We all know that we’re living in times of huge change across the industry with the rise of OTT video services and increased technology crossover with the A/V sector.
As a software design company, we’ve understood and adapted to these changes, continuing to expand the breadth and depth of our precision control applications.
What does that mean in the world of third-party device control? Those who we have worked with, and/or have read our blogs over the past couple of years, will know that the change has been significant. No, of course we haven’t suddenly abandoned our traditional broadcast tech control technologies; far from it. But have expanded the breadth and depth of our applications, with new functionality for broadcast and applications for live streaming control across IP routing, including for the A/V sector.
As a result, we’ve launched our new website, which we’ve spent a great deal of time on to make the user experience as clear and informative as possible, with an increased range of purchasing options.
A key development has been our increased integration of NewTek’s NDI® IP protocol. We support NDI in several products: RouteMaster Lite is a dedicated virtual router for NDI, allowing users to route signals easily from a mix of hardware panels and web-based panels. It’s equally applicable across the A/V sector as it is broadcast. Customers can combine this with ClockWork for automated time-of-day switching, or use the full RouteMaster system for hybrid SDI/NDI systems with tie-line routing. We’ve also expanded into streaming encoder control and easy streaming to Facebook Live and YouTube live streaming.
Our development of our WebCentre application is a prime example of changing requirements. WebCentre is a device-independent application that provides browser-based user role creation and management, control panel configuration and access to those panels for device control. It’s on-premise, server-based, with any modern browser on any device – tablet, PC, smartphone – able to access user-defined control panels according to the user management settings. Using HTTPS, it’s fully secure.
Why? Part of it is the desire to have less software installed on machines and to be able to access control surfaces quickly and easily. Being able to have WebCentre onsite as a service available to any machine is very important.
We’ve had good interest and orders for WebCentre purely for router control because there are many, many people using traditional baseband routing but they need ways of controlling those routers that bring them into the new millennia, rather than using hardware panels or panels only running on PCs. This may also involve control of NDI routing too in a mixed environment.
As mentioned, we’ve also continued to expand the capabilities of our flagship control application Helm, taking broadcast, streaming and A/V control to new levels, from simple router control to large master control environments.
What hasn’t changed is that viewers, even more so in today’s highly competitive environment, expect a quality experience and that doesn’t stop at production: presentation is key too. Providing precise, easy to use and configure control is more important than ever.
Come and see us at IBC2019 on stand 6.C19 and/or get in touch. We’re here to help.
Ephraim Barrett – Sales Director