Ad Insertion

Ad Creation

Growth in regionalized ad insertion is constantly increasing the demand for stored digital content. To meet this requirement, operators need high quality storage encoding stations that can encode content at low bit rates while preserving picture quality. Such high quality content ensures subscribers are satisfied with their service offering, while low bit-rates result in higher throughput in the networks as well as lower storage needs.

Harmonic’s CLEARcut storage encoding solution uses standards-based digital program insertion technology or VITC interfaces to control stream captures using Harmonic’s broadcast-quality encoders, which receive input from video tape players, DVD players, and live broadcast streams. The use of Harmonic’s award-winning encoders enables operators to take advantage of over 15 years of compression expertise and leverage the best video quality for their on-demand assets, while minimizing the bit-rate. A wide range of tools specifically tailored towards the on-demand arena have been incorporated into the Harmonic encoder line used with CLEARcut. Such tools include capabilities such as ‘Capped VBR’ which result in a 25% decrease in file size while retaining the same video quality.

For editing purposes CLEARcut incorporates an advanced MPEG-2 and H.264 editing and trimming tool for fine tuning of the complete asset. A common editing operation often used is the attachment of multiple assets together. CLEARcut incorporates advanced stream processing tools which allow operators to attach any number of pre-encoded assets to existing assets while retaining the asset’s MPEG compliance.

To summarize, the CLEARcut Encoding station is not merely a capture tool. It’s an advanced offline storage encoding solution capable of ingesting content from multiple sources (tapes, DVDs, live and MPEG-2 content), manipulating the content to appropriate format, editing it and delivering it to the ad server. All together it serves as an ideal tool for offline ad content preparation.