In Broadcast - July 2014 - 63

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 33 - JULY 2014

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

N E W S

InMEDIA

The Changing Face Of Broadcast
IT And Automation Systems
Broadcast automation workflows have been altered immensely by the changes
imposed as IP networks mature into viable robust globe-spanning systems...

By Monica Heck
Contributing Editor

T

he very deﬁnition of broadcast
automation is in constant ﬂux,
inﬂuenced by the advent of new
media workﬂows, 4K and cloudbased technology. Automation is
becoming more resilient, smarter
and more ﬂexible and its inﬂuence
now extends beyond the walls of
the master control room.
One thing automation is not,
however, is dead. "It's an interesting
moment in time for automation,"
said Tom Gittins, Sales Director of
Pebble Beach Systems. "There's
a general thrust in the press at the
moment suggesting that the days
of automation are coming to an end
and that before long, everything will
be done by a channel-in-a-box type
(CiaB) solution. If anything, we're
bucking that trend."

Tom Gittins, Pebble
Beach Systems

"...It's an interesting
moment in time for
automation

"

Gittins sees a wide range of
different operational and technical
requirements across a broad
range of different channel types.
"There's still a big market for state
broadcasters and sports and live
channels, where major revenue
comes into play and which are much
less suited to CiaB type technology."
There's still an appetite in the
industry for centralised automation
technology, according to Jason
Salyards, Product Line Manager
for Automation at Imagine
Communications. "We are seeing
up to 8% growth in linear broadcast
channels year on year, so there is
still a steady growth rate for those
types of channels. New facilities are
coming online and a lot of facilities
are consolidating. We continue
to see people purchasing and

Mariano L.
Monteverde, VSN

and
"...Cable, satelliteare
telco operators
increasingly securing
the rights to distribute
content and need to
scale out

"

expanding automation systems."
The profile of customers
requiring MCR automation is
changing however, particularly in
Europe where VSN Sales Manager
Mariano L. Monteverde has noticed
an increase in the presence of
large-scale playout centres and a
decrease in the number of small
customers or local TV stations.
"Cable, satellite and telco
operators are increasingly securing
the rights to distribute content and
need to scale out," he said. "Those
companies, or the companies that
provide the content distribution
services, need to handle a large
number of TV channels and the
playout and automation market
is now more targeted to this type
of customer."
Monteverde sees that what
was understood as automation,

Amarin Krub Transmission Control Room in Bangkok, Thailand

mainly for baseband equipment,
is being now combined with the
automation of business processes
for the content preparation (QC,
dubbing, subtitling, post-production)
to drive orchestration for an
optimised workflow.
"I don't see much investment
from traditional broadcasters into
the MCR at this point, but rather
on Business Process Management
(BPM), the production of content,
the optimisation of their workﬂows
and on getting ROI on existing
investments now that the DTT wave
has passed. By contrast, satellite
or cable platform operators and
companies that provide them
with content lineal distribution
services are the ones that are
currently expanding their linear
distribution and investing more in
MCR automation."

Shift Towards IP

One of the major trends affecting
MCR automation is the shift from
an SDI environment towards pure
ﬁle-based workﬂow and IT-centric
operations. With
the arrival of 4K,
browser-based
applications
are finally on
the rise in the
automation
space.
"Historically,
the industry
believed
a
web-based
application was
not adequate
for a real-time
Florical System's Smart Central acquisition application
TheQ was unveiled at NAB
automation

system," said Salyards. "But with
the evolution of some of the HTML
tools and web browsers, we've seen
that you can actually have real-time
information and instrumentation
presented in that kind of platform."
Shawn Maynard, Vice President
and General Manager of Florical
Systems, has been expecting
automation to break free from the
master control room since the 2007.
"I think being able to access and
manage systems from anywhere
[outside the MCR] is the future of
automation. I came as a broadcaster
to the vendor side of the industry
and felt automation companies were
very computer terminal centric. The
manager had to physically enter the
MCR room to ask questions and I
wanted to change the game."
His answer is a software solution,
accessible through a cloud or web
gateway, that enables automation
to be accessed, managed and run
remotely through apps from various
devices, requiring fewer staff.
"Now I can have only one operator
monitoring a number of channels
and I can develop and manage
my operations from one location
without building out a centralised
infrastructure. So we're deﬁnitely
seeing less and less of the traditional
automation with RS422 control
cables with hardware and much
more with IP control and streaming."
The impact of this trend is that
traditional broadcast manufacturers
may ﬁnd it hard to adapt. "Most
traditional broadcast equipment
vendors are playing catch-up
having to replace their proprietary
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