Norwegian operator GET has deployed a comprehensive Harmonic headend solution to power its IPTV, cable, and OTT multiscreen services. Through a high-density and scalable architecture designed to optimise bandwidth efficiencies, Harmonic’s video infrastructure solutions enable GET to cost-effectively deliver high-quality HD video services to a wide range of IP-connected devices. At the heart of GET’s integrated Harmonic headend is the fully redundant ProStream 1000 with ACE realtime transcoding platform (pictured). Utilising this versatile processing solution, GET can perform MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video and audio transcoding of multiple HD broadcast channels, as well as advanced statistical multiplexing, in order to maximise bandwidth efficiencies across its IP network. ProStream dramatically reduces GET’s carbon footprint and operating expenses, leveraging a high-density, scalable architecture. For live OTT services, Harmonic’s ProMedia Live realtime multiscreen video processing and encoding system leverages adaptive bit rate technology to transcode MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC content into multiple streams of H.264 with varying video resolutions and bit rates optimised for multiscreen delivery. Encoding is split across multiple machines to enable rapid media processing. ProStream and ProMedia Live are managed by Harmonic’s NMX Digital Service Manager, simplifying the creation, modification, and management of service lineups. Harmonic ProMedia Carbon transcoders handle a variety of critical operations for GET’s VOD services, including SD/HD conversion, PAL/NTSC conversion, logo insertion, colour space conversion, colour correction, and closed-captions extraction, from a file-based architecture that can scale to meet the operator’s evolving business needs. The ProMedia Carbon transcoding farms are controlled via a Harmonic WFS file-based workflow system, which provides automated processing of high-volume transcoding tasks, failover support, job distribution management, job prioritisation, load balancing, FTP transfer, status monitoring, and job notification, to further increase operational efficiencies. www.harmonicinc.com
