OLYMPIA, Wash.—TVW, Washington state’s public-affairs network, has deployed a new playout system featuring master and redundant PlayBox Neo and AirBox Neo systems as part of an overhaul of its existing live and file-based playout workflow.
TVW—which offers gavel-to-gavel coverage of all three branches of Washington state government, as well as meetings and hearings of various state boards and commissions, original documentaries, in-depth interview programs and educational content about Washington public policy—worked with systems integration and media technology company Key Code Media to design a workflow.
The 12-channel AirBox Neo systems interface directly with TVW’s third-party trafficking system. The design also includes a TitleBox Neo interactive CG; ListBox, for schedule creation and editing; Live Ingest; and the Multi-Backup Manager (MBM) for multichannel redundancy, PlayBox Neo said.
“Anything occurring at the state level, we cover,” Marc Gerchak, vice president and director of engineering at TVW, said. “It’s an incredible volume of content. We can be covering a live hearing or floor debate from one production control for eight hours straight, while recording other hearings, floor debate, Supreme Court cases in two other production control rooms.
“All while shooting segments for our produced studio shows in the fourth production control room at the same time. There are a lot of moving parts and varied programming types. We wanted a reliable system that could accommodate a constantly changing playlist, update graphics on the fly and allow us to edit material as it is ingested. It’s a complicated list of requirements for one system.”
The system runs on the PlayBox Neo Suite, which offers centralized control, monitoring and administration of an optimized multimedia workflow. The current line of Channel in a Box products integrates seamlessly with the PlayBox Neo Suite, maximizing existing investments while providing a unified interface for future upgrades, the company said.
PlayBox Neo solutions are based on modular products that can be customized to provide the exact capability needed for any scale of channel playout management from ingest and scheduling to transmission, the company said.
“TVW needed the flexibility of changing their playlist at a moment’s notice, as well as scheduling programming in advance, and they didn’t want to wait until a session ended in eight hours to edit a feed,” Mark Siegel, vice president of business development at Key Code Media, said. “And playout needed to interface seamlessly with their trafficking system. With a tight timeframe and a lot of multivendor communication required, it was a big ask. Thankfully, we’ve got a long history of collaboration with PlayBox Neo and were confident they could provide exactly what TVW was looking for under such a short deadline.”
The PlayBox Neo complement replaced TVW’s existing automation and server set up in master control. The new workflow uses the AirBox Neo servers for playout. The PlayBox system also controls the network’s NVision 9000 router.
AirBox Neo can easily mix a variety of media files and live inputs in one playlist. Any changes to the playlist while on-air are possible. Media can be trimmed, edited or repositioned while on-air. Live productions are streamlined to allow the insertion of live streams into the playlist. For automated playout, AirBox Neo enables playlist scheduling weeks ahead of time.
More information is available on the TVW, Keycode Media and Playbox Neo websites.
