OUTV Brings Simplicity, Redundancy, and Reliability to Broadcast Operations With NVerzion Automation
SALT LAKE CITY — April 7, 2015 —NVerzion®, a leading provider of cutting-edge tools for digital broadcasting and television station automation, today announced that OUTV, a public, educational, and government access television station run by the University of Oklahoma, has deployed NVerzion's Component Level Automation System Solutions (CLASS™) platform to streamline its file-based workflow. Using CLASS, which features a flexible, scalable architecture, OUTV can control a variety of third-party equipment, dramatically reducing the time it takes to perform ingest, dubbing, scheduled satellite recordings, and playout.
OUTV delivers a mix of live and recorded programming, including urgent weather and safety information, to the University of Oklahoma campus and broader community. The new NVerzion automation hardware and software components at OUTV include: NControl on-air playlists, NGest professional dubbing and recording software, NPoint video preparation software for segmenting and trimming, NBase SQL media database manager, NCommand machine status and control, NConvert manual and automated traffic interface, NTime time-driven event scheduling, and EMC Ethernet Machine Control.
"Our old automation system was proving to be ineffective at communicating with other equipment, causing on-air problems that kept our staff up at all hours of the night," said George Franklin, instructor and general manager at the University of Oklahoma. "NVerzion's CLASS platform features a modular architecture that offers a high level of reliability, simplicity, and redundancy, maximizing the efficiency of our-day-to-day operations while providing viewers with a high-quality television experience. We especially love the ease of use that CLASS provides, which is essential given that OUTV is produced by students and faculty."
Built upon an open architecture, NVerzion's CLASS allows OUTV to support a variety of third-party equipment, including Grass Valley K2 video servers and a Utah Scientific 400 audio/video router. By increasing OUTV's operational efficiencies, CLASS brings significant CAPEX and OPEX savings to the station while enabling it to provide a superior on-air presentation to viewers.
CLASS features a modular design that guarantees the integrity of the station's on-air presentation by eliminating any single point of failure within the file-based workflow. The modularity of CLASS will simplify additional upgrades in the future, making it easy for OUTV to stay on top of cutting-edge technology. While OUTV is currently using CLASS for its four cable television channels and a 24/7 Web stream, the scalable, future-proof platform can easily support additional channels and subchannels as the station's operations grow.
"OUTV is one of a few college TV stations that supports two major metropolitan areas in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, a campus housing facility with over 5000 residents, a continuous Web stream, and sports broadcasts, making the need for operational efficiency even greater," said Reed Haslam, director of sales and marketing at NVerzion. "OUTV is now able to display scheduling information during breaks, run public service and promotional announcements, and provide a final as-run log and report which is critical for their operation. CLASS is the most efficient, reliable, and flexible automation platform on the market, making it the ideal choice for a station with a complex file-based workflow like OUTV."
