BPNet Aims to Marry Video, Data and Control

BILLERICA, MASS—Broadcast Pix and ioGates began working on a new solution for IP video back at the 2015 IBC Show. The result from the two companies—which recently announced a letter of intent for Broadcast Pix to acquire ioGates—is BPNet, what Tony Mastantuono, Broadcast Pix’s product manager, calls “the marriage of video, control and data.”

Mastantuono says BPNet is primarily a cloud-based service that enables online and offline storage and archival services for content and distribution. “It really becomes an ecosystem for your production and all your production elements,” he explained.

With BPNet, users can upload any content from any device to the cloud. Broadcast Pix switchers have direct access to the BPNet cloud, creating a bidirectional application for uploading content, and grab and push it to Broadcast Pix switchers. Metadata can be entered, customized and viewed from the cloud, which creates the opportunity for collaboration workflows. A playback feature part of the cloud offers frame by frame searching. In addition, conversion and transcoding is built into the cloud, enabling content to be converted to any type of playout or format. “In a nutshell, it allows us to upload, store, convert, transcode and distribute production elements,” said Mastantuono.

BPNet is a subscription service, but doesn’t require an account to be accessed. Twenty-five Gigabits are included with the subscription for Broadcast Pix customers under warranty with options to add additional storage, conversion, transcoding and distribution options.

Mastantuono says BPNet will become “the foundation of Broadcast Pix.”