Award-Winning Firm Provides the 'Electronic Glue' Needed for Automation; OmniBus Helps Broadcasters Master the Digital Future.

Business Editors

NEVADA CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 11, 2000

Television stations across America are stepping into the digital 21st century, bringing with them an eclectic collection of technologies that trace the history of broadcasting itself.

OmniBus Systems is poised at the forefront of this conversion, having pioneered the process throughout Europe, developing systems to boost creativity and efficiency in news production as well as retain and integrate valuable legacy hardware as stations partially or completely automate their operations.

"The technological challenge can be formidable," acknowledges Andy Ioannou, Vice President of OmniBus Systems Inc., the USA subsidiary of the UK-based company. "Electronic newsroom computer systems have been used in the television industry for many years and offer a certain level of machine control capability," Ioannou says. "With the advent of server-based technology, browse desktop editing, and more, the control capability of these systems has become stretched to the limit." A station may have a Grass Valley router, a Sony switcher, a Leitch Server, a Quantel Editor, Panasonic VTR's, and rooms full of monitors, cameras, still stores, character generators, traffic, newsroom and archive systems.

"The clever bit is how you glue it all together," says Ioannou.

The OmniBus control platform incorporating comprehensive Asset and Media Management is the electronic glue that connects the new and old technologies system-wide. Through the control platform and a common user interface, all a station's users such as program schedulers, engineers, management and journalists have access through integrating newsroom systems, traffic systems, media acquisition processing, playout and archives.

"It also exposes the correct assets to the right people and gives them the tools to utilize those assets," says Ioannou. He notes that the system provides access not only throughout the facility, but also to users throughout a multi-domain station or news network.

"This is a process that often requires creating highly customized and often unique end-to-end solutions," Ioannou says. Media management allows a facility to identify a piece of media from the moment it is ingested into the system -- acquired tape, satellite feed, line feed, script, caption or other data -- and track it through processing, transmission and archiving.

"You need not only to glue the assets together, but also to track and manage the assets and media and have easy access, otherwise the assets are useless," Ioannou says.

The system applications have been developed in conjunction with stations worldwide. OmniBus Systems already has brought stations throughout Europe into automation, including virtually every national news program in the UK from the BBC to ITN. The company's initial work in the American market includes KGO-San Francisco, KVBC-Las Vegas, KABC-Los Angeles and KOMO-Seattle.

The founders of OmniBus came from all areas of broadcasting from technical to production to news. "We know how difficult it is to make programs," Ioannou remembers. "OmniBus makes their lives more creative, constructive, flexible and gives them more control -- all the things we were concerned about when we were in broadcasting."

With the explosion of channels coming into the newsroom, Ioannou says stations need a way to both manage the information and make it broadly accessible to reporters and producers. "OmniBus' approach is to employ browse technology to log, track, share, transmit and archive media in a way that places more creative control at the desktop," Ioannou explains. "In a conventional newsroom, journalists will have a stack of tapes on the desk. While they're in the stack, no one else can use them," he says. They, or an assistant, Ioannou notes, have to physically go into a separate room to search for archived footage.

"Why," Ioannou asks, "should a journalist worry about where a clip is -- not only in the station building, but anywhere in the world? Information doesn't have to be tangible, but it must be accessible."

In a station using OmniBus software, a reporter can access current clips, past footage and/or feeds from affiliates or other sources from his or her desktop without tying up information resources allowing others to work on the same source information simultaneously. Reporters can now access meta-data -- all the data attached to a piece of media, including scripts, video clips, stills and graphics.

With some low resolution editing at the Journalist Newsroom Desktop, about 70 percent of new items which air could be created at the desktop, freeing up edit suites for more complicated, sophisticated craft work, according to Ioannou. "Workstation edits published to the server allow a full broadcast-resolution version of the story to be transmitted instantly without the need to pre-conform or flatten the media into a composite clip," he says.

OmniBus technology gives stations or networks the ability to enter bi-media and tri-media broadcasting -- integrating television, Internet and radio. The technology also enhances stations' efficiency by simplifying the task of repurposing media from one domain for use in another.

An advantage of automation, says Ioannou, is that stations can increase or improve their output by adding channels or perhaps customizing regional broadcasts with an automated split-break. A system OmniBus is developing for USA Cable will replace its current cart-based system with a comprehensive, fully automated system based on the schedules of four 24-hour programming streams containing approximately 1,200 elements including commercials, live feeds, tape and server materials.

Ioannou notes that not every station automates all at once. Many go in stages from newsroom to master control. While some aspects of a news operation lend themselves to full automation, other areas are better served by partial automation or fully manual operations, so a news automation system must be able to switch seamlessly between any of these modes.

The design challenges are enormous. "We go in at a very early stage to first understand what the business need is, and then understand what the station wants to achieve," Ioannou says. "If a TV station has a specific need, and we don't have the software to do it, we'll create the software," Ioannou says. "We can talk to any piece of hardware and if we don't, we CAN." Ioannou likens the transfer from analog to digital to the transfer from film to video. "It can be very challenging for people," he says, but adds that OmniBus has a philosophy about technology. "We call it Fletcher's Law of Complexity -- named for our technical director and founder, Ian Fletcher," he explains. "Ian says that while you can't destroy the complexity, you can move it around, and that's pretty much the basis of what we do. We move the complexity into the software and away from the user, allowing the user to focus on the creativity and the output," Ioannou notes.

Control is another OmniBus theme, placing more control in journalists' hands. For instance with server technology, information and media placed on a server can be immediately accessible via the internet throughout a station, sister-stations, or an entire network. One station could air a piece that a reporter at an affiliate across the country could access immediately through a multi-domain gateway, download the meta-data, rewrap it, create a new voiceover, and have the story on air in a fraction of the time it now takes -- and do all the work from his or her workstation. OmniBus already has this in operation in Norway at NRK network's 11 sites.

"These are exciting and challenging times for the broadcast industry which is moving at an incredible pace," says chairman and co-founder Glyn Powell-Evans. "But it's not just the technology -- we believe it is the people and the technology that make television," he says. "When people begin to see what they can do with these new technologies, they are very excited."

OmniBus employs a common user interface throughout the entire system. People train to use one system that can do a lot of different things, and ultimately so can they. "They not only have better access and more control, they become multi-skilled which adds enormously to their creativity," Ioannou says.

"Now, I wonder if we could do something about the sorry state of British situation comedy," ponders Powell-Evans.

OmniBus Systems Inc, was established in Nevada City, California in 1999 to solely serve the North American broadcast market. Working closely with its parent company OmniBus Systems Ltd. (based in the UK), the company has rapidly established a worldwide reputation as the industry-standard system for total station automation, encompassing asset and media management, master control automation and news transmission. Having designed and installed automation systems in more than 75 sites worldwide, (including KGO, KVBC, KOMO, KABC and USA Cable) OmniBus Systems is regarded as a market leader in the implementation and control of new technologies for digital television stations worldwide. OmniBus Systems works with more than 80 manufacturers and has formed key partnerships with many industry leaders including AP, AvStar, Grass Valley Group, Informix, Omneon, Panasonic, Quantel, SeaChange, Sony and Virage. For the most current information about OmniBus Systems, please visit our Website at www.OmniBusSystems.com.