While the emerging concepts of remote processing and storage and “At-Home” production might be new to some, the team at Pac-12 Networks, the sports media production arm of the collegiate Pac-12 Conference, has been doing it—and refining their IT-centric workflows—for years. When you are tasked with supplying content across multiple platforms generated from 100 venues across 12 campuses, it’s just not humanly possible to deploy and manage all of the resources required.
Imagine Communications has implemented a new multichannel playout center for Alpha TV in Athens, Greece. The new installation gives Alpha TV the ability to meet its viewers’ demand for HD on all channels, and builds a platform for future growth plans. It also ensures business continuity by providing full redundancy, eliminating the risk of any channel going off air.
TV Azteca continues to grow in terms of the number of programming hours they produce, as well as by expanding to create content for OTT and other digital platforms. With plans to make a gradual transition to IP distribution, cloud-based operations and 4K UHD, the company was looking to replace aging playout and master control infrastructure with flexible technology that would enable them to efficiently run their current business and easily evolve to meet future requirements.
At the recent IBC Show in Amsterdam, it was clear that when discussing the design and deployment of next generation video production and distribution infrastructures, manufacturers of the technology and processes required are now using significantly different technical terms. Now, familiar words like “encoding”, “playout” and “software defined networks’ are being replaced by computer-geek terms “Blockchain”, “Kubernetes clusters”, “Docker containers”, “software stacks” and “cyber security.”
New software provides an automation control interface and a video pipeline delivering video and audio in a variety of output formats.
Embracing the ‘lean engineering’ philosophy of high performing companies, such as Amazon, Google, Netflix and Tesla, will enable Grass Valley to innovate faster, and at scale.