SURREY, U.K.—Ahead of its 21st anniversary, Pebble Beach Systems is rebranding as Pebble. The company says that it is putting a renewed focus on its people, process and technology.

With its new tagline, “Discovering. Designing. Delivery,” Pebble seeks to cement itself as a developer and supplier of automation, integrated channel and content management solutions for TV broadcasters, service providers and cable and satellite operators.

Speaking about the new tagline, Pebble’s Marketing Manager Alison Pavitt says that “[i]t reflects our commitment to building great relationships with our customers—it’s in our DNA.”

“The company has undergone a significant transformation in all areas,” said Peter Mayhead, Pebble CEO. “In addition to building strong financial performance in both 2018 and 2019, Pebble has communicated a clear mission and a strong set of values which we developed in a series of workshops, which involved every member of staff. Our strength lies in our ability to leverage our people, our process and our technology to provide exceptional solutions to the broadcast community, and put simply, the old branding no longer reflected this. I’m proud to introduce our new look to the market today, and even more proud of the exceptional team at Pebble and their energy, optimism and drive, especially in this extraordinary year.”

Part of the rebrand includes a redesigned website, which is now live at www.pebble.tv.  

WEYBRIDGE, U.K.—Pebble Beach Systems announced the appointment of David Kicks as vice president of sales for the North America and LATAM regions.

Company CEO Peter Mayhead said in a statement, “David’s rich experience and strong set of competencies will serve us well in these regions. As Pebble looks to consolidate its position and add new offerings into the market, we’re pleased to have him on board.”

 Kicks brings 40 years of diverse industry experience to his new role having begun his career in engineering roles at Pro-Bel in the U.K. and then taking on sales responsibilities with Pro-Bel and Chyron. He moved to North America in 2004, and went on to hold senior regional and national sales roles with Snell Group, Vidcheck and Telestream.

 Kicks said, “At a time of rapid technological change, [the company's young, driven team of engineers is] bringing new thinking and energy to the table. The strong problem-solving and collaborative ethos of the delivery team gives me great confidence in our ability to satisfy the specific needs of both the North American and LATAM markets.”

PHOENIX—The YurView network from Cox Communications delivers local, regional and national broadcasts as well as live streaming and digital content to customers across the United States. The company produces Emmy award-winning sports coverage along with original programming that covers the outdoors, entertainment, arts, events, people, businesses, news and more. Each of the regions where Cox Communications has a presence has a YurView channel, featuring paid programming as well as local and shared programming produced by Cox. Live university and high school sports also form an important part of the content offered in each market.

Three years ago, we decided to bring all local market feeds into a single centralized facility in Phoenix, and to have a single master control to manage all content. With markets in California, Nevada, Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Florida and Virginia, each local station was responsible for its own master control operations, but the organization identified that many of the legacy playout automation systems in these locations were fast approaching end of life.

DRIVING THE NEED TO CENTRALIZE

Many TV stations have been driven to centralize operations, which frequently results in the creation of regional hubs. Instead of a regional hub, the Cox YurView team created a national hub to provide an economy of scale with fewer operators watching over more channels. Making one investment in technology in one place, when content originates from so many locations, is typically much more efficient and cost effective. Creating a centralized storage hub that everyone can pull from rather than distributing and storing content on local storage systems was a key goal. This allows outside clients to upload content instead of distributing to FTP sites across the country and removes the need for equipment to transcode material in each market since it is all processed and stored in one place at the same time.

To make single master control operation happen, engineers and integrators developed an infrastructure that allowed all local programming to arrive in Phoenix and be recorded onto a Harmonic Omneon system. For a time, the legacy Sundance automation was deployed for this, but the YurView team needed to identify an alternative solution that would allow them to move forward and future-proof their operations. Pebble Beach Systems’ Marina automation system had a lot of similarities to what operators had been using and represented a state-of-the-art playout automation system that could bring operations into the future. The included migration tools gave the team confidence that they could seamlessly migrate playout operations to the new system with no disruption.

The YurView team made the move to Pebble’s Marina automation in August 2018 during a building expansion for the master control operators. They now have 17 channels going out across multiple markets, plus three or four smaller channels. The main YurView channels and Cox Sports TV, which is predominantly distributed throughout the southeast, originates out of the company’s Phoenix location by operators using the Marina system.

