The UK Local TV Network, operated by Comux UK, this year upgraded to a centralised transmission system supporting all twelve That’s TV (TTV) city-based studios. The new system was specifically designed by aQ Broadcast to fit the TTV workflow, and the company is discussing its work with Comux here in Amsterdam.
TTV channels run 24/7 with a mix of news coverage from the local studios along with long-form shows. Production and scheduling is handled locally and all transmission originates at the Comux network operations centre (NOC) in Birmingham, UK.
All playout for the TTV group runs on aQ aVS transmission servers. In the central system there are five of these video engines, each providing support for up to three parallel channels, with four machines handling the normal output and the fifth serving as an online spare.
Each transmission server also provides caption, graphics and branding capability for the channels it supports, based on the specific transmission schedule.
A critical piece of the centralised system and the element that links the dozen local studios to the NOC is the media asset management (MAM) system from aQ Broadcast. The MAM database is based on the aQ QSIA architecture and manages all content across the central system, both on the central store and at the local site-based servers.
This topology enables users to view all media assets, whether created centrally or by any of the local studios, and to input placeholders for content still under production.
The aQ MAM automatically populates the placeholders when the matching asset is available.
Neil Hutchins. CEO, aQ Broadcast, said: “An important aspect of the TTV operations is that the output of each channel is closely monitored, so that in the event a live feed fails or a schedule runs short, the system auto-inserts a holding graphic until the fault is cleared.”
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