SI MEDIA NEVER STOPPED
SI Media worked from home but never stopped: a quick look at four installations around the world during the lockdown
In order to ensure their work was performed safely, SI Media owner Luigi Panozzo adopted smart working from home for fifty employees while equipping the Villa Costanza headquarters in Riese Pio X of every comfort in anticipation of the restart.
The entire SI Media team returned to headquarters, from technicians to operators for the new start post Covid-19. Upon their return they also evaluated what was accomplished during the lockdown period. SI Media never stopped while the world was in lockdown, continuing to work at a fast pace with operators located in their homes and around the world. During this period several installations were made remotely exploiting the new .YES! platform.
Among these was the very first with the next generation .YES! platform. The national station on the Caribbean island of Aruba, Telearuba, is officially preparing to go on air. As the leading television station on the island, Telearuba, provides locally-produced variety programming with the primary purpose of tourism promotion, information and entertainment for people of all ages. A single screen user interface greets the .YES! users displaying incoming recordings, media asset management, traffic, news, playout and studio playout.
Also during the lockdown period, Television Nacional de Uruguay (TNU), the national television of Uruguay awarded SI Media an international public tender issued last year by the Uruguayan public broadcaster. The .YES! platform, SI Media’s next generation Linux based software was installed, implementing Matrox SDI I/O DSX LE4 boards in Dell servers. TNU purchased SI Media Media Asset Management, two fully redundant MCR Playout Automation systems with clone backups, four baseband ingest channels as well as the complete newsroom computer system including Studio Automation. The installed NRCS at TNU includes social media content sharing, both for input and for output: generating and publishing stories from social media. With additional support of iMediaNewsClient, the SI Media App (IOS and Android) allows the journalist to start writing the story, shooting videos, taking photos and attaching them to their press report and finally transferring all data directly to the central archive. Another key point of the installation will be to integrate .YES! with 3rd party HSM software and with Vizrt graphics system.
Also, within Northern Italy during the lockdown period, SI Media completed an important agreement with Telenuovo Verona that launched a real “S.O.S.” to the company. The requirements included a system that would allow journalists to work from home in an easy and immediate way, features inherent in the .YES!software. Telenuovo has been working with SI Media software since 2000 and recently requested software customization to integrate the Newsroom with their existing broadcast system.
Continuing remotely through the lockdown, SI Media also completed an agreement in Kuwait for Al Qabas. The installation is the first for the creation of a video news collection platform on Vimeo. SI Media immediately set to work proposing the new .YES! platform. Al Qabas needed to quickly implement a streaming channel with a simplified traffic and scheduling architecture that builds a playlist feeding a live playout stream. File ingest is directly managed and playout includes the option to insert a logo/watermark. With the playout system being purely IP-based the .YES! platform intuitively manages all the workflow in the Cloud and with support of SI Media technicians when needed. The system was installed on a virtual server provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform, opting for a very high-performance profile allowing the launch of the Al Qabas channel on the Al Qabas website in just 3 days!
Despite the world in lockdown mode, global organizations must continue to deliver content to the public, be it news or entertainment. Many of these broadcast and media companies rely on SI Media to maximize the processes of delivering programming to the public. Remote production and management are part of the SI Media strategies, before lockdown and continuing when the world opens for business.
