Pebble Beach Systems

www.pebble.tv

Neptune is a full scale transmission automation product designed to automate the acquisition and playout of programs commercials and trailers for a station. It is built using modern software techniques and runs on the latest PC hardware platforms.

Neptune is frame accurate, reliable and easy to use. It controls a full range of devices including cart machines, data archive libraries, video servers, VTRs, routers, master control switchers, logo inserters, character generators, UMDs and audio mixers. It is a powerful, expandable and highly versatile product, which is continually being enhanced to meet customer needs and to integrate new devices.

Neptune has a client-server architecture. The controller controls the broadcast devices via serial or network interfaces and communicates to the clients via Pebble Beach's TCP/IP protocol. There are clients for ingest, transmission and media browsing. A separate housekeeper is responsible for managing the system database and for generating logs.

Supported ENPS Workflow

Running Order Control

This device allows ENPS to dynamically build and control a playlist within the media server. Changes to the Running Order in ENPS result in immediate changes to the sequence of media objects queued for playout by the media server.

Item Status

This vendor sends real-time status information during playback and other functions which is displayed through ENPS writers and producers in real-time. This includes the use of a minimum set of standard status messages which enable color coding and the automated movement of the ENPS timing bar.

ActiveX Plug-in Functionality: Search & Find/Click & View/Drag & Drop

ENPS users can discover media stored on this device through the use of simple searches within ENPS. When a media description or link is found in ENPS, a user may simply click on the media to view it. The media can be linked to ENPS Running Orders, Stories and Assignments by simply dragging it into and ENPS document.

Buddy Fail-Over

This product supports automatic redundant operation with both Primary and Buddy ENPS servers.

Media Awareness

This device sends ENPS a description of the media it stores. The description contains structured metadata and a pointer to the media object. This information is used by ENPS to return media in search results. Pointers are used to link media to ENPS documents, including Stories, Running Orders and Assignments using simple drag and drop workflow.

Pebble Beach Neptune ActiveX Plug-in

This vendor provides an ActiveX plug-in for ENPS which allows users to search and preview media from the ENPS user interface.

© 2009, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. AP\'s reviews were limited to a test environment, and products may perform differently within your own production environment and workflow. Performance may also vary with other factors, including periodic ENPS and partner software releases. Only you can determine if a specific product or combination of products will meet your needs. AP MAKES NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY REGARDING THE PRODUCTS DESCRIBED HEREIN, INCLUDING WHETHER OR NOT SUCH PRODUCTS ARE COMPATIBLE WITH ENPS OR THE MOS PROTOCOL.