Grass Valley, Vivesta Offer Affordable Content Management

Thomson's Grass Valley division has joined forces with Netherlands-based company Vivesta to market affordable channel management, automation and content management solutions to small- and mid-sized broadcasters.

The offerings will be based around Grass Valley's K2 media server and Vivesta's MediaFlow scalable broadcast management and automation encoding workflow software.

Transmission schedules and playout operations can be managed and monitored from any location via Web browser user interfaces. The modular approach of the MediaFlow channel management system in combination with the Grass Valley K2 server delivers a reliable platform with the ability to scale to an advanced multi-channel play-out solution as necessary.

"The tight integration of Vivesta MediaFlow software and the Grass Valley K2 media servers enables us to provide broadcasters a comprehensive and highly scalable channel management solution," said Thijs Vanderhallen, Marketing Director from Vivesta, as well as providing a play-out solution based on proven components for a lower cost per channel than conventional solutions."

"This joint solution is part of our effort to continue to drive down the already affordable price per channel of our powerful K2 media servers in all types of content distribution workflows, making sophisticated content management technology available to a wide range of broadcasters," said Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of the Grass Valley division within Thomson. "K2 also offers the utmost in flexibility. Thanks to the K2 server's AMP protocol support, it's easy for leading developers such as Vivesta to quickly and easily perform key tasks, such as asset management."

MediaFlow can be expanded with one or more workflow application modules, such as program management, scheduling, long-term planning, broadband VOD publishing, rights management, as well as device automation modules for the control of routers, transcoders, graphic servers, and video servers. The playout platform delivers multiple broadcast channels and VOD services on digital TV, the Internet, and DVB-H mobile video. The MediaFlow platform deployed is based on two K2 media clients, a K2 media server, and K2 RAID storage.

The MediaFlow platform has already been deployed by United Broadcast Facilities in the Netherlands for a new multi-channel music station.