SES Platform Services has built the first dedicated playout centre in Germany, providing technical support for broadcasters and production companies as well as managing the transmission of over 300 television and radio channels. A key element in the workflow is the AmberFin iCR platform.
The iCR platform is being used to support all media ingest, file transcoding and quality control operations. The workflow is simplified by the ability of iCR to perform all these functions in a single workstation, saving time in transferring content around the network as well as reducing capital expenditure. The platform is tightly integrated with and managed by SES’s existing Harris D-Series automation.
“Already iCR has proved itself to be a sophisticated, high-level content management all-rounder,” said Roger Greβer, VP of playout and asset management at SES Platform Services. “It can cope with all our system ingest needs, whether that is to our standard XDCAM format or to a less common standard that one of our customers has requested.”
The installation includes AmberFin’s Unified Quality Control (UQC) functionality. This performs QC checks on the baseband video during the ingest process, to ensure that the content is correct before it enters the workflow.
“Not just during ingest but at various points in our workflow, iCR offers unique content quality management which is important to us and important to our customers,” said Kristin Pӧschel, SES system engineer. “ICR’s advanced QC capabilities are helping us to increase satisfaction amongst our customers since their customers are making fewer complaints.”
The system for SES was developed in association with AmberFin’s German distributor Netorium. “Our business is challenging and changing every day and we are pleased to have AmberFin and Netorium on board our team to help support our business growth,” concluded Greβer. “Already we have expanded our UQC platform to include Interra’s Baton quality control software. With this extension, we can offer even higher quality standards to our customers without time consuming restructuring and changes to the existing workflows for our operators.”
