KSNW Wichita selects Crispin for four channels of playback

Crispin Corp., a worldwide provider of broadcast automation software, equipment, services and support, today announced the completion of a System 2000 installation at KSNW, the Wichita, Kan., NBC affiliate owned by Montecito Broadcast Group. KSNW is also the flagship station of the Kansas State Network, the state’s chain of NBC affiliates.

The tightly integrated system is configured to match KSNW’s requirements and includes control for four on-air playback channels (KSNW, KSNC, KSNG and KSNK) with high-level supervisory monitoring. RapidPlayX, Crispin’s highly configurable on-air playback application, provides playlist monitoring, allowing operators to create and load playlists, edit events, issue playlist commands and monitor event status.

The system includes Supervisory View, which can be used by master control or the traffic department to help minimize operational impact. It enables users to see, from a single screen, multiple play-to-air channel status complete with visual notification of messages, warnings and operator intervention requests. These early indicators allow operators to quickly evaluate and address errors (if necessary, traffic can make last-minute changes to the schedule) before they develop, all without the need for a dedicated master control engineer.   Supervisory View prioritizes tasks in the order that they’re needed, reducing on-air problems and allowing operators to focus on additional tasks within the facility. Additionally, operators can utilize TurboBrowser to insert alternate events (interstitials, commercials, evergreen material) or entire blocks of material to accommodate last-minute changes to the schedule.

The KSNW solution includes multiple levels of redundancy including hot-swap dual RAID system drives, dual power supply workstations and a cold spare backup.  The cold spare workstation can be used immediately upon hardware failure.

The system includes one Dubber workstation that provides tools to speed and simplify the acquisition and preparation of material for fully automated on-air playback. DubberAssist, a video server media management tool, allows users to drag and drop asset records directly into Dubber. It automatically creates dub lists by comparing a playlist to actual video server content. This reduces the need for manual data entry and virtually eliminates errors in the dub process.  Operators may also generate a kill list to execute the deletion of one or more clips, reducing the amount of old assets that exist on the video server. This allows operators to manage their disk space and reduce the potential for errors in the dubbing process.

Mapper, Crispin’s traffic interface, converts KSNW’s daily Wide Orbit traffic schedule into an automated playlist, ready for on-air playback by RapidPlayX. During operation, as-run data for each channel is written back to traffic for reconciliation within the traffic system.