ON-AIR Gets Ovation Down Under

6 Novemember 2006

Top UK playout provider sells channel automation package to leading Australian arts channel.

On the back of a number of recent sales into broadcasters around the world, UK channel playout software provider ON-AIR Systems has made its first foray into Australia with the sale of a fully digital automation and playout system to Australian pay TV arts channel, Ovation. The system was installed and will be maintained by ON-AIR’s Australian systems integrator, Magna Systems & Engineering.

As Gerry Travers, managing director at Ovation, says: “When we first started looking into how we could handle our automation and playout needs, we thought we’d continue down the outsourcing route, as this is how Ovation had always operated in the past. But then we came across the ON-AIR solution, and this seemed to give us a lot more in the way of flexibility and reliability – and importantly worked out to be much more cost-effective.”

Gerry continues: “Under the new ownership we’ve effectively started with a completely blank canvas. This has allowed us to build the infrastructure for Ovation to exactly the specifications we want. There’s no legacy equipment getting in our way – meaning we have been able to design the most efficient and economic systems to get our programmes on air. And now our inventory of over 4000 hours is progressively moving over to hard drive storage devices,” he adds.

The ON-AIR system is central to Ovation’s vision for a completely digital, tape-free environment. Ovation edits its own production using Final Cut Pro, and then directly transcodes this digitally on to the ON-AIR system. Outside suppliers deliver their programming on digi-tape, and then it’s ingested into the system. Bugs, crawls and voice are added, and the schedule is programmed automatically. All the material is selected from the hard drive, so it avoids the inherent issues of handling tapes.

“The ON-AIR solution is the ideal fit for what we need – it’s compact (it fits on just two racks), it’s very easy to use, it’s straightforward to install, and is backed up with excellent technical support,” Gerry concludes.