MCR Broadcast Hire and Video Europe Ltd today announce they have entered into a strategic partnership, formalising the existing and longstanding relationship between Mike Ransome and Steve Green and aligning the two companies’ business operations.

Steve Green and Matt Marner, directors at Video Europe, have entered into a shareholding agreement in MCR Broadcast Hire alongside MCR’s Managing Director, Mike Ransome. Video Europe has invested significant funds into the live broadcast sector over the past few years and considers the alignment of MCR’s business a natural fit.

Dejero, an innovator in cloud-managed solutions that provide Emmy® award winning video transport and Internet connectivity while mobile or in remote locations, has introduced new short-depth versions of its 1U rack-mounted WayPoint receiver and CuePoint return video and teleprompter server to its portfolio. The smaller chassis of WayPoint 50 and CuePoint 50 make them the perfect fit for remote production vehicles where space is at a premium, and for portable flyaway kits that simplify transport and enable rapid response in case of a disaster recovery scenario or for contingency preparedness as part of a broader business continuity plan.

American singer Halsey kicked off her Manic World Tour 2020 in Madrid in February supporting her just released studio album, also called Manic. The Manic World Tour spans 48 shows, and kicked off in Europe, with the next legs currently being planned for Asia and North America later this year. disguise gx 2c media servers were selected by All Of It Now to drive the show’s video and Notch IMAG real-time effects.

Numerous features of the disguise solutions came into play for the tour starting in pre-pro. “The show’s video design used a multi-layered frame, and the 3D workflow of disguise Designer allowed us to create parallel maps that placed content on the screen spatially without requiring specific renders for certain songs,” explains Danny Firpo of All of It Now, a disguise Rental Partner and Workflow Specialist based in San Francisco, who did the tour’s video programming with Cade Moore. “This gave us the creative flexibility to move content around the screen and explore different approaches for certain songs.

Scale Logic Enterprise Support Services

In these difficult times all of us need to save money on our support contracts, and our partners at Scale Logic have all the answers.

Scale Logic have decades of experience in helping clients extend the life and investment of their servers, storage and networking.

They make it easy for IT managers and CFOs to save time and money!

Scale Logic offer customised SLAs to reduce IT maintenance spending by 50% -70% compared to OEMs and will deploy OEM certified engineers who are often the same engineers used by the OEM manufacturers.

They can increase your savings with other services including buying back equipment you no longer use and by sourcing new and/or factory refurbished equipment to expand your capacity and performance, including legacy products.

FOR-A Corporation of America has built integrated live production solutions that combine its HANABI series of video switchers with Variant Systems Group replay systems, ClassX graphics and playout software, ODYSSEY Insight video servers, and Brainstorm Multimedia virtual studios.

“Together with our technology partners, FOR-A is creating live production systems that make integration easier and more reliable,” said Ken Truong, President of FOR-A Corporation of America. “With the combined expertise from these companies across the professional video industry, we can offer best-of-breed solutions that improve workflows while delivering broadcast-quality results for HD, 4K, and beyond.”

Variant’s Envivo Replay offers a cost-effective sports and live event replay solution, with an intuitive user interface and continuous multiple iso-channel recording capabilities. It offers simultaneous clip storage of multiple angles, playlists for highlights playback, built-in branding capabilities, and direct publishing to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms. FOR-A is the exclusive distributor of Envivo Replay in North America.

FOR-A – the exclusive distributor of ClassX in North, Central and South America – also combines the latest ClassX real-time 2D/3D HD/4K CG and live motion broadcast graphics and playout solutions with its HANABI video switchers. An expansion I/O card for HVS-100, HVS-490, and HVS-2000 production switchers enables a close integration of the ClassX graphic playout from any HANABI video switcher directly by the switcher operator. ClassX’s real-time graphics playout software suite is popular with TV channels, news broadcasters, live event productions, and live sports productions.

MBC was looking for a way to ingest live feeds of the 2019 Indian Ocean Island Games (IOIG) in Mauritius and approached Jasco to recommend and install a solution that could record material live from up to eight HD-SDI feeds. With MBC being a user of Avid products for over 10 years, including Avid NEXIS network storage and Avid Media Composer, the recording solution needed to integrate easily into their Avid-centric workflow.

Having integrated Bluefish444 products in the past, Jasco suggested MBC install Bluefish’s IngeSTore Server for their requirements.

