VPK PRO is On Air with Etere NDI Playout

VPK PRO, the largest independent television production company in Slovenia, is on-air with Etere Ecosystem. Etere equips the station with a future-proof and modular NDI Playout architecture for 4 channels.

Etere extends its strong relationship with VPK PRO, the largest independent television production company in Slovenia, with a complete playout automation setup for 4 channels driven by NDI technology. Etere helps VPK PRO to advance with the adoption of NDI playout technologies that allows video and audio sources to be shared bi-directionally across a network, eliminating the need for costly direct connections, expensive cable runs, and infrastructure upgrades. In addition, the end-to-end NDI setup allows VPK PRO to enjoy real time, ultra low latency videos even for live recordings.

VPK PRO creates compelling content for sports, commercial, entertainment and corporate projects. Working with the Etere team, VPK PRO is empowered with the turnkey software solution Etere ETX, which integrates all the playout features needed to bring a channel on air including ingest, 4K playout, closed caption/subtitling insertions, dynamic overlays, text over recorded/live videos, NDI, IP and SDI inputs/outputs in a single software. Etere ETX brings greater efficiencies with its easy deployments, operation and upgrades. The system runs on an end-to-end NDI connectivity. Network Device Interface (NDI) is a royalty free standard developed by NewTek that enables multiple video systems to identify and communicate with one another over IP as well as to encode, transmit and receive many streams of high quality, low latency, frame-accurate video and audio in real-time.

Etere Automation was also deployed to meet the station's evolving playout automation needs. Etere empowers VPK PRO with a highly resilient database setup that enables multiple levels of fault tolerance including Backup Mode, Master/Clone Mode, and Disaster Recovery Mode.

For the management of secondary events in real-time, Etere STMan offers an efficient set of tools to enhance performance capabilities. With STMan, edits are synchronized in real-time across Etere modules and your playlist is always updated even with the addition of on the fly changes. Etere STMan manages on-air broadcast of secondary events including custom scripts and complex graphics with real-time data from Etere Executive Editor and Etere Media Asset Management (MAM). Etere MAM provides real-time content search, retrieval, browsing and content editing on the centralized web interface that allows you to drive your workflows no matter where you are.

Additionally, Etere Executive Editor brings together the most efficient features to improve the complete planning and efficiency of broadcasters' playlists. Etere enables the strategic pre-planning of schedules and accurate synchronizations of last-minutes changes. With the tight integration across the Etere Ecosystem, planned schedules are automatically synchronized with the associated licensed content, contractual commercials, imported materials and regional ad insertions. Furthermore, operators are able to manage media previews and loudness control directly from the same interface.

Designed with flexibility and efficiency in mind, Etere T-Workflow empowers VPK PRO users to customize and automate their broadcast procedures to meet broadcasting and content distribution requirements. From the T-workflow designer tool, users can design, customize and authorize the workflow that they need. Etere makes any configuration possible, it manages every stage of the content lifecycle and workflow management from ingest to playout automation. Flexible and unlimited, T-Workflow provides intelligent load-balancing across multiple servers and multiple paths to manage even thousands of processes concurrently.

Etere SNMP Monitoring Console equips VPK PRO with a single dashboard for a quick monitoring of their system, storage and workflows. It is also able to manage third-party processes and devices in the system. Not only that, Etere SNMP Console detects missing heartbeats and sends both a visual-alarm and a real-time e-mail notification whenever an error is triggered. Etere provides a professional monitoring console with very high processing density for an agile environment.

As a multi-channel network with multiple file formats requirements, VPK PRO needed an easy and reliable file conversion tool. The integrated Etere Transcoder provides unlimited frame rate conversions between different video standards. It provides all major format conversions required in production, post-production, broadcast and distribution environments.

Etere also provides unlimited transfer, copy and movement of digital content from one level to another based on customizable workflow rules. The sophisticated Etere Media Manager integrates with Etere Transcoder to provide encoding and decoding between media formats, conversions of bit rates and change of video resolutions to meet lower resolution screens.

Etere delivers all the functionalities that VPK PRO needed in a single solution that is equipped with the agility and flexibility to keep the station's infrastructure at the leading edge of technology.