Starz Entertainment is using the compact, rack-mountable Presto video switcher from Wohler Technologies to support its confidence recording, compliance and logging activities.
Located in Englewood, CO, Starz Entertainment recently completed a migration to a new IT-based playout environment for its 16 distinct movie channels, including the company's flagship Starz and Encore brands. The Presto video switcher works in tandem with the facility's existing Volicon monitoring and logging system, which continuously records the network's 44 unique HD and SD return confidence feeds.
A compact 1RU solution, Presto provides quick at-a-glance monitoring for all of the inputs going to the Volicon servers — making up to 16 sources readily available for monitoring and straightforward switching via integrated OLED push buttons. Because each of the 16 OLED screens on the Presto serves as a switching button that displays an SDI stream from any source, Starz operators can easily see that all of the inputs to the Presto unit have active video. To route the input video and embedded audio to downstream QC monitoring and scopes for verification, operators simply press the button displaying the appropriate stream.
Downstream from the Presto video switchers, Starz has upgraded all of its BOC and Media Encode stations with Wohler's operator-friendly AMP2-E16V modular audio/video processing monitor. The AMP2-E16V provides dual 4.3in OLED displays that make the system ideal for dedicated video monitoring, loudness metering, audio routing and mixing control, and DolbyE Zoom functions. In the Starz operation, the AMP2-E16V's user-defined presets enable operators to monitor simple AES stereo pairs, Dolby E, and 12-channel embedded feeds with ease.
