IPV’s SpectreView browse solution has been selected by ViaSat Broadcast to form part of its new automated playout facility in Riga, Latvia. The project is being lead by Luxembourg-based systems integration company BCE and is expected to be completed in early 2010.
ViaSat is one of the largest free-TV and satellite premium pay-TV operators in both Scandinavia and the Baltic regions. The new playout facility is part of a major renovation program that will enable ViaSat to replace its three smaller local playout centers currently in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania as well as build a new central playout hub to manage the existing nine channels and facilitate future channel expansion. In addition to the playout of the Baltic channels, the new center will provide DR services for ViaSat’s UK operation.
The system includes Pebble Beach automation and media management capabilities as well as Front Porch Digital’s DIVArchive, Omneon Spectrum and MediaDeck servers and Apple Final Cut Pro (FCP) editors. The entire workflow is under the management of Pebble Beach’s Neptune automation and Anchor media management systems, which includes the movement of media between London and Riga via the DIVArchive.
Once ingested, assets are tagged as passing QC and they are transcoded using multiple IPV SpectreView XCode engines to create low-resolution browse proxy copies. The IPV browse resolution content has multiple purposes including the selection of clips for promo production, content segmentation for advertising insertion, and the provision of voice-overs and subtitle files. The content can be viewed on 20 Razorfish clients installed in ViaSat’s facilities in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. EDLs from Razorfish are used to trigger partial file restores of high-resolution material from the DIVArchive system and can also be shared with FCP suites to provide an efficient workflow for final promo production. “SpectreView’s new ability to provide multitrack audio, with up to 11 stereo tracks, was crucial to meet the demands of ViaSat’s multilingual transmissions,” said Tom Gittins, director of sales for Pebble Beach Systems.
