Aveco Announces New Solutions, Markets, Products, and Technologies for Broadcast and Media Companies

March 1, 2012 - PRLog -- Prague– New for 2012 from Aveco is a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Solution that can be deployed in a variety of configurations based on customer requirements and budget. While a disaster is rare, most station outages today are the result of human error or simple equipment failure. The cost of going dark is expensive both in terms of dollars and reputation. Aveco's cost-effective solutions are scalable from small single-channel stations to multi-station group broadcasters. Aveco has solutions on-air today that have achieved frame accurate synchronization between two sites for truly seamless failover between the main and backup site even with last minute changes in the playlist.

Remote Ad Insertion
Remote Ad Insertion is a simple and cost-effective solution for Hub and Spoke or Centralized architectures to generate additional revenue by enabling higher priced ads that are specific to viewers in that region. Various configurations enable playlists to be controlled solely from the Hub or shared control with the regional stations. Aveco controls the ad insertion playout in all the regions by managing the playlists and making sure the media is available in the various locations. Aveco has teamed up with Thomson Video Networks to offer this solution throughout the world.

New ASTRA Studio 2 for Studio Automation
ASTRA Studio 2 will demonstrate how a single operator can easily produce a complex live newscast or studio program. During production, Studio 2 controls the recording devices for re-recording portions and easily splicing the new content into the final program. For playout, by controlling all existing studio equipment, Studio 2 lets the operator focus on how the show looks rather than the technical details behind the scenes. This enables a single operator to adapt to the surprises of live production and improves the on-air look and feel of a broadcast.

New Multi-Platform User Interface for Master Control, News Automation, and Media Management
Major enhancements to Aveco's full line of applications now offer a new multi-platform GUI. While the core software still runs on a Real-Time Operating System for the ultimate in software reliability, the user interface portion runs on any Windows, Apple, or Linux server providing user compatibility with their house servers. Media Management, Master Control, and News Automation will be demonstrated at NAB 2012 to show complete file-based workflows.

New Generic Media Asset Management Tools
To address new markets, Aveco has unbundled its powerful media asset management tools used with its automation system into a family of generic applications that run as standalone solutions (SAS). The first of these products are SAS CMS and SAS Archive.
SAS CMS is a multi-site Content Management System that provides a cost-effective solution to managing all of the media content within a facility, regardless of the storage devices used or how content was ingested. It works as a standalone application by itself or seamlessly with other Aveco tools such as Ingest, Browse, Archive, MCR/News/Line, and Studio automation to manage assets.
SAS Archive is standalone application that adds the ability to save and restore content from tape- or disk-based archive systems. When used in combination with SAS CMS, users have a very powerful MAM system that is often a fraction of the price of traditional broadcast MAM solutions available today.

New Predictive Failure Analysis
Already well known for its reliability, Aveco has developed technology for even higher levels of reliability—Predictive Failure Analysis. The traditional method for mirrored servers is to connect the two servers together with a simple "heartbeat" cable to detect a hardware failure. When a hardware failure occurs, the heartbeat is lost and this triggers a switch to the backup server. While not common, some failures can result in a significant delay between losing the video signal and the server going down.
Predictive Failure Analysis overcomes this by monitoring the internal software processes of the servers. Through comprehensive system analysis, Aveco engineers use the normal process parameters as a baseline. When these parameters are exceeded during normal operation, the probability of a failure is high. Predictive Failure Analysis will trigger a switch to the backup server for a true seamless switch before an actual failure occurs. Maintenance can then be performed on the off-line server and either fixed, put back on-line, or with the parameters adjusted.

Summary
"We have been delivering the industry's highest reliability solutions for over 20 years, based on RTOS [Real-Time Operating System] technology," said Roger Crooks, VP Sales and Marketing for Aveco. "Using our expertise in this area, Predictive Failure Analysis was the next logical step. First minimize the potential for a failure, then try to predict a failure.
"We are also excited about our new standalone applications for Media Asset Management and Archive as this lets a whole new set of customers take advantage of our powerful file management capabilities—which are simple to use and very attractively priced. They have been converted to be generic applications that do not care what storage devices they control or what applications are used for ingest or playout. Meanwhile, SAS CMS sees all content within a site and can easily be extended for multiple sites both with full security protection," said Crooks.
Aveco will be exhibiting at NAB 2012 in Las Vegas at booth N2138, showcasing Media Management and Automation Solutions for Broadcast Facilities. The company will also be holding a press conference on Monday, April 16, at 10:00 a.m. in room N242 (NAB Official News Briefing Room) of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

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AVECO s.r.o., based in Prague, Czech Republic and the United States (as AVECO Americas), designs, sells, and supports Broadcast Facility automation worldwide. Based on a powerful content management system, the ASTRA Suite of Tools provides complete solutions for all aspects of file-based and traditional video workflows including solutions for ingest, browse, master control, newsrooms, and studio automation. A variety of architectures are available from small standalone systems to high channel, multi-site operations which are modular and easily expandable. Solutions can be custom configured with only the features needed and various redundancy options provide very cost-effective and reliable systems. ASTRA is the only automation system available that scales from single channel to high channel systems that are built on a Real-Time Operating System which has the ability to hot swap software modules without rebooting.