are multiple teams with different permissions that works on parts of the chain (and one of these parts is the scheduling itself). A BMS has a standard base but is a software that has customized features to adapt to the workflow of the broadcaster, so each company will have a “unique” BMS that fits their way of working.

Keep in mind that there are many other points that have to be analyzed (like advertising, EPG, secondary events, billing, etc) but with these 2 simple directions now you know where to point your attention.

Now is your turn, do you have anything to add? Do you see these needs in your organization and how do you face them?

Newsno |

29 ottobre 2014

| by SiMedia

CASE STUDY: A.S. Roma Channel

In the past weeks SI Media has completed the configuration and installation of a traffic system in Rome, on the television channel of one of the most important European football teams, AS Roma.

The project has been implemented together with Broadcast Solutions, a well-known Italian system integrator, who was looking for a partner able to interface an already existing workflow in the shortest possible time.

The customer indeed wanted to substitute its traffic software with a solution able to integrate ITX Miranda in the automation workflow.

SI Media, thanks to its flexibility and capability to customize its software applications in order to perfectly fit the customer’s needs, has been the perfect choice.

During the installation of SI Media traffic engine MediaList, all the metadata (program names, assets, clip durations and many other fields) have been recovered from the previous system, allowing the operator to start working with the new solution without losing any of the information present in their database.

SI Media performed also the full integration with ITX Miranda automation system, starting from the import of the asset list from ITX Miranda archive and ensuring the data exchange between the two systems in both directions.

The playlists prepared in MediaList are automatically exported to ITX Miranda, while, on the other hand, the as-run log is imported in the traffic system to generate reports and analysis.