Cambridge, UK, July 13, 2009

IPV, a global leader and largest independent supplier of low bit-rate, frame-accurate video technology to the broadcast and professional video sectors, today announced that its SpectreView browse solution has been selected by Viasat Broadcasting, to form part of the its new automated playout facility in Riga, Latvia. The project is being lead by Luxembourg-based systems integration company BCE and is expected to go to air in early 2010.

Part of Modern Times Group (MTG), Viasat is the largest free-TV and satellite premium pay-TV operator in both Scandinavia and the Baltic regions. The new playout facility is part of a major renovation program that will enable Viasat to replace its three smaller local playout centres currently in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania - and build a new central playout hub to manage the existing nine channels and to facilitate future channel expansion. In addition to the playout of the Baltic channels, this new centre will provide the disaster recovery services for Viasat’s UK operation.

The system includes Pebble Beach automation and media management capabilities as well as Front Porch’s DIVArchive, Omneon Spectrum and MediaDeck™ servers and Apple® Final Cut Pro (FCP) editors. The entire workflow is under the management of Pebble Beach’s Neptune automation and Anchor media management systems — which includes the movement of media between London and Riga via the DIVArchive.

Once ingested assets are tagged as QC passed, they are transcoded using multiple IPV SpectreView XCode engines to create low-resolution browse proxy copies. The IPV browse resolution content has multiple purposes including, the selection of clips for promo production, content segmentation for advertising insertion, and the provision of voiceovers and sub-title files. The content can be viewed on 20 Razorfish clients installed in Viasat’s facilities in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. EDLs output from Razorfish are used to trigger partial file restores of high-resolution material from the DIVArchive system and can also be shared with FCP suites to provide a highly efficient workflow for final promo production.

"The implementation of the IPV’s SpectreView low-res browse solution was integral to the whole workflow at Viasat as it offers the operators all the necessary tools right at the desktop," said Tom Gittins, Director of Sales, Pebble Beach Systems. "SpectreView’s new ability to provide multi-track audio, with up to 11 stereo tracks, was crucial to meet the demands of Viasat’s multilingual transmissions."

"We are delighted to be involved with this project at Viasat alongside our long term partner Pebble Beach Systems," said Nigel Booth, Executive Vice President for Sales and Marketing at IPV. "The ability to have low-resolution production proxy material quickly and easily available, at the desktop, enables Viasat to harness the business benefits — including speed of operation and accessibility of material — that come with an integrated file-based process."

Seen by many as the de facto standard for browse resolution systems, SpectreView is implemented by a large number of manufacturers of playout automation, newsrooms, asset management and access services. Key to its success is the incorporation of precision timecode and frame accuracy. This coupled with its advanced streaming server ensures an unprecedented user experience providing a VTR-like performance at the desktop. Content can be encoded using a low bitrate codec – originally MPEG-1, now MPEG-4 or Windows Media 9 – and be accessed by multiple devices on standard computers, even when precise timecode control is critical.

About BCE

About IPV

For further press information please contact: