SYRACUSE, N.Y.— Nine New York State public television
stations have joined forces to contain operating
costs, manage technological change, and free
themselves from the pressure to conduct capital
campaigns.
The nine stations have joined CentralCast LLC,
an organization established to provide centralized
master control operations at its Joint Master Control
Facility (JMCF) located within WCNY-TV/FM’s new
Broadcast and Education Center in Syracuse. N.Y.
CentralCast member stations include: WNET/New
York, WLIW/Long Island, WNED/Buffalo, WXXI/
Rochester, WSKG/Binghamton, WPBS/Watertown,
WMHT/Albany, WCFE/Plattsburgh, and WCNY/Syracuse.
The JMCF will occupy approximately 3,500
square feet of the 57,000 square-foot building,
which cost $20 million to build.
Initially, the JMCF will support 35
streams, which is one primary HDTV and
two or three secondary DTV channels per
station. Since this facility is sized to support
up to 200 DTV channels, it provides
the opportunity for other U.S. PBS stations
to participate.
“In today’s climate, it’s imperative that
we leverage technology to drive new innovative
business models resulting in efficiencies
and real cost savings,” said Robert
Daino, president and chief executive officer
of WCNY and a member of Centralcast
LLC.
“Centralcast LLC was formed to realize
true recurring savings through operational
efficiencies, eliminate redundant equipment,
and reduce maintenance contracts
exceeding $25 million over the next 10
years,” Daino said. “We want to create a
business model that provides for new
revenue streams through a fee for service
model, as well as a self-sustaining approach
for master control operations and
infrastructure support.”
MONITORING BY EXCEPTION
Other key partners of the Centralcast
project are: Azzurro Systems Integration, in
charge of systems integration; Evertz, the
primary end-to-end technology provider;
and Myers Information Systems, a software
vendor providing its enterprise class Pro-
Track traffic, content, and business management
software.
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| CentralCast LLC’s Joint Master Control Facility (JMCF) is located within WCNY-TV/FM’s new Broadcast and Education Center in Syracuse, N.Y. The facility is expected to open in October. |
One of the most interesting aspects of
Centralcast’s model is “monitoring by exception,”
an efficient, automated workflow
that reduces this highly complex centralized
broadcasting process to just three
screens. In other words, no big multiviewer
monitor wall typical of today’s technical
operations centers.
The JMCF leverages the voluminous
Evertz product catalogue, including 3480
Series MPEG-2 encoders, servers, and routers.
But the systems critical to enabling
monitoring by exception are the Evertz
MAGNUM Unified Control System, Vista-
LINK Pro SNMP Monitoring and Control
Software, and Mediator Content Management
and Workflow Platform Solutions.
“Rather than expecting an operator to
watch 35 or more simultaneous streams
looking for problems, our workflow takes
care of its own QC monitoring. Monitoring
of both signal quality and workflow is
automated and integrated into the fabric
of the facility,” said Tim Murphy, director of
file-based solutions for Evertz, in Burlington,
Ontario. “When a problem arises, the
system automatically detects it—such as
a channel with no audio—and puts that
‘touch point’ into a ‘penalty box’ on the
operator’s MAGNUM touch screen.
Monitoring by exception is an intelligent,
data-driven process that only notifies
the operator on duty when a problem develops,
according to Murphy.
“All’s well until a problem appears in
the penalty box on one side of the MAGNUM
touchscreen,” he said. “When the
operator touches the display, more details
appear including graphic depictions pinpointing
the problem and suggested actions
to fix it.”
In some cases the problem may have
already been resolved by the system. For
example, if a scheduled program were not
available on the proper server, automated
messaging would be sent up the chain to
locate and retrieve the missing asset and
move it to where it needs to be. With monitoring
by exception, master control can
now be run by fewer, less highly skilled
operators, reducing labor costs.
AUTOMATED TRAFFIC
MANAGEMENT
According to Murphy, great pains have
been taken to avoid problems altogether.
Evertz master control and automation systems
under the control of the Mediator
platform were configured to cooperate
seamlessly with Myers ProTrack traffic and
scheduling software, in order to facilitate the
end-to-end workflows as much as possible.
“ProTrack takes a comprehensive, holistic
approach to traffic and scheduling,
which results in significant operational
efficiencies and savings,” said Crist Myers,
president and chief executive officer
of Myers Information Systems, based in
Northampton, Mass. “Among its many traffic
functions, ProTrack defines the schedules
and ensures that programs and other
content slated for broadcast are acquired
in time for delivery to air. It also plays an
instrumental role in managing the media
library to ensure that content is purged appropriately
to make the most of the valuable
but limited storage.”
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| Evertz VistalLINK Pro SNMP Monitoring and Control Software |
ProTrack is the traffic system used by
virtually all U.S. PBS member stations,
according to Crist, who adds that public
broadcasters represent a respectable
portion of its overall business. Prior to
joining CentralCast, eight of the nine
PBS stations utilized ProTrack to manage
their broadcast operations. The remaining
station switched over to ProTrack so
all nine would be singing from the same
song sheet. This made it easier for Myers
and Evertz to implement the unified automated
workflow.
“ProTrack was initially designed to
meet the unique requirements of public
broadcasting,” Crist said. “If the nine CentralCast
stations were using nine different
traffic systems, it would have been virtually
impossible to unify them onto a single,
streamlined workflow in a timely or costeffective
manner.”
RESILIENT ARCHITECTURE
The stations will go online in a staggered
fashion beginning with WCNY on
Oct. 31. When ready, each station will flip
the switch that moves the master control
from their local facilities, now known as
“spokes,” to the JMCF, now the “hub.”
“Signals will move between the hub
and spokes over a high-performance IP
video network,” said Marc Bressack, executive
vice president of Azzurro Systems
Integration, in Northvale, N.J. “Programs,
content, and interstitial programming for
the HD and SD channels [like the Create
network] will move from each spoke to
the hub where it will be ingested, QC’d,
prepped, monitored, and ATSC encoded,
among other tasks.”
According to Paul Berg, director of
technology and chief solutions architect,
at Azzurro, “The signals will then be sent
back to the spokes as an ATSC-encoded
multiplex that’s ready to go to their transmitters.
In the case of live shows, the multiplex
will be turned right around with virtually
no delay. There’s also a sophisticated
disaster recovery plan for both the hub
and each of the spokes to ensure that the
stations stay up and running if the infrastructure
is ever compromised by natural
or manmade disasters.”
In a signal path parallel to the ATSC multiplex,
the hub will also send each spoke
a replica of its programming and schedule
for the next day, which is then locally
cached on Evertz OvertureRTLive server
and separately managed by Mediator SC
(self-contained) software. In the event of
an accident or technical failure, like damage
to underground fiber network cables
or a flood, each station could take the reins
and continue to broadcast from its local
cache until the problem is resolved.
Murphy explained that the hub was
designed with N+3 levels of redundancy,
including automatic failovers to backup
resources, such as the next available
ATSC encoder in the workflow and local
caching of programming. “You don’t
need the hub to run the spokes,” Murphy
said. “That’s the beauty of this.”