ASTRA Automation Modules - Aveco

ASTRA Modules
AVECO Americas Incorporated
468 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02115
tel: (303) 588.5528
www.aveco.com
The ASTRA routing switcher control manages only the outputs dedicated to devices controlled by
ASTRA yet it can co-exist with other routing switcher controllers, if this is supported by the
routing switcher itself.
Subtitling
ASTRA has built-in multilingual subtitling support. ASTRA accepts subtitling files in the EBU
format. The subtitling can be in-vision or teletext. The subtitle files can be attached to the events
in the daily schedule and played back along with the main event.
Tape backup
ASTRA provides a backup module to direct recording to tape of important media on the
videoserver in the chosen format for broadcast in case of an emergency. Blocks, particular
commercial breaks or individual clips can be recorded on tape. The tape can be then used in the
continuity room for commercial break playout or as the backup media.
The TAPE BACKUP modules works like this:
1. Once all necessary commercials have been recorded onto the videoserver
2. And the playlist of commercials are also in ASTRA (input or via traffic interface)
3. And a blank tape is loaded into a VTR under ASTRA control
4. ASTRA can create a back-up tape automatically. The format of this back-up tape
has been specialized for customers in different ways. For example, ASTRA will run
the tape, will start recording on a VTR (frame accurately), play out color bars and
kilohertz for one minute, then black and silence, then first commercial break
(including leading jingle, commercials, trailing jingle). The next commercial break
will then start recording on the next whole minute with the appropriate amount of
black inserted. And so on to the next commercial break etc. up to the trailing ten
seconds of black.
When ASTRA is used to record a backup tape with fully assembled sequences of
commercials, ASTRA can add value: The defined rules, like max/min number of
black frames between the commercials, color bars and black, are optional. There
can be countdown clips before each leading jingles. There are many options.
Several customers chose PROCON (the building block of ASTRA) because their
number one selection criteria was capability to create recorded tapes. For
example SWR, Germany uses PROCON to prepare backup tapes and then they
play out commercial breaks from the tape. What is interesting is this: PROCON
must deliver a 5 minute completely assembled commercial break consistently to the
same number of frames. SWR's planning system plans the breaks with a target
duration of 5 minutes of commercials in it. PROCON imports the commercial
playlists. During import PROCON inserts the true durations of the individual
commercial clips. The real durations may differ from the planned ones. At the end
it may show that the break with planned duration of 5 minutes has only 4'59".
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