Slovenia-based STN has awarded the contract to upgrade its automation system to Pebble Beach Systems, who will shortly be installing a 4 channel Neptune automation system at the facility.
STN was founded in 2004 and has rapidly grown to become one of the leading broadcast over satellite providers in Central and Eastern Europe. Offering TV channels, radio broadcasters and content producers a cost-effective outsource for all or part of their play-out and transmission requirements, the organisation pursues a policy of keeping ahead of the expanding market by investing in the latest technology. At the same time, it also builds in spare capacity on a rolling basis in order to handle the demand for increasing channel turn-around and time-dependent projects.
Mitja Lovsin, STN’s sales and marketing director was instrumental in the selection of automation system. “We considered at least two other major suppliers when looking to upgrade from our legacy automation system, but making the decision to go with Pebble Beach Systems was quite straightforwar,” he said. “Our overriding concern was that the automation system should be easy to use, enabling us to make the transition as smoothly as possible. Pebble Beach Systems’ Neptune automation fully met that brief whilst adding a wealth of advanced functionality. Many of the channels we host transmit a high proportion of live events, so we needed a system which could cope with highly complex workflows and rapidly changing playlists as well as the more predictable requirements of movie playout channels.”
The new STN system also comprises four Miranda Xchannel playout servers, and eight Xingest stations for HD/SD ingest. The system goes live this summer, with ingest and playout both controlled by Neptune. Ingested content is QC’d and passed either directly to playout storage or to a Quantum data tape library under the direct control of Anchor for archive.
Branding graphics for the new live sports and entertainment channels are provided via Miranda’s Vertigo graphics automation. A powerful HD/SD character generator, which allows the playout of virtually unlimited layers of animated text and dynamically updated text, multi-level animation and dual channel DVEs, is controlled by Pebble Beach Systems’ Neptune, featuring automatic playlist synchronisation and on-air protection. The system will also incorporate Miranda’s monitoring and interfacing equipment. Two Kaleido-X multi-viewers will be used for monitoring, and 13 Densite frames will house more than 100 interfacing modules, including up/down/cross conversion, and Dolby E/AC-3 encoding/decoding cards.
