CityCable 11 Adopts NVerzion CLASS

SALT LAKE CITY—NVerzion announced that CityCable 11, the public, educational, and government access television channel run by the City of Scottsdale in Arizona, has upgraded its automation system during the recent migration to an all-HD infrastructure. The NVerzion Component Level Automation System Solutions (CLASS) platform provides CityCable 11 with an unmatched level of flexibility and modularity, enabling the station to make a seamless transition to HD and control a variety of third-party equipment to get content on-air faster and deliver a flawless HD broadcast to viewers.

CityCable 11 covers a wide range of live events, including local city council meetings, public safety announcements, arts and entertainment, and more. During the transition to HD, the station upgraded their existing NVerzion automation hardware and software components to enhance its file-based workflow. New components include: NControl (MC) transmission playlists, NGest professional dubbing and recording software, NView database viewer, NPoint video preparation software for segmenting and trimming, NBase SQL media database manager, NTime time-driven event scheduling, and EMC-NT Ethernet machine control.

“Aside from wanting to improve the quality of our on-air presentation and workflow efficiencies, one major goal during this upgrade was to implement a clean Join-in-Progress during live broadcasts,” said Tim Delaney, chief engineer at CityCable 11. “NVerzion automation optimizes our file-based workflow, enabling us to get content on-air more quickly and, in the case of Join-in-Progress, make a smooth transition to programming during live meetings and other events that can typically be unpredictable. As a result, our station has realized a significant cost savings and can deliver a cleaner, higher-quality HD presentation to viewers.”

Join-in-Progress performs a series of complex timing calculations, allowing the station to seamlessly join a scheduled program in the event of a live overrun or underrun, eliminating the dead roll operation that would typically occur in these situations.

The NVerzion CLASS solution features an open architecture that allows CityCable 11 to control various third-party equipment, including a Harmonic Spectrum MediaDeck server, Sierra Pro XL router, and Scala graphics system. By providing CityCable 11 with total control over all master control and playout operations, NVerzion's automation system speeds up the station's file-based workflow, reducing capital and operating expenses. The modular architecture of NVerzion keeps CityCable 11 on-air 24/7, eliminating any single point of failure within their file-based workflow. Through the modularity of NVerzion's automation system, CityCable 11 has the flexibility to add more features and perform additional upgrades as needed. In addition, the scalable platform can easily support additional channels and subchannels in the future.