Company Overview

OmniBus Systems, the award-winning provider of comprehensive broadcast automation, content management and workflow solutions, will be revealing new versions of iTX, the ground-breaking master control and playout application, and the OPUS content management and workflow suite at IBC2008. New features and capabilities in these applications further strengthen OmniBus' product offerings for broadcasters, whether operating in conventional hardware-based environments, transitioning to an IT-based model, or creating entirely new facilities based on the most advanced technology available.

New at IBC2008

NEW VERSION: OmniBus iTX 1.2 Production and Transmission System — OmniBus iTX is the next-generation solution that makes the conventional broadcast automation, master control and playout chain obsolete. Combining and exceeding all the functions of a conventional transmission chain in a single, integrated suite of software applications, iTX is flexible, open and feature-rich, and offers a significantly more configurable and responsive end-to-end solution for a wide range of operating environments. With market-beating support for SD and HD, and exceptional ability to integrate with third-party systems, iTX delivers the most powerful solution available while significantly reducing the investment required to launch and operate high-quality channels in broadcast, IPTV, mobile TV, disaster recovery and business continuity applications.

Shipping from IBC2008, iTX 1.2 delivers a significant number of enhancements and new features including schedule preview; Omneon reference file support that allows content to be read directly from Omneon servers and played out by iTX; multiple language support with instant language track reassignment and support for Omneon language stacking; an exceptionally flexible audio engine with native Dolby® surround encoding and input/output remapping; support for multi-regional breaks and opt-outs; automated insertion of evergreen content for disaster recovery; capabilities for newsflash and roll-under situations; closed captions; enhanced control of a wide range of external devices such as routers, VTRs, subtitlers and graphics systems; and live instant playback for news and sports programming.

NEW PRODUCT: OmniBus iTX NEWS — Developed in consultation with some of the major names in news broadcasting, iTX NEWS provides an extremely speedy, flexible and responsive solution for today's rapidly evolving, multi-format news environment. iTX NEWS has outstanding multi-format capabilities, allowing users to ingest and edit together SD and HD sources easily, and combine them in the same playlist with non-broadcast material such as security footage and user-generated content, with real-time format conversion and rendering of effects. The iTX architecture streamlines the output of multiple versions of the same playlist for SD, HD, Internet streaming, mobileTV and other platforms, with automatic transcoding and distribution of content.

NEW PRODUCT: OmniBus iTX Edit — iTX Edit is a unique editing solution tailored to the demands of news and sports applications, with an emphasis on speed and ease of use. The most revolutionary aspect of iTX Edit is that it is not necessary to render the finished edit before it can be taken to air, as the iTX playback engine can render the EDL in real time, with vision and audio effects, stills and captions. This unique ability delivers considerable improvements in workflow performance and speed, in particular when editing long-format content such as sports highlights packages.

NEW PRODUCT: OmniBus iTX Business Continuity Process (BCP) — iTX BCP is a specially-configured variation of iTX designed for business continuity (disaster recovery) applications that includes media replication, fully redundant mirroring and remote operation after evacuation.

This lightweight solution sources content automatically from existing video servers, transferring content as required to a remote location where an iTX playback engine interprets the transmission schedules to provide a parallel service. It includes an automatic service for the insertion of evergreen content to fill schedule gaps for which content is not available, such as live events. The service intelligently selects a piece of standby content based on the duration required and business rules defined for that channel.

NEW VERSION: OmniBus OPUS Content Management — OPUS is a sophisticated suite of content management components that delivers unmatched capabilities for the end-to-end content process, including "soft-XML" support for customized logging and annotation, frame-accurate proxy generation and viewing, full-text indexing and searching, seamless integration with production editing systems like Final Cut Pro®, increased integration with OmniBus iTX and standardized Web services data exchange with adjacent systems.

The OPUS SmartClient uses Microsoft's Silverlight technology to provide access to the OPUS system within a Web browser environment from both Windows® and Mac® desktops, allowing unlimited users on an enterprise or global scale to access media and metadata for picture research and shot selection without the need for specialized software. This powerful application allows operators to browse material in the system, make shot selections of key events and transfer the EDL to a craft editor directly from their desktops.