Aveco’s ASTRA Studio 2 Provides New Capabilities for Studio Automation

Aug. 16, 2011 - PRLog -- Prague — Aveco®, the worldwide broadcast facility content management and automation solutions specialist, has introduced ASTRA Studio 2. Studio 2 offers multiple levels of studio automation, from simple automation-assisted manual production to a single operator mode—where one person can control a live newscast or program. It includes new journalist tools that makes it easier to develop stories and provides journalists more control of how a story goes to air. A new Preproduction Mode for recording and editing a live show for later broadcast enables a quick and simple way to replace segments or correct simple errors.

ASTRA Studio 2 builds on the experience gained from the original ASTRA Studio. Germany's Hessischer Rundfunk (HR) has been a long time ASTRA Studio user.

"HR has been using ASTRA Studio for five years for our daily news programs," said Ralf Trieder, Project Leader of Studio K at Hessischer Rundfunk. " It has reduced our operating costs significantly by letting fewer operators direct the show and, at the same time, it improved our on-air look resulting in a very consistent looking show day after day. We are looking forward to new developments in Astra Studio."

Aveco is now in the process of installing Studio 2 at a major broadcaster in Germany. Studio 2 is a major redesign with a new, highly graphical, multi-platform, timeline-based user interface that increases the operator’s efficiency.

A key advantage of Studio 2 over competitive products is its lower initial investment. Studio 2 works with existing infrastructures and broadcast equipment. Customers are not tied to a specific vendor’s hardware or workflow. With Studio 2, customers are free to pick the equipment best suited to their needs.

New journalist tools give journalists additional options. They can work exactly as they do today to develop a story and let the producer determines how it goes to air. Or with Studio 2’s new features, journalists themselves can direct how the story goes to air. This does not require any additional knowledge or work on the journalist’s part—just a simple drag and drop of a pre-programmed template from Studio 2’s library. from that point on, everything is automated.

A new Preproduction Mode is used to record and edit a live show before being broadcast. A new feature,  Intelligent Splicing, makes it easy to replace a section of the show at a point where it will look seamless—avoiding splicing during a transition or fade, inconsistent audio levels, or other points that would distract the viewer. The show is then automatically assembled and registered as being ready for broadcast.

"This new version of Studio goes a long way in reducing broadcasters costs while at the same time improving quality, giving journalist more control over their stories, and reducing the time to produce complex shows," said Roger Crooks, VP of Marketing and Sales for Aveco. "The studio automation market is relatively young and customers are still sorting out what is available and how to use these new tools. Studio 2 places Aveco in a prime position to lead in this market segment with a simple but powerful and affordable solution that works in existing environment."

ASTRA Studio 2 can be delivered as an integral part of the ASTRA Suite of Tools production chain, or as a stand-alone product, integrated into a customer’s existing environment.

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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.