TV Puls MCR Automation

TV Puls is a Polish nationwide commercial television channel that broadcasts free-to-air the channels TV Puls and Puls 2. Being each program simulcasted in HD and SD. The HD and the SD programs share the same main layer for video in HD, broadcasting natively HD and automatically downscaling the SD program channel outputs.

Furthermore, in order for the SD programs to have sharp graphics for channel branding, there are independent graphics engines to avoid downscaling the graphic layers. Thus, the systems play out the downscaled video from HD to SD, but with native SD graphics, providing a great channel branding quality no matter the resolution.

The content is also broadcasted with subtitles over teletext, with STL level2 files, providing colored dialogs experiences in a cost-effective way for DTT.

The system has also a preview playlist and output that allows to position in any future event, allowing the operator to display the primary, secondary event graphics placement and the subtitles before airing the content.

All the HD, SD and the preview channels are played out in parallel from the backup server; that syncs the playlist of each program with the main servers and provides instant switch over in case is required.

This facilitates upgrading the software to versions with new futures without any downtime to the On Air broadcasted programs.

At last but not least, there is an integration with the Provys business management system to provide a unified workflow for the purchase, sales and scheduling departments. From the Provys system the complete playlist can be scheduled in advanced, including the primary events, following the contracts policies, the secondary events for graphics and swapping audio tracks in case required. The playlist exported from Provys is automatically loaded in the Skylark automation system.

Also, all unique media IDs, UMID, in the exported playlist that may not be already ingested are then used to automatically transfer the media files in to the playout storage from a source folder in the SAN repository. To conclude, all broadcasted media is reported in the asrun log that is afterwards imported into Provys system for reconciliation.