Grass Valley Ships 200th GV Stratus System

Five years after Grass Valley (a Belden Brand) began shipping its GV STRATUS Video Production & Content Management product, a total of 200 systems have now been installed — almost one per week since the launch. Customers have relied on GV STRATUS to provide complete and adaptable production workflows, with media production tools to assist ingest, editing, content aggregation, logging, transfer and playout.

With version 4.5 released this month, the GV STRATUS Video Production and Content Management System is one of the most widely used systems for live programming, according to Grass Valley. Roughly half are used in news environments, with the other half serving sports, production, and play-to-air applications. The full set of production tools in one application helps broadcasters better manage entertainment, on-air operations and production media workflows to stay competitive.

Companies such as Los Angeles-based KCBS, Shaw Communications Inc., the Pepsi Center, Sky Racing, Māori Television, Tencent, TV Cultura, TV Nova, VC Medios and Canal 9 are using the more than 6,000 seats of GV STRATUS around the world to help create and deliver breaking news and live programming quickly by taking advantage of improved operations management, either in the field or in the newsroom. Users are able to work more efficiently with remote collaboration features and by utilizing the sophisticated rules-based workflow engine to automate complicated tasks.

“In everyday life, GV STRATUS enables us to increase efficiency either for live production or for our management system,” explains Joël Antonin, co-CTO of Canal 9 in Switzerland.“With multiple rules and configurations, Grass Valley allowed us to go further, even in a small infrastructure like ours.”

Tencent Video, China’s largest and most used Internet service portal, and the country’s biggest video website, relies on GV STRATUS to meet the ever-increasing demand for online video content. “For our show The 15 of Us, we researched and tested a number of solutions,” says Chang Shu Lei, technical director, The 15 of Us, Tencent.“We found GV STRATUS to be the most appropriate for our program workflow because of its program management, acquisition, editing and playout tools.”

TV Cultura in Brazil has 30 GV STRATUS seats. “By going with GV STRATUS from Grass Valley, we’re getting much more than an upgrade for our production system,” notes Gilvani Moletta, technology director at TV Cultura. “In addition to improved connectivity and GV STRATUS being a future-ready application, we chose this solution because it will also help us reduce operational costs and create a more agile production environment.”

With customizable features and the ability to scale or expand seamlessly as production needs change, GV STRATUS is an ideal solution for broadcasters looking to be more efficient. It integrates easily with other equipment in the workflow and is easy for operators to learn, reducing operational costs and creating a more agile production environment.

“The task-driven tools in GV STRATUS operate in a wide variety of environments and can be tailored for each user’s job function, so collaboration becomes easier throughout the entire production lifecycle,” says Mike Cronk, SVP of strategic marketing, Grass Valley. “The fact that 200 broadcasters are now relying on GV STRATUS to get programming to air every day says a lot about the system and its ability to meet the individual needs of so many different kinds of operations. We expect to see continued growth and adoption of GV STRATUS as more and more broadcasters discover the advantages and long-term benefits. This is an exciting milestone for us and a testament to the outstanding work done by our team of passionate engineers.”