Etere for MTV Italy

MTV Italy chose Etere to reorganize their installations in Milan.

The system was furnished with many technological innovations, developed at Etere during the last year. Principal innovations regard the organization of archive, complete redundance, managing schedules and commercials, and also invoicing and the new Etere Disaster Recovery. MTV archive is managed with Etere Asset Archive, which is able to contain over 5000 hours of music. It’s based on a Microsoft SQL 2000 database, and that for it is safe, fast and economical. An archive can keep names of artists, video versions, VJs and any other useful data. Etere controls a SeaChange BMC™1230 videoserver, capable of containing all clips, necessary for a daily program, thanks to its ingestion. Etere Clone was installed to have a complete redundancy: two automation controllers that broadcast two copies of the same play-list. If you modify the play-list it will be automatically sent to the Main Automation and to the Clone. The Clone process controls the proper work of Main Automation; if it points out a problem, the Clone takes control over all devices and continues broadcasting. Fast commutation guarantees that not a single event will be lost in case of damage. There are 2 Etere schedule levels to have the maximum flexibility when creating and managing the schedule:
Presentation Editor - the real high-level multifunctional editor for the construction of sophisticated schedules;
Instant Editor - allows you to modify the schedule even a few seconds before the broadcast
Thanks to Etere distributed architecture, the system is completely configurable, error free and with Fault Tolerance/Fault Resilience. The library connects all editing stations to have a tape-less archive. Thanks to ETERE Media Manager, there are less than 5 transactions per a day between the library and the server. Etere Automation is perfectly integrated with Etere Traffic, which revolutionized the way of programming and managing commercials on TV stations.
Commercials are not sold according to “time slots” but according to the programming. It is finally possible to sell commercials independently from time changes on schedule.
Invoicing is perfectly integrated with the commercial programming, the schedule and the On-air. Data for invoices come out from the commercial programming, which is managed by ETERE Traffic; the software reads modifications, even in the last moments before the broadcast, directly form the “as run logs”. The connection between 4 MTV offices (3 in Milano plus the 4th in London) is guaranteed by SQL’s simplest remote access, through a 2Mb ISDN line. Everybody working in those 4 offices can use the same system. Templates can be switched really fast, and that allows a major flexibility when managing subtitles and asset graphics, created with Pinnacle Write Deko 2000, which creates “on the fly” automatically. Thanks to SQL 2000 database, thew system doesn’t have a single point of failure. The newest installation is Etere DR: a recovery system that operates automatically. It starts working in case it traces damage in the main system, caused by a natural magnet or another non-predictable event, which couldn’t be avoided. Etere DR uses Sync as a second site, with another Server, even if not of the same size as the main one. The DS site works without being managed, and it’s connected by using a simple Ethernet connection, so it can be placed in another city or even another country.