Channel Playout

I have a question; i would love to use CasparCG, because it’s open source. Build by a sister Public Broadcaster (ok, we’re a local station in The Netherlands). Can you give me you’re thought on how you should do this, hard and or software (client)?

This isn’t a no budget thing, but we need to ne critical; so let’s say 10.000 euro’s for the initial project to get a idea/

I Need a solution to do a 24/7 Channel Playout, with file-program playout and live sources (atem videohub to input). Besides that we a news kiosk mode, with background audio from our radiostation. could be done with HTML; or an external machine that ackeds like a live-source.
Oh course some standard branding like channelbug (several, because of ‘specials’) as secondary’s and it would be awesome to can doe auto- now-next or auto- coming-up’s.

Looking forward to your suggestions!

Thanks!

Rien Janssens

Hi Rien (or should i say hoi rien :wink: )

Have a look at the sofie project

i think it does exactly what you need and is open-source

the guys making this can be found on the forum.
one off them is also dutch by the way.

Hi Rien,

I’ve built a system for another local station in the Netherlands (Schagen FM), which is called folderplayout and open source: https://github.com/baltedewit/folderplayout

The newest version is based on the same tech stack that the Sofie TV News Automation is built, of which I am also a developer.

The latest version of folderplayout allows you to define a recurring schedule for a playlist. Say every day at 10am, 12am, 2pm and 4pm. But also allows you to blacklist items in a playlist (say a certain clip only plays wednesday and friday). This has been working really well for the station I built this for.

In its current form it does not support any channel branding, but since I switched it over this christmas vacation to the sofie stack it should be quite easy to add that in. Live input support via a decklink is on the list of planned features.

Regarding infochannel, there are cheap-ish subscription based commercial solutions available. Think narrowcasting on a chromebox with a dvi-sdi converter into a decklink input.

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Hello! I am interested in developing a 24/7 over the air (low Power) and cable channel for our local community. I live in a beach area in North Carolina where there is not a lot of local TV coverage, but a lot going. I was interested in CasparCG as an automation platform to do what my vision of this channel could do.

Has there been any newer versions of folderplayout, Sofie or anything else to do something like this on a dependable basis? I have a decklink card i have had for a while that is working well with the basic casparCG software, and have played various schedules but I see I am going to need more programming for timing of events such as program schedule, on air graphics overlays (station branding, coming up next etc.) and just managing all the program inventory a 24 channel could cause.

Thanks!

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I’m also kinda looking for something like this. So far I’ve been using RedCast OnTime, which has its limitations but does the job. I’d recommend you to use it with NRK’s fork for stability and features.

Thanks! I will take a look at it!!

It’s extremely unlikely folderplayout will ever do on-air graphics, unless a channel is willing to pay for the development costs. But that’s quite expensive.

There are new versions of Sofie all the time, but it’s not that type of automation. It’s a studio automation, so it helps the director/producer and not MCR.

Most professional and feature-rich playout automation I know of is https://github.com/jaskie/PlayoutAutomation
It could probably do all you need.

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So, I have an update on this … the popping and crackling is specifically when outputting 1080i at 59.94fps. As you may know this a major output format in the US. There is no crackling at 60fps or 30fps. Very clean. As a file we are encoding at 1080i 29.97. Any ideas?

Thanks!