New “All In One” OMNI Solutions with Closed Captions!

Randy Visser

by Randy Visser, East Sales, Cablecast Community Media

Video play-out systems provide community media operations the tools they need to distribute their content to members of their communities, and beyond.  Early systems involved the use of multiple video tape machines, and eventually DVD players that were programmed by external devices to play, and then switch, programming from one source to another.  You never knew if this complex chain of events was going to work as planned, and the set-up time to cue tapes and calculate “pre-roll” times for every event made the process challenging and time consuming. 

Fast forward to the 21st Century…and here we are, comfortably pecking away at our keypads and smartphones sharing video content like it was just another call to a friend. YouTube, the first successful video sharing platform and Facebook, have suddenly become the video viewing platforms of choice, and our local PEG channels are having to re-invent the way we support our communities through video distribution.  After all, YouTube and Facebook are indeed commercial platforms.  They make money by selling user data and “phishing” for customers engaged in niche content viewing. Not ideal. 

Cablecast products

Cablecast has the solution.  Our company has been right beside you all the way providing the tools you need to manage this work in the 21st Century.  Our new “VIO Omni” servers have the combined power to schedule video files, or live shows, while providing an easy interface to make that content available as a live stream, or as easy to use VOD (video on demand) files complete with the ability to chapter those videos (either while you’re recording…or after the fact). You can even attach .pdf files like meeting agendas that viewers can download.  One box does this all using Cablecast’s easy to use interface and award winning bulletin board software (also available for small, or large, digital signage throughout your community).

Now….purchase our CDN (content delivery network) called “Reflect”, a fixed service that handles all of your content distribution in the cloud for just $2200 a year.  Done…you’ve just created your own “YouTube” platform where citizens can find and watch your shows easily from a built-in web portal providing live feeds, searchable indexes for VOD content, an active schedule feed and links to all of your other web content.  What more could you do?

Cablecast Screenweave

That’s right…this is video technology in the 21st Century.  Time waits for no one and suddenly we’re facing a whole new set of video distribution platforms called “Over The Top” (OTT).  Companies like Apple, Roku, Amazon, Google and others are betting that the television viewing market will in fact be moving away from expensive cable packages to a more open broadband network solution that gives viewers the options to watch content on their preferred platform on any video viewing device available; HD televisions, lap-top computers, hand-held smart phones…who knows what’s next.

Again, Cablecast is ready to roll with new technical features and services that allow you to share all of your content throughout these varied platforms (web video or OTT). 

We know that not everyone is ready to jump into the deep end and change the way you’ve been doing things in the past.  Not a problem.  We’ll let you try our OTT distribution FOR FREE using our “Cablecast Screenweave” application.  Give it a try yourself on all of the popular OTT platforms.  Search for “Cablecast”. Download the application and watch hundreds of stations from around the country as they provide both live streams as well as VOD content.  All of this happens, literally, with one click of a button!  Talk about easy workflow….and at no additional cost!

And finally, Cablecast has added to this powerful video tool kit with the ability to provide Closed Captioning of any content, live or existing files, again with just one push of a button.  Purchase a bundle of hours and you decide what gets transcribed.  Super easy to use and affordable with rates between .11 and .15 cents an hour.  You’ll have a link to your own Cablecast Cloud Services web interface where you can track your usage. 

Presentation at JAG General Members meeting, March 30 at 12:12pm