TIGHT INTEGRATION IS KEY

At the heart of the system sits Marina and the Harmonic Omneon playout system. The new Harmonic Spectrum X playout devices integrate DVEs and graphics, and Marina gives all the commands over IP for doing lower-third weather delay graphics or similar workflows, so it’s a very simple process. Other systems may require talking to a playout port, a graphics device and other devices independently, with the potential of having to use GPI commands to trigger things. Marina and Spectrum X integration is operationally seamless for managing items on the playlist and entering commands into the system.

For Cox Sports TV, there’s a considerable amount of live sports programming that will then be replayed at a later time. The program producers use a lot of graphics bugs to tell viewers when content is live or that it’s a replay in the upper right of the screen. This becomes a simple secondary event in the Marina playlist. Operators go to a menu and pull the bug that they want and simply drag it onto the event in the playlist where it’s supposed to go. At the end of the playlist, Marina automatically pulls the bug off, goes to a commercial break and comes back into the next segment where there’s another secondary event to put the bug in.

NEW FEATURES EQUAL NEW REVENUE OPPORTUNITIES

Marina has allowed operators to utilize more SCTE 35 commercial insertion commands, which was impossible to do with the previous automation system.

For example, when broadcasting a Fox Cardinals game, for the avails during the commercial breaks (which allows the downstream content distributors to insert commercials), operators can take a trigger from Fox that instructs Marina to start a commercial break. This enables the team to make use of their own programming, or conversely, they can send that command downstream to trigger any of the downstream commercial insertions that happen in the regional markets.

The Yurview team works closely with the Cox Media part of the organization as they are focused on commercial programming for the local markets. Being able to send those commands out and have separate commercial insertions for each of the regions has enabled account executives to maximize their sales.

The Pebble engineers are installing a redundant Marina system with automatic failover soon. This sophisticated system will give the team even more security for their operations while supporting the organization as it continues to evolve.

David Russin is vice president of sales, the Americas, Pebble Beach Systems.

WEYBRIDGE, U.K.—Pebble Beach Systems has appointed Yucel Timur as its new head of solutions architecture, the automation and content management company announced today.

In this role, Timur will lead the company’s solutions architects, who develop the solutions for the company’s customers around the world, the company said. He will report to Pebble Beach Systems CEO Perter Mayhead.

Timur has more than 20 years of project management expertise in the M&E technology industry. Prior to assuming this role, he held a senior position at Sony Professional Solutions Europe and NOWTV. He also has led key tech initiatives at BBC.

“This new role comes at an exciting time for Pebble and the industry as a whole, and it enables me to leverage my experience across the organization—from pre-sales through to development and support. I’m looking forward to playing a part in delivering the broadcast solutions we offer now and in the future,” said Timur.

Mayhead predicted that the combination of Timur’s understanding of broadcast solutions and his years of experience in managing customer relationships will have “a significant impact” on how the company develops relationships with customers.

More information is available on the Pebble Beach Systems website. 

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.

As buzzwords go, “microservices” is big right now, so let’s take a step back to try and understand why, starting with what the term actually means.

A microservice architecture comprises a collection of services where each one is focussed on a single business function, is self-contained and lightweight. Being independent, microservices can be maintained and developed as required without having to re-compile and debug an entire application. However, there is still a debate on how small the business function must be to constitute the service being “micro.” By contrast, traditional “monolithic” software can be a modular application, but packaged and deployed as a single entity, or monolith.

While microservices-based software development can offer clear benefits in many applications, as usual, there are also drawbacks. Simply claiming that a product is microservices-based is meaningless if the benefits this approach delivers are not used for the job at hand. So, we’ve been asking what the relevance is to playout. And the answers are interesting.

It is a fact that microservices can make it easier to scale functionality. Let’s say between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. when there is hardly any activity, you could theoretically have a single microservice managing a system within your facility, and then scale it up to maybe 10 instances to support the peak load later in the day. And it goes without saying that it is easier to scale a small application than a large one that encompasses a lot of functionality. Similarly, if there is a failure with one of those instances, a new one is very easy to spin up.

Scaling requires additional hardware (compute and memory) being available to run the extra instances on, so for an installation with a fixed amount of hardware there could be less benefit. This is where the cloud comes in to provide more flexible compute, allowing the hardware and cost to be reduced during quieter periods and expanded on demand. Of course, you don’t only need extra compute, but there is also a requirement for some intelligence to know when to scale each part of the system. This can mean the complexity of your system increases, and you will need the correct tools to manage this.

