Iraqi broadcaster Al Baghdadia TV launched a second channel prior to Ramadan. The launch, which included the installation of Pebble Beach Systems Neptune automation system, Omneon servers and Vizrt graphics, was undertaken by Dubai-based systems integrator AV Solutions. The broadcaster launched with one channel a few years ago and has since then, undertaken substantial upgrades […]
Iraqi broadcaster Al Baghdadia TV launched a second channel prior to Ramadan. The launch, which included the installation of Pebble Beach Systems Neptune automation system, Omneon servers and Vizrt graphics, was undertaken by Dubai-based systems integrator AV Solutions.
The broadcaster launched with one channel a few years ago and has since then, undertaken substantial upgrades in increments, explains Samir Isbaih, regional manager, Pebble Beach Systems Middle East.
With the Al Baghdadia customer base and reputation growing in Iraq, Pebble Beach Systems together with AV Solutions, provided the technology and the complex workflows to fulfill their evolving requirements.
Initially, the automation solution from Pebble Beach Systems controlled the broadcasters near line storage servers, playout, ingest and media management. When the broadcaster undertook its first upgrade and deployed a robotic tape library based on LTO5 technology, the Neptune system controlled that as well, providing direct control of both the nearline storage and the archive library allowing for complex automatic media management through the same user interface and a single database shared between ingest, playout, media management and archive systems.
Although a single control system has provided Al Baghdadia with a reliable solution, the broadcasters management was willing to invest further in redundancy to ensure 100% system availability to their viewers. In a second upgrade, they added the seamless, fully automatic fail-over option from us as well, adds Isbaih.
The automation takes care of simple scheduling as the broadcaster does not have a scheduling system. Neptune also handles ingest, playout, media management and direct archive control.
Al Baghdadia has also invested in providing an automatic graphics generation workflow as a result of which graphics from Vizrt are automatically populated with the metadata through the Pebble Beach Systems automation API, Samir concluded.
