54 December 2020 TV TECHNOLOGY www.tvtechnology.com
EQUIPMENT GUIDE
Sinclair Takes Playout to the Cloud With Imagine’s Versio BY MIKE KRALEC VP Technical Operations and Deputy CTO Sinclair Broadcast Group
Sinclair’s built on its experience with Imagine Communications’ Versio, with Versio helping to automate channel playout.
HUNT VALLEY, Md.—Early in 2020, Sinclair made the business and operational decision to migrate three of our national networks—Comet, Charge! and TBD—to
USER REPORT automation and playout in the public cloud. This entirely new infrastructure and services platform allowed us to take a greenfield approach and let us consider how we really wanted to operate. As a broadcaster, we sought to add value by streamlining the media supplychain and operations workflows, automating processes to remove manual touch points and reducing the effort required to build and maintain racks of equipment. We looked to remove the hardware wherever practical and move the signaling processes from manual operations to embedded in the creation of the linear stream itself. We had some experience in public cloud playout in the past, with Imagine Communications as our primary technology partner. It made sense to build on this experience, as we were already familiar and comfortable with the Versio platform. This time we decided to originate these channels from Versio playout instances controlled by Versio automation and running within AWS.
FAST AND SIMPLE The first thing to say about cloud playout and automation is that it is swift to implement. Our timeline was to design in April, start implementation in May and finish in the third quarter. That left us with development testing in June and production deployment in July and August, in time for shadowing in September when we also went on air. All this took place in a year when external forces limited everybody’s mobility and every design, implementation and training session was remote. This is a big point in favor of the cloud. With automated infrastructure deployments, you can build large infrastructures
in days, not weeks, and without any requirement for hands-on servers, switches and storage. The second point is that this migration allowed us to streamline our playout operations with extensive automation. The software and infrastructure now leverage the metadata that accompanies our media to ensure it’s in the correct distribution path with the correct segment timings, and that any information that does need manual review is handled by exception. Public cloud serverless computing means our traffic team no longer works from a spreadsheet—the BXF segment timings are reformatted, embedded in a message and distributed.
EVOLVING WITH THE TIMES Similar to letting our metadata drive multiple outputs, our linear stream itself now serves multiple distribution paths. Our streams used to be created individually, with broadcast sent to LTN Global for distribution and separately sent to digital encoders for OTT. Now the same stream serves broadcast and digital using embedded signaling. What are the results? First and most obvious, we are much more efficient. We have increased our capability for ad delivery and distribution, which is critical to any media company. Second, we are no longer constrained by hardware, making our operations more flexible. We’re not stuck making assumptions that we’ll need to live with or face as obstacles in the future. We’ll build the system we need now and as business requirements change, we can change with them. Essentially, our architecture does not age, it evolves. As AWS, Imagine or one of the other partner providers innovate, we can quickly take advantage of any new capabilities. It becomes a living system on which we can improve and innovate at any time we choose. That gives us remarkable flexibility as a broadcaster: The freedom to efficiently match infrastructure and operations to business models. Mike Kralec is vice president of Technical Operations and deputy CTO at Sinclair Broadcast Group, responsible for media technology and operations. He can be contacted at mkralec@sbgtv.com. For more information, contact Imagine Communications at 866-446-2446 or visit www.imaginecommunications.com.
BUYERS BRIEFS Enco ClipFire ClipFire organizes, manages and automates broadcast production and integrated channel playout tasks. Combining ingest, media asset management, graphics, live production and playout automation, ClipFire also integrates with third-party systems to form end-to-end media workflows. Enco’s MOS Interface bridges news production and playout operations. ClipFire supports the ingest and playout of many industrystandard file formats, resolutions and frame rates. It also automates recorded video clips and can manage live video inputs from cameras, routers and production switchers, switching between inputs and recorded content. Live inputs supported include SD, HD, 3G-SDI, and over the network using NDI. For more information, contact Enco at 800-362-6797 or visit www.enco.com.
Cablecast Community Media Cablecast 7.2 Version 7.2 of the Cablecast Community Media broadcast automation, playout and content publishing platform expands support for IP-based media workflows alongside enhanced clip trimming and metadata tagging. Cablecast 7.2 can ingest NDI streams from NDI-enabled production switchers and solutions from anywhere on the network as an IP input source. New virtual clip editing features enable users to cut out sections of a recorded program without a separate editing system or creating multiple versions of the file. Meanwhile, content searching and metadata consistency are improved by allowing multiple defined values in a single Tag field. For more information, contact Cablecast at 866-866-4118 or visit www.cablecast.tv.
Tedial Hybrid Cloud Tedial’s Hybrid Cloud architecture, based on its aSTORM content management solution, migrates from an onpremise system into a Hybrid Cloud system to enable remote production—important in today’s production environment. Leveraging a mixed computing storage and services strategy combining the privacy and security of a private cloud with the scalability of a public cloud, it enhances orchestration among various platforms and multiple sites. The architecture enables broadcasters to meet business objectives quickly while maintaining full control of media archives and costs and ensuring a low-risk transition into the cloud by moving the operation in-line with business needs. For more information, visit www.tedial.com.