It’s easy to see how, for example, a microservices-based MAM system would improve servicing a queue of workflow tasks that fluctuates based on the demand. However, with a playout system you are not generally expecting massive variations in load, and your peak is relatively easy to predict. Let’s not forget that at the heart of your playout solution sits a video processing engine for 24/7 real-time playback, and this is not a small—let alone “micro”—application. And if you’re looking to handle 4K video frames at high data rates, you are likely to see performance issues and increased complexity when splitting each component out into its own process.

Rather than fixating on the latest buzzword, let’s shift the debate to what will really deliver the resilience, efficiency and sustainability you need. For playout this means a system that is centrally monitored and self-healing, with open APIs, modularity and proper versioning of software that is correctly deployed. The system must interface well with third parties, and where required, must incorporate dedicated video processing hardware that delivers focussed functionality with reduced overhead on the underlying host system.

Perhaps a better approach, therefore, is to deploy an architecture that uses the appropriate tools for the specific job in hand. Some of these may be microservices, but where it counts, a modular, or even monolithic, application may be the best approach to deliver the reliability and speed the task demands.

Taking a look into the future, beyond microservices, it would theoretically be possible to deploy a serverless architecture, which would take the granularity down to the level of individual functions and no longer require the broadcaster to manage hardware. Let’s say you wanted to do a playlist import on a cloud-native system, you would pay just to run that one function of that import. That’s a single API call to run a single job, which happens fast and it costs micro-cents. You could even go down as far as paying tiny sums for individual validations of the playlist. Even running thousands of these would be relatively cheap compared to having a box sitting there all the time. The question is, how much variability in cost is desirable? How easy is it to budget and forecast for this? And can you really predict to this level what your usage will be? Food for thought! A word of warning though, you may find yourself locked in to a specific cloud provider as some of the larger public cloud providers have proprietary interfaces for serverless technologies.

While the microservices approach offers some tangible benefits, it’s not a panacea for every challenge in playout. Here at Pebble we would argue that the closer a module is to doing the actual playout, the "bigger" the service should be. Equally, the closer we are to the management and automation logic, the greater the relevance of more lightweight and modular services. In this service-based architecture, all services are appropriately scaled for the task they are responsible for. They are connected by an open API, which supports independent versioning, easy deployment and ultimate flexibility, whether virtual or physical, cloud or on-premise.

It can be easy to get lost in the “nano/micro/macro” debate, but in the end you as the broadcaster need to understand the goals you want to achieve with your system and ensure the vendors you work with can provide a solution that meets these, no matter what system architecture they use.

Stuart Wood is a product owner at Pebble Beach Systems.

WEYBRIDGE, U.K.—Pebble Beach Systems today announced several senior management moves, including the appointment of Miroslav Jeras as CTO, Tamas Vass as CMO, Jim Reid as COO and Justyna Munnich as Group Financial Controller.

Jeras, who previously was head of software architecture, will now have overall responsibility for the technology that will help broadcasters and others transition from traditional to IP-based infrastructures. A participant in technology working groups dedicated to new standards development, such as AMWA, Jeras most recently has been focused on development of the IS-07 standard.

Vass takes on the CMO role after serving as the company’s VP of Global Sales. In his new position, he will have overall responsibility for strategic marketing and global sales. Vass holds degrees in marketing and electrical engineering and has more than 20 years of experience in the broadcast industry. He has held roles in key account and partner management as well as strategic marketing at Vitec, Videocom, Amberfin, Harris and Leitch.

Reid, who joined Pebble Beach Systems in 2018, has more than 30 years of experience in business management and administration. Last year, he oversaw creation of the company’s Customer Fulfillment and Solutions Architecture teams.

Munnich, an experienced finance professional, held a senior finance role with Walgreens Boots Alliance before joining Pebble Beach Systems.

“These appointments demonstrate the depth of talent within the Pebble Beach Systems organization, with Miroslav, Tamas and Jim having been part of the management team which was responsible for the improvements made throughout 2018 resulting in significant improvements in the company’s profitability,” said Peter Mayhead, CEO of Pebble Beach Systems.

Pictured: Pebble Beach Systems’ management team (L to R) Jim Reid, Tamas Vass, Justyna Munnich, Miroslav Jeras and Peter Mayhead

WEYBRIDGE, LONDON—A pair of appointments have been officially announced by Pebble Beach Systems, as the company has brought on David Russin and Robert Amoroso to join the staff for its North American operations.

Russin (pictured above) has been hired as the vice president of sales with the goal of expanding Pebble’s business across North America. He comes to Pebble after previous stops at Grass Valley, Harris Broadcast, Omnibus and Masstech.

