At NAB, Pebble Beach Systems celebrated a significant new contract for the first Marina automation system in the Gulf region (GCC). Qatar-based broadcaster Al Kass, which will be broadcasting from a new purpose-built facility in Qatar from this summer, has selected Marina to automate its five sports channels. Samer Younes, technical advisor to Al-Kass stated […]
At NAB, Pebble Beach Systems celebrated a significant new contract for the first Marina automation system in the Gulf region (GCC). Qatar-based broadcaster Al Kass, which will be broadcasting from a new purpose-built facility in Qatar from this summer, has selected Marina to automate its five sports channels.
Samer Younes, technical advisor to Al-Kass stated that the breadth of interfaces to third party equipment which the system offers, the Arabic user interface, and a range of features optimised for the rigours of sports broadcasting were key criteria for choosing the solution.
Marinas user interface is exceptionally easy to use and highly configurable to suit the needs of different users and processes, and to have all this functionality available to us in Arabic is a real bonus. The system will be handling ingest and playout, and also the media management between the SAN and EVS servers which forms part of the new system, Younes stated.
The automation system with be fully redundant, with automatic failover, and in addition to controlling EVS servers, will also interface to an NVISION router, five GVG Maestro switchers, and five Imagestore750 master control and channel branding processors. Redundancy switching is via Harris Panacea and Miranda routers.
Pebble Beach Systemss regional manager for the Middle East, Samir Isbaih added that Marinas feature set is especially suited for the fast-paced live sports environment.
To safeguard on air operations during live events, Marina offers live feed redundancy with the ability to select and configure main and backup router sources. It is also possible to change the duration of events whilst they are on air to cope with late changes, and thanks to Marinas database-driven playout capability, clip metadata can be edited for QC or approval by an administrator, to enable or disable clips across multiple playlists.
Pebble Beach Systems has worked with EVS on a number of key projects in the region, including an installation at Qatar TV, where a new interface using the latest EVS XSquare protocol has been implemented.
