Considered the state-level equivalent of C-SPAN, TVW is Washington State's public affairs network, providing gavel-to-gavel coverage of all three branches of state government as well as meetings or hearings by other state boards and commissions. TVW also produces original documentaries, programs with in-depth interviews, and educational content about Washington public policy. With the sheer volume of coverage overall, TVW needed to overhaul its existing live and file-based playout workflow for a more customized and flexible approach.
“Anything occurring at the state level, we cover,” explained Marc Gerchak, VP/director of engineering, TVW. “It’s an incredible volume of content. There are a lot of moving parts and varied programming types. We wanted a reliable system that could accommodate a constantly changing playlist, update graphics on the fly, and allow us to edit material as it is ingested. It’s a complicated list of requirements for one system.”
TVW turned to Keycode Media to design a workflow that would address everything on its wish list. The new playout system features master and redundant PlayBox Neo AirBox Neo systems with 12 channels that interface directly with TVW’s third-party trafficking system, plus a TitleBox Neo interactive CG, ListBox for schedule creation and editing, Live Ingest, and the Multi-Backup Manager (MBM) for multi-channel redundancy.
The system runs on the PlayBox Neo Suite, a platform that offers centralized control, monitoring, and administration of an optimized multimedia workflow. PlayBox Neo solutions are solutions based on modular products that can be customized to provide the exact capability needed for any scale of channel playout management, from ingest and scheduling to transmission.
“TVW needed the flexibility of changing their playlist at a moment’s notice, as well as scheduling programming in advance, and they didn’t want to wait until a session ended in eight hours to edit a feed,” explained Mark Siegel, VP of business development, Keycode Media. “And playout needed to interface seamlessly with their trafficking system. With a tight timeframe and a lot of multi-vendor communication required, it was a big ask. Thankfully, we’ve got a long history of collaboration with PlayBox Neo and were confident they could provide exactly what TVW was looking for under such a short deadline.”
The PlayBox Neo complement replaced TVW’s existing automation and server set up in master control. The new workflow utilizes the AirBox Neo servers for playout. The PlayBox system also controls the network’s NVision 9000 router.
AirBox Neo can easily mix a variety of media files and live inputs in one playlist. Changes to the playlist are possible—and media can be trimmed, edited, or repositioned—while on-air. Live productions are streamlined to allow the insertion of live streams into the playlist. And for automated playout, AirBox Neo enables playlist scheduling weeks ahead of time.
“The design of this workflow really shows the flexibility of our platform,” said Van Duke, director of U.S. operations, PlayBox Neo. “We’re particularly proud of the seamless way we can communicate with all the tools in master control."