Amoroso is the new sales engineering manager for the company. He will be working to solve Pebble’s U.S. customers’ workflows. His past stops include 14 years at Leitch/Harris in pre-sales engineering and in station operations with CBS, ABC, PBS and Univision.

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.

Read up on all of TVT's NAB Show Sneak Peeks and other 2018 NAB Show news here.  

DUBAI—Pebble Beach Systems is the choice of Discovery Networks MENA to handle the playout of all of its channels, according to a press release from Pebble.

Pebble Beach, Discovery and Tek Signal team at CABSAT.

Discovery Networks installed an eight channel redundant Marina system at Du-Samacom, a regional operator and satellite support service that currently serves more than 170 TV stations throughout the Middle East and Asia.

The install features fully redundant playout and control of all regional HD channels with Marina automation. The installation also includes Harmonic spectrum servers, Pixel Power graphics, Polistream subtitling and transcoding from Telestream. Automated graphics and archiving workflows were also included in the platform.

The project was implemented by systems integrators Tek Signals.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Scripps Networks Interactive (SNI) is the leading developer of high-profile content for many lifestyle media platforms including television, digital, mobile and publishing. Popular lifestyle brands in its media portfolio include HGTV, DIY Network, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Travel Channel and Great American Country. The organization is headquartered in Knoxville, Tenn.

After retiring its previous automation and playout system over a year ago, SNI has been successfully broadcasting 33 channels from the Knoxville Broadcast Operations Center utilizing Pebble Beach System’s Marina automation and Dolphin integrated channel systems. The 33 channels are spread across three playout domains: main (A) and fully redundant backup (B) feeds, located in Knoxville, with DR (Disaster Recovery) located out of state. A fourth domain, ICM (Ingest and Content Management) houses all the upstream ingest and QC workflows in Knoxville.

In many deployments, A and B playout are part of the same system, existing on the same network, and the systems can be “glued” together. The Pebble Beach Systems team was tasked with designing a system that would sufficiently isolate and protect each playout chain, while still allowing synchronized operation. In order to accomplish the task, Pebble built a multi-domain playout architecture for A, B and DR residing on independent VLANs.

“Our goal was to eliminate as many points of failure as possible,” said Scott Wilkerson, engineering manager at SNI. “We wanted a more user-friendly UI, column-based editing and synchronized databases. The system had to be easy to maintain, and offer complete redundancy.”

The challenge with building such a system was in finding the right balance of synchronicity and isolation between the systems and databases so that A, B and DR playout were protected, but also in sync. The Pebble team presented various intermediate steps between being completely isolated and tightly coupled, which allowed SNI to choose an architecture that precisely met its needs. “We’ve built a level of redundancy, with separate domains and separate databases, that we’re very happy with,” said Wilkerson. “The databases share information easily, while keeping everything in sync.”

ISOLATED DOMAINS 

“ICM is where the heavy lifting happens. All of the schedules, as they initially drop, are edited here. All the QC is also carried out here, with media being ingesting into the Omneon Spectrum video server and sent to archive. We bought 22 seats of Marina, and at any given time, we can have up to 18 of them manned. We keep the ICM domain pretty busy,” say Wilkerson. There are also four Marina client stations for A and B domains in two control rooms where feeds are split and monitored. Any last minute live changes are made in those rooms at the Marina clients.

“Metadata is automatically synced from ICM to A, B and DR, and that works great. If you make a title change, video classification change, or a direction change, ICM updates all three of them with that data. The way we designed things, we can lose a database, even with them linked. If we experience corruption on one, it won’t affect the other,” says Wilkerson.

The CiaB (Channel-in-a-box) philosophy—having automation running on the same device where the video playback and other graphics, audio and VANC processing reside—is a core benefit that delivers simplicity and reliability for SNI. “We have pulled the network connection out of the back of the box and the Dolphin system will continue to execute as long as it has a playlist and media. We could lose every core, every switch, every piece of our network infrastructure and we would continue to playout over the air,” says Wilkerson.

SNI, like any broadcaster, is decidedly cautious about installing new versions of software on busy equipment. This often creates a “Catch 22” scenario as vendors, like Pebble Beach Systems, strive to improve and evolve features, often in response to requests from customers. For SNI, this is no longer a concern as the isolated domain architecture gives them the ability to run different software versions on each domain so they can roll out a new build very gradually.

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

“Whether it’s ease-of-use in the UI for cueing events, or being able to easily find missing media, our technicians like to work on Marina every day. They really love the system,” says Doreen Akune, director of network operations at SNI.

