Pebble Beach Systems stand at IBC 2018 will showcase integration between its Dolphin integrated channel device and XStream EFS shared storage options from storage and workflow experts EditShare.

EditShare storage improves system redundancy, adds flexibility for preview channels, and offers fast turnaround of late arriving content.

“We are encountering use cases for shared storage more and more frequently as the user base for Dolphin continues to grow and broadcasters seek to add to the resilience and flexibility of their operations,” says Alison Pavitt, Marketing Manager at Pebble Beach Systems. “EditShare has a huge amount of experience in production and playout workflows, and they offer guaranteed stream performance for these mission-critical applications. This makes their flexible and robust shared storage options a great fit in the Dolphin deployments we design with our customers.”

Dolphin is a compact and cost-effective integrated channel device which, operating under the control of Pebble’s Marina automation, delivers highly automated integrated audio, video and graphics functionality for ingest, channel branding and frame-accurate multi-channel playout. The flexible pipeline design enables the virtual output chain to be customised for each channel, specifying the order in which functions including graphics, effects, and aspect ratio conversion are handled within the system.

Having access to external shared storage which has backups of all locally stored content is an effective solution in several key use cases. In so-called ‘N+m’ redundancy scenarios there may be a number of channels playing out on Dolphin devices, with an additional spare device in the system as a backup. If any one of the main channels fails, the spare would be deployed, but there would inevitably be a delay while the content is copied across to its local storage.

Similarly, it’s possible that the additional ‘spare’ device may be wanted for use as a preview channel, but impractical delays are incurred if, again, content has to first be copied to its local storage.

With EditShare XStream EFS shared storage in the system, any Dolphin device can instantly access the content it needs to either playout the channel, or to view a preview. And for fast turnaround applications, late arriving content onto the shared storage - either by file delivery or completed edits - can be played out immediately on any channel.

Architecting a system to have both local and remote storage also gives additional operational flexibility, enabling playout to continue, for example, during maintenance periods.

“Mission critical broadcast environments require playout solutions with reliable bandwidth and throughput..  There can be no lag or downtime,” comments Lee Griffin, Head of Marketing, EditShare.  “Integrating EditShare XStream EFS shared storage with the Dolphin distribution workflow allows Pebble customers to further automate delivery workflows and play content direct from storage that is backed by fault tolerant, highly scalable node-based architecture. It’s simplifying workflows with peace of mind.”