SES chooses AmberFin iCR

AmberFin has announced the completion of a project that sees its iCR software platform integrated within the workflow at SES Platform Services’ broadcast playout center in Munich, Germany. AmberFin has worked closely on this demanding project with its German channel partner, Wiesbaden-based Netorium.

At this ultra-modern HD-capable playout facility, AmberFin iCR is being used to provide a single unified platform capable of supporting all media ingest, file transcoding and quality control management operations. In order to support large numbers of ingest feeds, iCR has been integrated alongside the customer’s existing Harris D-Series broadcast automation system.

Within Germany’s first dedicated playout center, SES Platform Services provides technical support for broadcasters and production companies and offers a comprehensive range of services for the preparation and transmission of content for more than 300 TV and radio channels. These include both digital archiving and playout, as well as preparation and transmission of content via satellite, over the Internet and to mobile devices.

A major incentive for SES Platform Services in its selection of AmberFin iCR is the system’s integrated architecture, where all ingest, transcode and quality-control functions are performed by a single workstation. SES Platform Services reports that the ability to combine multiple core processes on a single workstation has saved significant time and capital expenditure.

Alongside its media ingest and file transcoding operations, AmberFin iCR is performing a third critical role for SES Platform Services in terms of its advanced media quality-control capabilities. Thanks to the integrated nature of AmberFin Unified Quality Control (UQC) within the iCR platform, SES Platform Services is able to perform QC checks on baseband video during the ingest process, helping to ensure that only best-quality media enters the workflow.

iCR offers unique content quality management, which is not only important to SES, but also is becoming more important to SES customers. SES can identify that iCR’s advanced QC capabilities are helping the company increase customer satisfaction and decrease complaints.