Operational efficiency was a key aspect for SNI and the ability to integrate seamlessly with the Grass Valley Intuition XG graphics system saved a lot of time and investment. “Our Dolphin systems are controlling the Intuition XG over IP and the Intuition XG box is actually upstream, with the Dolphin keying the signal,” said Wilkerson. “It was one of the features that sold us on the Pebble system, versus other vendors. We’re able to control the keyer via logic in the playlist so the keyer is ‘on’ during programming and ‘off’ during commercials. This allows us to protect our ad revenue.”

With Marina, schedules are edited only once in the Ingest and Content management domain, then automatically propagated to the DR domain. Metadata is also propagated between all domains, including DR, eliminating double data entry. Using Marina’s exposed XML schema, purges show up as job lists that can be executed at the click of a button—a process which was previously very manual. SNI’s compile process (recording the next day’s playlist in one hour chunks for off-air QC) is now completely automated, with records alternating between two virtual encoders and schedules auto-appending.

“Looking back at the development stage, Pebble has met or exceeded our expectations. The increase in efficiency coupled with the reduction in hardware has enabled us to take on additional work and grow the department. This new infrastructure has also positioned ourselves to spin up any content stream the business requires much faster than historically,” said John Ajamie,SVP, US Operations, SNI.

ENHANCED RESILIENCY 

SNI is benefiting from enhanced resiliency, which comes from the self-sufficient ecosystem that Dolphin, running Marina automation, provides. A more autonomous system also means there are fewer points of failure in an integrated channel design. “We recently had an issue where we lost network connectivity, and things kept running like a dream. No one knew anything was going on in the rest of the facility,” said Akune. “If we had to evacuate the building, and be able to do our regular process, including QC, while running things from outside, I think, we’re in a much better place to accomplish that with Pebble. Having a comprehensive, off-site DR is certainly a plus for us as well.”

REMOTE MANAGEMENT

The SNI team is looking at Pebble Beach Systems’ Lighthouse, web-based remote management and monitoring tool, to further streamline operations. “Controlling and monitoring operations remotely is important, but we also want other departments, like creative services and traffic, to have access,” says Wilkerson. “For example, we’d like Traffic to be able to make log change requests electronically through Lighthouse, have them approved, and automatically send the approvals back to Traffic. For that and many other reasons, we like the options that Lighthouse brings to the table.”

SNI is also looking at options for expanding with virtualized playout systems, such as Pebble’s Orca, for dynamic deployments including pop-up and experimental channels. The challenge is to bring any best-of-breed processing tools into a software ecosystem, so that either Dolphin, or Orca, can run everything required in the cloud. “It’s great to see all of these additional software plugins coming onboard for Dolphin, and we think the product is well positioned to support us as we look to virtualize playout”, concludes Wilkerson.

LOS ANGELES—With its integration with the NDI IP video standard, Pebble Beach Systems is now able to provide low-latency confidence monitoring for its virtualized Orca software-defined integrated channel solution. This development removes objectionable monitoring delays that can be inherent to real-time video over IP virtualized workflows and increases Orca’s suitability for the playout of high-value live, reactive channels and latency-sensitive applications.

NDI provides a low-latency, light-weight, frame accurate video protocol, giving Pebble’s customers less than one frame of delay when confidence monitoring channel-in-a-box or virtualized playout systems over an IP network.

The company is also demonstrating its Lighthouse web-based remote management and monitoring dashboard for the Marina automation platform. Lighthouse extends Marina’s functionality to business users, operational staff and engineers both inside and outside the broadcast facility. It offers a series of interfaces, which deliver configuration and deployment functionality for Orca virtual channels. Using the new design and deployment tools, Lighthouse users can quickly and design, edit, launch and decommission virtual IP channels on the fly.

It also offers control, monitoring, media management and system configuration tools via an array of widgets on configurable web-based dashboards, with the ability to aggregate data across multiple sites.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Saudi Media City Co. (SHAMAS) has installed Pebble Beach Systems’ automation system for its new headquarters. SHAMAS will use the automation system to handle the channel playout of multiple organizations.

The Pebble Beach system installed by SHAMAS has the capability to playout 30 channels; 15 channels have already been taken to air, according to Pebble’s press release. The system also controls video servers, routers, a branding processor from Grass Valley and a TitleOne graphics system from Imagine Communications. Both VTR and file-based ingest are supported and the system offers an automated QC workflow and content management.

