Pro-Bel’s Morpheus Automation System Has Scheduling Tools
by | Sep 15, 2008 - 10:33:48 AM
Pro-Bel comes to IBC with a
range of innovations to its Morpheus automation system developed in direct
response to the business requirements of customers. They are demonstrating Morpheus
at the IBC Convention in Stand 3.A61
“Automation systems are an integral part of a broadcaster’s business model,”
says Pro-Bel CTO Dave Collins. “In addition to new content-delivery
functionality, our latest automation developments enable our customers to
deploy enhanced operational security, flexibility, and channel branding, and do
it all in a much more cost-effective way.”
New at IBC is the Advanced Scheduling Tool for Morpheus. Developed for
multichannel environments, the tool brings a new level of flexibility to
search-and-replace automation operations. It allows new content to be rapidly
and accurately introduced across multiple channels, with an operator able to
search for material within specified search constraints and use an onscreen
report, showing every scheduled instance, to alter any metadata field on either
the entire report or on individually selected events.
“This delivers enormous flexibility,” says Collins, “and adds to the powerful
channel branding capabilities of Morpheus, especially when coupled with another
enhancement, Alternative Break Scheduling, which allows for multiple options to
be scheduled for each commercial break slot. This enables very rapid reactions
in a live scenario, for example during sports events, where break duration and
content may need to change instantly based upon what happens on the field of
play.”
Even more operational flexibility, and considerable cost savings are now
available to users with the development of a new 64-bit version of Morpheus.
This delivers much greater power and flexibility of configuration, as a single
Morpheus event store can now support up to 32 channels rather than eight. It
also represents the potential for significant cost savings on hardware, since fewer
servers are required for a given configuration, and all supported devices in a
system can be shared across a larger channel count.
Morpheus ICE – Pro-Bel’s integrated single-box channel playout platform – which
is making its European debut at IBC, is already benefitting from an enhancement
to its Video Network Manager. This allows advanced management of both primary
and secondary content, specifically subtitle and voiceover files.
Also at IBC will be updated versions of two Morpheus developments first shown
at NAB: Panoplay, which allows fully redundant mirroring and disaster recovery
across multiple playout sites, and Event Start Time Linking, to allow
synchronised triggering of scheduled events in multichannel systems.
“These developments hugely increase the channel architecture flexibility and
resilience strategy options available within the Morpheus automation range,”
says Collins. “Morpheus helps broadcasters react swiftly to evolving
operational and business requirements.”
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