Encompass Enhances Playout and OTT Services With Integration of Cobalt Digital Frame Sync Solution
Frame Sync Cards With +SCTE104-FAST Software Bring Frame-Accurate Insertion to Encompass’ ChannelMark™ Media Enrichment Service
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Cobalt Digital today announced its partnership with Encompass Digital Media, a global technology services company supporting broadcast, cable, and digital leaders, in providing a new service offering — ChannelMark™ — that seamlessly interfaces with all major broadcast automation systems to drive automatic, frame-accurate SCTE 104 message insertion. Cobalt Digital’s award-winning HPF-9000 frame and frame sync cards with +SCTE104-FAST software enable Encompass to implement the entire SCTE 104 specification without requiring customers to modify their upstream traffic and scheduling workflows, which in turn enables a host of downstream features such as automated ad replacement and automated VOD file creation.
“Cobalt Digital worked closely with our team to meet all of the technical requirements for frame-accurate SCTE 104 message insertion, as well as for producing encoded outputs with SCTE 35 inside a single 2-RU appliance,” said James Heliker, director of media workflow engineering at Encompass. “Together, ChannelMark and the Cobalt gear allow our customers to leverage linear content for VOD and OTT in ways that were previously not possible.”
Specializing in full-time network origination/playout and live ad-hoc transmission services, Encompass is a global gateway for moving media throughout EMEA, Latin America, the Pacific Rim, and the U.S. The ChannelMark media enrichment service is offered as part of the company’s comprehensive channel-playout services.
The Cobalt Digital +SCTE104-FAST software incorporated into ChannelMark provides the unique ability to tie real-time events from broadcast automation to specific frames of video in the baseband SDI. In the preparation of linear content for VOD platforms, this capability eliminates the need to capture and manually edit out extra head and tail content surrounding programming, a process that delays delivery of content into the VOD chain for viewing. It also expedites the process of viewership credit by automatically encoding a program with original advertising in place as aired, for C3 commercial ratings provided by The Nielsen Company. Taking advantage of +SCTE104-FAST, the Encompass ChannelMark service can automatically mark the beginning and end of every segment in real time, and downstream systems can extract the perfectly marked segments for dissemination to CDN, VOD, and OTT platforms.
“Ensuring precise insertion of pertinent data, our +SCTE104-FAST frame-accurate SCTE trigger greatly enhances the performance and accuracy of VOD and server-based commercial-replacement systems,” said Bob McAlpine, CEO of Cobalt Digital. “We’ve been developing and refining this solution over the past year, and we’re excited to see it being implemented by an industry leader such as Encompass to give its customers a competitive edge.”
More information about Cobalt Digital and its products is available at www.cobaltdigital.com.
About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning 3G/HD/SD conversion, terminal, throwdown, and multiviewer technology for the broadcast television environment. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative, Cobalt offers a full range of openGear video and audio processing card solutions for applications such as closed-caption compliance monitoring, OB production, master control, HD news production, signal transport, audio loudness, and color correction. Cobalt’s Blue Box Group™ line of interface converter boxes streamlines and simplifies a wide range of 3G/HD/SD conversion and signal transport tasks. The company’s multi-image display processors enable multiviewer capabilities in the most demanding studio and remote broadcasting environments. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. More information is available at www.cobaltdigital.com.