SHAMAS customers are able to log into the system with their own secure credentials and are only able to see devices and media to which they have privileges to access.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Malaysia’s Media Prima Television Network has switched over to a new automation infrastructure with the help of Pebble Beach Systems technology. The new infrastructure is based on Pebble’s Dolphin integrated channel device and the Marina content management and multi-channel automation system.

The new system, which completed its installation in December, controls the playout of Media Prima’s TV3, TV9, TV8 and ntv7 with complete redundancy. The Dolphin integrated channel devices deliver video playout, graphics and subtitles for these channels. The system is also able to create a mirrored playlist for a main and backup program output in case of on air problems. In addition, the system interfaces with a Dalet MAM system and a customized IBS traffic system, with Dolphin providing Flash and Vizrt graphics.

Multiple user access rights can be configured according to different operator privileges, enabling users to view and edit playlists, to view media on Dolphin servers, or to access the Marina configuration, depending on their level of authorization.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—The team of Pebble Beach Systems and Blue Lucy has come up with a new workflow engine, content management and video processing system, Beluga. Able to be integrated with Pebble’s Marina automation system, Beluga offers targeted file delivery, content preparation and integrated QC workflows.

Pebble Beach Systems CEO Tom Gittins and Blue Lucy CEO and Founder Julian Wright

Beluga focuses on preparing content for playout and distribution. This is done by checking segmentation and program content, allowing for conformance editing, performing QC and generating reports. Beluga also adds transcoding and proxy creation to Marina’s existing toolset. With its web-based interface, teams on the Beluga can interact with the media.

Additional features for the Beluga include advanced traffic/schedule workflows; drag and drop workflow builder; media versioning and replacement; automated or manual file delivery to playout servers, with archive support; metadata synchronization to and from Marina; and integration with post editing systems.

Pebble offers the Beluga in different pre-defined configurations for different workflows, use cases and system sizes.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—The Digital Media Centre (DMC) in England has taken to the cloud, embracing virtualized playout from the cloud with the help of Pebble Beach System’s Orca virtualized IP system. DMC uses the system to playout 10 channels from Fox, Scripps, AMC, A+E and others.

In replacing its previous SDI infrastructure, DMC was looking for an IP-based system that could run on Commercial off-the-shelf IT hardware. DMC chose to go with Pebble Beach’s Orca integrated channel devices controlled by Marina automation. The Orca is a software-only, virtualized implementation of Pebble’s Dolphin channel-in-a-box integrated device that can run in private or public clouds, with IP inputs and outputs. Orca provides the same functionality in a pure software environment to hardware video servers, graphics, audio processing and subtitling systems.

DMC reports that using the Orca system and a virtualized playout system enables a channel to be launched in 10 minutes. DMC also plans to migrate an additional 24 channels to virtualized playout soon, with all remaining channels expected to migrate throughout the remainder of 2017.

BOTHELL, WASH.—A quintet of companies have signed on to join the Alliance of IP Media Solutions (AIMS).

The five new companies are Artel Video Systems, a media transport provider; BFE Studio und Medien Systems, a provider of OB vans, studio and other media technology systems; Leader Electronics Corporation, a developer of measuring instruments; Meinberg, which manufactures time and frequency synchronization systems; and Pebble Beach Systems, an automation, channel in a box, integrated and virtualized playout technology provider.

All five companies will now follow the AIMS bylaws, which provide specific guidance to members and to the media industry via its AIMS Roadmaps. The organization officially endorses an IP transition that includes support for SMPTE 2022-6, AES67, VSF recommendations TR-03 and TR-04, and AMWA NMOS IS-04.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Spain and Portugal’s AMC Networks International Iberia is jumping on the 4K bandwagon, announcing that it will rely on Pebble Beach Systems’ Marina automation system for its first 4K channel. Reports indicate that this will be the first 4K channel in Spain.

The Marina system will control a Spectrum X server from Harmonic in a fully redundant configuration for AMC Iberia, according to the network’s Chief Engineer, Ramón Juvé.

AMC Iberia is based in Madrid and operates 23 television stations throughout the Iberian Peninsula. The 4K channel is expected to launch this fall.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—CNN Chile is making a switch at its Santiago-based headquarters, announcing that it will replace its legacy Sundance system with Pebble Beach System’s Marina Xpress automation.

The Xpress system is able to integrate with CNN Chile’s iNews system through the Media Object Server protocol. It also offers ease of use and training for CNN’s staff, as well as 24-hour support, according to Pebble Beach.

The new system will be installed by Santiago-based reseller VGL.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Automation, content management and integrated channel developer Pebble Beach Systems has announced that its software-defined virtualized IP channel system Orca is now available for both private and public cloud deployment.

