WEYBRIDGE, England—Pebble Beach Systems has integrated Adobe After Effects in order to streamline playout graphics workflows.

The integration incorporates a plug-in and pre-render workflow, which is designed to simplify graphics and promo production.

Working in conjunction with Pebble Beach Systems’ Dolphin integrated channel device under Marina automation control, the integration manages the process of automatically rendering After Effects templates and delivering them straight to playout.

According to Pebble Beach, by removing the need to convert Adobe graphics into vendor-specific formats, the plug-in gives graphics designers the creative freedom to use any feature supported in After Effects for on-air graphics, and eliminates the need to individually render many different versions of a promo or graphic.

The company said any After Effects project can be converted into a pre-render template via the new plugin.

“The ability to pre-render graphics created in After Effects gives the designer full creative freedom by removing the need to compromise the look of the graphics during any format conversion process,” said Stuart Wood, product owner at Pebble Beach Systems.

“Many networks, television stations and multichannel service providers are also looking for ways to deploy playout servers without the need to provision GPUs for real-time graphics processing power, especially when we talk about virtualized environments or the cloud, as this can be much more expensive.”

WEYBRIDGE, England—Pebble Beach Systems is bringing a Vizrt component to its Dolphin and Orca integrated playout systems, announcing that it will add the Viz Engine into the units. The goal of this integration is to enable broadcasters to improve 3D graphics workflow with the Dolphin and Orca systems.

The functionality will be offered through a shared memory interface as a software plug-in that utilizes a GPU. This makes it no longer necessary to pass video signals between devices, according to Pebble Beach Systems. As a result, the playout chain is simplified and network bandwidth is reduced within the cloud. The amount of hardware needed to run a channel providing a full graphics workflow will also reportedly be reduced.

“Broadcast graphics are fundamental to channel identity,” said Alison Pavitt, marketing manager at Pebble, “so broadcasters naturally don’t want to compromise on their branding when reviewing their playout technology choice.”

The Viz Engine software plug-in for Dolphin and Orca are now available.

LAS VEGAS—Pebble Beach Systems will highlight its Orca virtualized IP channel solution, Dolphin Channel in a Box (CiaB) and Marina automated playout system at the 2018 NAB Show.

Orca enables users to deploy multiple, virtualized IP channels from public or private cloud platforms. This software-defined channel delivery solution now offers low-latency NDI confidence monitoring, increasing reliability for live applications.

As a multichannel playout automation system, Marina can replace legacy and end-of-life automation systems and incorporate new and evolving technologies, while minimizing operational disruption. New options include enhanced channel redundancy options, SCTE-104 encoding and enhanced SmartPanel capability.

Lighthouse, a web-based management and monitoring tool for Marina, enables secure, real-time remote access. With its web-based GUI and channel design tools, broadcasters can deploy virtualized channels tailored to their needs.

Pebble Beach’s automated Dolphin integrated channel device now incorporates best-of-breed software plugins—including Ross and Pixel Power graphics, Linear Acoustic loudness, EEG live captioning and Kantar and Nielsen watermarking—enabling users to integrate preferred solutions within Dolphin.

For broadcasters transitioning to the cloud, Pebble Beach’s Beluga content management system integrates closely with Marina to streamline workflows, manage the media supply chain on-premise and in the cloud and prepare content for linear playout, OTT and VOD distribution.

The 2018 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 9-12. Pebble Beach will be in booth SL4528. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

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