BCNEXXT Vipe cloud-native playout software now brings live sports and events workflows into real-time operation, simplifying tasks and provisioning, and reducing overhead.
BCNEXXT Vipe RT is a new version of the company’s cloud-native playout operations software. Vipe consolidates linear, FAST, VoD and streaming silos onto a common platform with a single point of technical and financial management and has features for detailed customisation and remote operations. Vipe RT runs on a separate engine, specifically designed for sports and live events, that deploys real-time processing upstream from Vipe's existing playout engine. As an optional upgrade, Vipe RT can be added to an existing Premium Vipe playout channel to handle live sports and events.
"Vipe RT improves the automation capabilities and reliability that are typically available for sports and other live events,” said Graham Sharp, CEO of BCNEXXT, USA."With the new Live Operator panel, users can control functionality such as switching, graphics selection, emergency slates and audio mapping in real time, while using a low-latency Web RTC confidence monitor as they work."
The goal is to achieve maximum resource and staff efficiency, cut capital expenses, and add agility and flexibility when broadcast services need to be created and shut down for sports and live events. This new Vipe release has increased the number of Quality Control (QC) checks to more than 80. The specialised RT GUI automates repetitive tasks and focusses on limiting on-screen operator errors.
Using Cloud Dynamics
Vipe takes advantage of cloud dynamics to scale resources to processing needs. Vipe differentiates between the complexity of specific content and assigns resources accordingly, provisioning and releasing resources only for the duration of complex live events, stopping provisioning when events come to an end.
This dynamic type of resource management keeps costs to a minimum, reducing operational costs for both file-based channels and potentially more for live sports and news, especially when running occasional live events. Also, since QC is also done ahead of time, Vipe can achieve very high reliability in a lights-out-operation mode for thematic channels.
Vipe helps to simplify media supply chains, resulting in a lower operator-to-channel ratio. Organisations can deploy new channels quickly – without undue upfront costs or risk of affecting on-air playout – using a pay-as-you-go model.
Regardless of the transport or distribution system, Vipe can manage linear playout, online VOD and OTT delivery for any device, delivering all content in a single workflow from the same UI. The Vipe parallel processing engine can assemble content directly from existing storage locations in a faster than real-time process, bringing together the material and graphics and places ancillary data into compressed transmission format files.
BCNEXXT at IBC 2024
At IBC 2024, BCNEXXT will show other new capabilities for its distribution platform including Break Containers. These features can quickly adapt to changing playout requirements when delivering unscheduled breaks, such as those that occur during matches of sports that do not have fixed break times like baseball or cricket.
With Vipe's new Swimlane View, a single operator can manage nested channel variants. This tool targets multichannel playout where channels follow the same break pattern, often around a single sports event, but have their own regional content and ads during breaks.
For live events and late arriving file-based content, a low-latency output has been added, allowing operators to insert live subtitling into the regular playout pipeline. Also, CPU-only rendering and playout means users have more flexibility when deploying Vipe.
Schedules and manifests, which are stored in the compressed TS format, are used to create the versions required for all distribution channels. Vipe can be deployed across public and private cloud platforms as well as on-premises. Its highly optimised compute usage also keeps energy consumption relatively low. www.bcnexxt.com