Orca allows users to create new IP channels from a series of templates and deploy them into a running system without having to restart or make configuration changes. The same Marina automation infrastructures that are used on-premises can be launched for us in the cloud.

An additional feature for the Orca system includes Disaster Recovery. DR storage can contain backup material to be run during an emergency, while mirrored show content of the original broadcast can be uploaded quickly, per Pebble.

Pebble Beach Systems will showcase Orca’s new cloud capability at IBC 2016 in Amsterdam.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—With the Olympics taking place in its home country, Brazilian broadcaster Globosat aimed for its largest coverage of the Games. Automation content management and integrated channel specialist Pebble Beach Systems has announced that it contributed to this effort with its Marina automation system for expanded playout capacity.

Eight new 24-hour linear channels, which consist of eight main and eight backup, are controlled with Marina, as well as OTT feeds of the same channels. On demand content is also available. Globosat says that it is expecting to have coverage of 92 percent of live Olympic TV coverage and 100 percent for OTT.

Globosat uses the Marina system for automated control of ingest and playout as well as content handling workflow management. The system handles the sequencing and control of the eight channels from a Harmonic ChannelPort server. In addition, Globosat is utilizing Pebble Beach’s Dolphin integrated playout system to generate signals from the Rio Fun Fest stage OB truck.

The 2016 Summer Olympics are currently underway in Rio de Janeiro, and will continue until Aug. 21.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—As Managing Director and Founder Peter Hajittofi is set to retire, Pebble Beach Systems has named its new CEO, Tom Gittins. Peter Mayhead will also serve as part of the new leadership team in the newly created position of chief operating office, and Founder director Ian Crockett will stay on in his position as chief technology officer.

Tom Gittins

Gittins has been with Pebble Beach for 10 years, serving as sales director. He previously worked for Leitch and Ampex Corporation.

Mayhead, who will also serve as chief financial officer, joined the company in 2013 as its finance director. Prior to joining Pebble Beach he was the CFO at Pro-Bel.

Pebble Beach Systems is a provider of automation, content management and integrated playout systems.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Mike Ruby has been appointed to the position of senior software developer for Pebble Beach Systems, the company announced in a press release. Ruby will help develop automation products for migration from legacy systems.

Mike Ruby

For the last 13 years Ruby worked with Avid Technology in senior engineer positions. Among his responsibilities were working on Avid automation systems, including Sundance Digital products.

Pebble Beach General Manager Eric Openshaw says that Ruby will work with fellow Avid/Sundance Digital alum Sean Pendleton, who was hired by the company back in March.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Pebble Beach Systems and Myers recently deployed a Broadcast Exchange Format (BXF) based integrated system to their shared customer base. One of the customers was KCET, a public television stations serving Central and Southern California.

Gordon Bell

BXF is a SMPTE standard for data exchange that enables Pebble Beach and Myers clients to benefit from automated workflows between traffic and automation, according to the companies’ press release. Specifically, this allowed KCET to add Pebble’s Marina system to create a two-way communication with its previously installed Myers’ ProTrack for data exchange. KCET's Vice President of Engineering, Gordon Bell, said the station implemented BXF during construction of a new facility.

The BXF protocol provides a universal integration environment for the two systems to connect, with the web-based integration enabling a bidirectional exchange of data and an expansion of the total volume of metadata ProTrack and Marina can share. The integration also provides automated notifications and feedback between the two systems; search messaging capabilities between the two systems; real-time, as-run reporting; and heartbeat messages to verify system connectivity.

Interfaces now available to KCET as part of the BXF integration include Play-List, Live As-Run Media Update, Record-List, Ingest/Dub Order, Purge-Confirm, and Purge-List.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Pebble Beach Systems has created a new web-based remote management and monitoring dashboard for its Marina automation environment, Lighthouse. The system provides control, monitoring, media management and system configuration tools through widgets on configurable, web-based dashboards.

Lighthouse

The Lighthouse system is designed for PCs, tablets and mobile devices, built using JavaScript and HTML5 technology. It incorporates its own node.js web server and offers load balancing and high availability for monitoring and access. It also utilizes TSL encryption for protection in the web environment.

Lighthouse can work with multiple Marina systems that are running different software versions and operating at different frame rates. Layouts can be configured based on a user’s roles and switch between different dashboards. The system is also capable of designing, editing, launching and decommissioning virtual IP channels.

Pebble Beach can deploy Lighthouse as a node.js webserver on a Linux operating system, provide host hardware, or implement it as a virtualized infrastructure. 

