Russia’s Shopping Live Channel Turns to Aveco’s Automation and Media Asset Management System

Russia’s Shopping Live channel is using Aveco’s ASTRA Control Automation and Media Asset Management system. Shopping Live is a popular teleshopping company serving Russia’s consumers with a state of the art production system.

“Our strategy is to use high production techniques along with fast-paced action to achieve higher sales,” said Michael Bogomolov, Head of TV Production at Shopping Live. “To achieve this, we chose Aveco’s ASTRA MAM and automation system which includes a powerful workflow manager and features to give our crews the ability to manage this complex operation. Our work with Aveco can be summed up simply: ‘Авеко – суперсистема, суперкоманда!'” [translation: Aveco – super system, super company!]

ASTRA manages Shopping Live’s fast paced workflows by using placeholders which enable shows to be scheduled before all the content is available. This gives the production team more time to fine tune their video clips. This feature enables the planning of the show and the production to be independent, yet linked together.

“We are excited about our first sale into Russia and see this as an important key account for future sales in this huge country” said Pavel Potuzak, Managing Director Aveco. “Their complex workflow and high production values are a perfect fit for our ASTRA Suite of Tools and gives them a platform to grow with.”

The Shopping Live workflow starts in the studio where the presenters show products in topic oriented shows. The shows are ingested under control of Aveco’s ASTRA Ingest into the video server. ASTRA Browse creates the low resolution clips. Users then browse the low resolution clips as proxies, mark segment boundaries and create new high resolution clips ready for broadcast.

Playlists are manually created in ASTRA by using Playlist editing tools. Playlists include a combination of live shots from the studio, rich graphics for additional information, and pre-produced clips from the video server.

The playout is then all automated under ASTRA control. ASTRA controls Shopping Live’s Harmonic ChannelPort for clip playout, master control switching, as well as the insertion of rich graphics. An as-run log is exported for playout evaluation and internal processing.

ASTRA MAM manages the playout workflow, archiving of clips and shows, and the purging of content. In addition, metadata management enables Shopping Live to use extensive metadata to manage all the product clips so they can be easily found when needed.