Digital Broadcast Centralizes McGraw-Hill Broadcast Operations

Digital Broadcast has installed a centralized broadcast system for McGraw-Hill in which WRTV in Indianapolis controls KERO in Bakersfield, California. The system includes Digital Broadcast’s MediaFire Playout and MediaBank Ingest Servers along with MediaBank Automated Master Control and MediaBank Remote Client to provide a totally integrated and automated centralized operation.

The MediaBank Remote Client provides remote control via network of KERO from the McGraw-Hill’s Digital Service Center in Indianapolis. The central site has complete control and monitoring of the automated playout and satellite recording in Bakersfield. KERO, however, does have the ability to control the playout schedule locally, if that should become necessary.

Redundant MediaFire Broadcast Servers provide the playout for ABC-affiliated KERO in Bakersfield. The MediaFire Servers include a direct interface with Pathfire to immediately receive and air syndicated programming from the Pathfire Receive Server. Programming received via satellite into the Pathfire server is automatically transferred to the MediaFire at gigabit speeds. A half-hour program transfers in less than six minutes. The syndicated material is already prepped and ready to air with no requirement to segment the programming or transfer it to baseband for processing.

Playout is controlled with MediaFire’s integral MediaBank Automated Master Control software. With a direct interface to the station’s traffic and billing system, MediaBank Automation provides completely automated master control operations, including control of the station’s SD and HD routers.

MediaBank Ingest Servers include MediaBank Automated Scheduled Record for automatically scheduling records from satellite or other inputs. Also included is MediaBank Segmenter software that allows the user to browse an MPEG-2 file and trim or remove segments from it without having to uncompress the material. The unique Segmenter performs frame-accurate edits on I, P or B frames in long or short GOP MPEG-2 format.

The MediaBank Central System features a unique design in which the automation is totally integrated with the system hardware, resulting in very high performance and significant cost advantages.