Indonesian Production Specialist Adds Replay Capabilities with Tightrope Media Systems

Indomedia Pekar Sentosa, a production services company, has added slow motion replay to its offering using the ZEPLAY multichannel instant replay platform from Tightrope Media Systems. This four in, four out HD server provides comprehensive functionality, including variable speed replay.

Starting some twenty years ago as a wedding videographer, Indomedia Pekar Sentosa has grown to provide production services and rental equipment to the whole market including broadcasters like Star Sports and international events producers like Java Production. It has a roster of equipment including its own outside broadcast truck.

The ZEPLAY system was developed specifically to provide instant replay and slow motion functionality. ZEPLAY continually records four 100 Mbps HD streams and provides replays from any or all of them at the same time without interrupting the recording. Capacity of the standard unit is 40 hours of 1080i HD for each of the four channels, for 160 total hours.

“Our broadcast and top end production clients wanted us to provide replay capabilities that would be more cost-efficient and increase productivity, and at a glance it was clear that ZEPLAY would meet our requirements,” said Edwin Effendi, technical advisor at Indomedia Pekar Sentosa. “We were a very early adopter — acting as a beta test site for Tightrope — which, like new equipment from any manufacturer, meant we had a bit of a bumpy ride at first.”

“The support from Tightrope has been excellent, and the results have been very positive,” he continued. “Unlike other systems, ZEPLAY is easy to learn, intuitive and enhances workflow. We have leased ZEPLAY for big events like the Guinness World Series of Pool and the Djarum Indonesia Badminton Open, and it proved itself by creating playbacks and clip sequences as easy as one, two, three.”

With the latest ZEPLAY 2.0 release, the system incorporates additional features such as a built-in highlight editor with dynamic control and push/skip capabilities, cross-faded switching on both sequence and replays, and built-in clip editing with match frame and multi-angle editing tools designed for extremely fast operation during a live production.

“When we designed ZEPLAY we wanted to be able to put live replays into the hands of everyone who works with video, not just the top broadcasters with big budgets,” said Andy Starks, co-founder of Tightrope Media Systems. “Indomedia Pekar Sentosa is typical of the type of customer we had in mind, and they gave us great feedback during the beta phase. Now we are delighted to continue the relationship as they regularly use the system to add value across their live broadcast production business.”

ZEPLAY has seen action on hundreds of hours of live production in the field and can meet the heavy demands of live sports production.