“The Bluefish IngeSTore Server is an amazing piece of technology, so it was a simple choice to make when we had to propose an ingest solution,” said Jonathan Smith, Technical Manager of Jasco. “The ease when installing and integrating the server into existing infrastructure, and robust recording ability is what made all the difference. When you have no file corruption and no dropped frames on recordings, and no ingest fail during the whole IOIG event, the product speaks for itself. Definitely not the last Bluefish IngeSTore Server we will be installing.”

Bluefish444 are represented in UK/Europe by Polar Graphics Ltd

www.polar-graphics.com

Studio to headend: In an IP focused world, also audio is currently moving over to IP distribution which is most cost-efficient form of contribution. Regarding DAB this includes the chance to forward the station programs to the headend via Audio over IP and separate the audio portion from DAB multiplexing system. At Paneda, we do so by using 2wcom’s IP-4c four-channel Audio over IP codec and MoIN Multimedia over IP Network server. Both solutions offer a number of benefits and increase flexibility to handle the entire parts of a project. The basic principle for such setup is that the studio audio contribution feeds the centralized MoIN server over IP and providing the flexibility to choose different codecs and formats between studio and centralized server.

Head end to transmitter sites: 2wcom’s DAB-4c high density converter enables operators to use new and already existing infrastructures at the same time, including EDI and ETI multiplexers as sources or legacy ETI and EDI transmitters. Moreover, a satellite tuner and ASI interfaces allow very cost efficiently integration into already existing DVB-S/S2 satellite distribution systems or ASI networks to optimize coverage and distribute programs to regions that are still lacking broadband IP.

2wcom’s Multimedia over IP Network (MoIN) server software is a containerized solution that provides all functionalities that traditional hardware audio over IP codecs have implemented. In contrast to hardware codecs the software offers vast scalability options no matter, if it is run in the cloud or on premise.

Thanks to its realization as a containerized service the operator can make use of the pricing benefit for containers compared to VMs on all major cloud platforms such as AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. The reason for the better price is that in contrast to a VM containers don’t need allocated resources like vCPUs or RAM. They just consume what the need to. Moreover, the use cases of the software are very different and just a few are named here:

Icecast to DVB Transport Stream Transcoding: This is used by a number of customers who want to make web streams available on a DVB transport stream that can be sent in cable networks or via satellite.

Streaming Encoder: The software can also be used to feed a streaming encoder for example the Wowza streaming cloud. Or, 2wcom’s solution transcodes the audio signals to adaptive bitrate protocols like HLS that can be distributed to the end customer by using a CDN.

Presteigne Broadcast Hire, a leading dry hire and total multi-location production equipment provider, today announced the appointment of Jane Skinner as Senior Hire Desk Co-ordinator.

Reporting to Presteigne North Hire Manager Roy Gaterell, Skinner is based at the company’s northern office in Warrington, equidistant between Manchester and Liverpool.

Skinner started her career at Granada (now ITV) in Manchester as a coordinator for Granada Reports and This Morning.

She then progressed to drama with Mersey TV/Lime Pictures, working as a technical coordinator on programmes such as Hollyoaks and Brookside. Due to her expertise, Skinner was soon seconded to the production department where she undertook resource and production coordination roles.

Skinner comes to Presteigne from a Liverpool-based dry hire office, where she had converted her experience as a dry hire customer to apply it as a supplier.

Skinner said, “I am delighted to join Presteigne, which has a well-established reputation for excellence. I am already enjoying using that reputation to establish relationships with new clients and reinforce those with existing ones, both of which include an extensive number of contacts from my previous roles in production.”

Presteigne CEO Adrian Young said, “Roy and I are very pleased that Jane has joined us. She understands and exemplifies the value we place on providing excellent service to our clients, and the commitment to our staff in providing an environment that enables them to perform at their best.”

Axon’s proven Neuron IP processing and Cerebrum control & monitoring technology will be demonstrated with equipment from EVS, Sony, Arista, Calrec and Meinberg during this 22-day Outside Broadcast truck tour.

The Axon PRE-NABSHOW TOUR 2020, which runs across 16 locations in eight different European countries, kicks off on March 2nd. It allows broadcasters to experience tomorrow’s workflows by getting on board today. The products demonstrated on the truck will be exactly the same as those on display at Axon’s booth at NAB, so this will also provide a perfect opportunity for people who are not going to Las Vegas to get up-close and personal with Axon’s solutions.

For further information about the tour and to access a full schedule, please follow this link: https://www.axon.tv/knowledge/axon-pre-nab-tour-2020/