Dutch regional broadcaster, Omroep Flevoland, has installed Harmonic’s ProMedia Carbon file-based transcoding software to streamline its production workflow for multi-screen news delivery, writes David Fox.
ProMedia Carbon supports a wide array of acquisition, editing, broadcast, web, and mobile video formats, and is being used as part of a complete NIS4 installation from Dutch newsroom specialist Evoxe.
It is deployed at OF in a transcoding farm with multiple nodes controlled by Harmonic Workflow System software, which the NIS4 system uses to automatically create the video assets. The newsroom sends requests directly to the transcoding farm to: archive, retrieve, and ingest content; create thumbnails; process commercials; and distribute via the internet. Common tasks, like low-resolution copy creation, are also automated by ProMedia Carbon to speed up operations.
“ProMedia Carbon is an essential technology component of our news production workflow,” said Bram Liplijn, CTO at Omroep Flevoland. “In addition to the wide format support, high-volume transcoding, and video quality, ProMedia Carbon provides us with the crucial automation capabilities to keep operating expenses at a reasonable level by not requiring additional personnel to deliver 24/7 programming to these new distribution channels.”
ProMedia Carbon “can be relied upon to deliver the volume of content necessary for OF’s demanding news cycle, while providing the video quality and multi-screen viewing options subscribers expect,” added Ian Jefferson, vice president, Rhozet sales and business development, at Harmonic.
As part of the transcode process, it can handle a variety of critical operations including SD/HD conversion, PAL/NTSC conversion, logo insertion, colour space conversion, colour correction, and closed captions extraction.
ProMedia Carbon is powered by Rhozet technology and is one element of Harmonic’s recently released ProMedia software range for multi-screen production, processing, and delivery. The ProMedia products can be deployed individually or as an end-to-end video processing system, performing such functions as live- and file-based transcoding, packaging, and origination, to enable high-quality video creation and delivery to TVs, PCs, tablets, and smartphones.
