Every media operation has unique playout and distribution needs; from the ability to manually intervene an on-air schedule at a moment's notice, to how to handle multiple regions, multiple sites, multiple languages and OTT. Grass Valley has the playout solutions to handle any playout and distribution requirement, with more channels on air worldwide with every type of broadcaster and distributor than any other provider. With Grass Valley, your operation may be unique, but our experience assures your playout success.
Manual Intervention
REACTIVE SPORTS CHANNELS & SCHEDULE TIMING
In the world of live sports, managing the airing of high revenue commercial breaks is critical.
What was previously a manual, error-prone process is now fully automated using sophisticated playlist logic with different operating modes for different scenarios. Commercial breaks are taken to air by the operator at the most opportune time, leading to minimal interruption of game flow and maximum audience retention. The remaining schedule automatically re-times, ensuring that there is no possibility of missing any live footage — no matter how frequently breaks are aired.
This means a commercial break is never missed! Advanced tools such as The Commercial Hotlist allow breaks to be quickly inserted across multiple regions simultaneously, ensuring the channel output runs error-free, maintaining maximum service level agreement compliance.
RE-JOIN PAUSED PROGRAM OR JOIN IN PROGRESS (JIP)
Being able to handle unscheduled situations has always been a challenge for operators — how to elegantly merge back into the interrupted event with minimal on-air disruption. A prime example is re-joining a program at the exact point where it was interrupted.
When a breaking news event hits and demands air time, and then wanting to elegantly re-join the interrupted program at the exact frame where you left off is difficult. With Grass Valley playout, re-joining the program becomes a simple task carried out via a simple user interface. It allows the operator to resume normal service after the important breaking news event has finished, thus maintaining viewer interest.
There is also the join in progress (JIP) feature, where the interrupted program is "dead run" to maintain schedule timing and then picks up after the break.
Re-joining a program at the exact frame where interrupted can be enacted for both single channels and multiple channels, with multiple-channel re-join on a channel-by-channel basis. JIP can be enacted for both single-channel and multiple channels, with multiple channels initiating JIP simultaneously.
MASTER CONTROL
In many playout situations, hands-on manual intervention is a must. When dealing with highly unpredictable and reactive scenarios such as breaking news, live sporting events, etc., operators need more than just the ability to quickly add events to a schedule using a keyboard and mouse. They need ultra-quick access to changing the on-air event and the associated graphic presentation. In these situations either a physical hardware master control system is required or, alternatively, a touchscreen control surface.
Grass Valley has offerings for these specific master control requirements:
Masterpiece: For the ultimate in hands-on tactile control, there is Masterpiece. A multiformat presentation switcher with DVEs, DSKs and audio processing. It's the perfect partner to a Grass Valley playout system where an operator requires that close level of control via a hardware control surface.
Morpheus UX: For other environments, where differing levels of master control might be needed for different types of channels, there is Morpheus UX. A web-based user-configurable interface. This interface can be configured/customized and then operated via touchscreen allowing the operator a tactile experience. Not only can Morpheus UX be configured to allow master control tasks, it can also be used to highlight errors and warnings as well as other channel playlist related statuses.