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Pebble Beach Systems has announced that it is releasing its Marina Migration Pack. The plug-in framework is designed to ease the transition from legacy broadcast automation system to the Marina automation system.

The Marina Migration Pack features an active database bridge that allows both the Marina automation and legacy system to be in sync and run parallel to each other. The framework includes playlist readers and AsRun writers for different formats, including the BXF standard. For legacy Sundance systems, the Migration Pack has the ability to import media/macro associations.

The plug-in maintains a live link between databases and associated metadata, enabling additional information ingested with the legacy system to be automatically transferred to the Marina system. Both automation systems can stay active in sync, allowing for a permanent hybrid offering that allows both systems to co-exist.

The Marina UI layout can be configured to mimic a legacy system UI to aid in initial training and uninterrupted operation. Additional data and augmented feature sets can be revealed to operators by the system’s administrators.

Pebble Beach Systems will display the Marina Migration Pack at the 2016 NAB Show at booth N5323.

WEYBRIDGE, ENGLAND & BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Sean Pendleton is joining the Pebble Beach Systems team as its new senior software developer. Pendleton will be in charge of designing and implementing software workflows, as well as recruiting engineers and supporting U.S.-based customers, according to Pebble Beach.

Before joining Pebble Beach, Pendleton was the principal engineer for Avid Fastbreak, the automation system Avid acquired as part of its purchase of Sundance Digital in 2006.

Pebble Beach Systems is a provider of automation, channel-in-a-box and integrated channel technology. The company has both U.S. headquarters in Broomfield, Colo., and U.K. offices in Weybridge, England.

BROOMFIELD, COLO.—Pebble Beach Systems has announced that it is launching Orca, its new software-defined virtualized IP integrated channel system. The company also announced that DMC in the Netherlands is the first sale for the Orca system.

Running in a VM on a virtualized platform, Orca utilizes a software-only implementation of Pebble’s Dolphin platform to run in a private cloud with IP inputs and outputs. Orca software-defined channels can be configured to meet specific requirements. With an advanced orchestration level, it is also allows ultra-fast deployment against pre-configured templates, enabling channels to be launched and integrated into a running Marina system literally at the click of a button.

Pebble Beach was recently awarded a contract with the Digital Media Centre in the Netherlands and that it will fulfill with the Orca system. The implementation deploys standard IT hardware, which DMC will source and maintain; Pebble Beach will then deliver the virtual images for each channel with the Orca system based on DMC’s pre-defined transmission chain requirements.

Pebble Beach Systems is an automation, content management and integrated channel specialist headquartered in Broomfield, Colo.

BROOMFIELD, COLO.—After successfully deploying a DR system built around the Marina and Dolphin systems earlier this year, Scripps Networks Interactive have contracted Pebble Broadcast Systems to supply a 31 channel Marina playout automation system and Dolphin integrated channel system for the Broadcast Operation Center at Scripps’ headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn.

Scripps Network Interactive headquarters

Pebble Broadcast Systems, the U.S. branch of Pebble Beach Systems, built a multi-domain system with high levels of resilience and isolation between each functional area. One domain exclusively handles ingest and content management, with a second and third dedicated to primary and backup transmission. Despite the isolation, domains are able to synchronize metadata and playlists are mirrored automatically between primary and backup transmission domains.

Each live to air channel is hosted on a single Dolphin server, each offering program, preview, clean and spare outputs.

In addition, the software is native 64-bit; features a customizable UI; has three systems—A, B, and DR— that can be upgraded and tested independently; and can create a new service for playout quickly.

Pebble Beach Systems is a provider of automation, channel in-a-box, and integrated channel technology.

SURREY, ENGLAND – Pebble Beach Systems have announced that it has brought on Paulo Andrés Martin-Cleves to serve as vice president of sales in Latin America. Martin-Cleves’ main responsibility will be to expand the company’s distribution network across Latin American territories.

Paulo Andrés Martin-Cleves

Martin-Cleves previously worked in high-level sales positions with Odetics Broadcast, Encoda-Harris, Sundance Digital/Avid, MC Consulting and TransMedia Dynamics. He also worked as technical director at Telepacifico and helped implement on-air automation systems at CNN facilities in Santiago, Chile.

“Paulo’s past experience leading major engineering projects in his native Colombia and during his tenures at Odetics, Sundance Digital and Avid makes him a valuable asset to Pebble Beach Systems’ team,” said Tom Gittins, director of sales.

Martin-Cleves currently resides in Orange County, Calif.