Sundance Digital Delivers Ground-Breaking BXF Gateway to WJCT

PBS Station Becomes First in Nation to Integrate Standardized BXF Protocol
Tewksbury, Mass., June 2008—Sundance Digital, Inc., a part of Avid Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AVID), today announced that WJCT, a PBS station located in Jacksonville, Florida, has become the first station to deploy the new Sundance Digital™ BXF Gateway system. The BXF Gateway system enables broadcasters to streamline their workflow and increase the reliability and productivity of their systems’ tasks by using the SMTPE BXF communication protocol – a standardized means of data exchange among its traffic, automation, program management, and digital content distribution systems. Facilities that deploy the standard as a part of their workflow will be able to dramatically improve business processes and cut down on operational costs by taking advantage of real-time fault alerts and eliminating time-consuming master control activities caused by batch list inefficiencies.

Sundance Digital, a founding member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) S22-10 Working Group, developed the BXF Gateway system to support the SMPTE-2021 (BXF) standard, the end product of the Working Group’s three-year effort, which involved more than 150 participants. The BXF Gateway provides a secure point of exchange between systems inside and outside the master control networks. The BXF standard offers support for file and message-based data exchange, increases integration of related systems and extends the metadata set for data exchange, via a standardized messaging between a station’s diverse business and transmission systems. SMPTE published the landmark standard on April 1, 2008.
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“BXF is standardizing the broadcast industry and pushing the technical envelope even further by enabling us to achieve a highly efficient exchange between our Sundance Digital Titan automation suite and Myers ProTrack TV traffic system. Our goal has always been to deliver a pristine image to our viewers, one with seamless breaks and transitions, and BXF helps make it all possible,” said Bob Culkeen, WJCT’s Vice President of technology and operations.

WJCT serves northern Florida and lower Georgia with one HD channel, five SD channels and one analog channel. Duane Smith, WJCT’s director of technology commented on his initial reaction to the BXF Gateway and how he believes it will impact WJCT’s business, “Sundance Digital’s BXF Gateway is the meaningful glue we’ve been waiting for to link traffic and automation. Before the BXF Gateway, there were many processes in the workflow that provided opportunities to introduce human error; manually manipulating electronic data by pecking on keyboards is an inherently flawed approach. The BXF Gateway allows information to be entered once, in traffic, and no one has to touch it again. It automatically propagates through automation, dramatically improving reliability and efficiency. It is eliminating time-consuming, manual, daily tasks and reducing routine activities – allowing that time to be spent ensuring greater quality assurance and control of our broadcasts. The efficiency improvements are going to net WJCT approximately 20-25 man hours a week, which will allow us to use that saved time to step up the QC in master control and enable WJCT to provide the absolute best possible product to our viewers.”

Smith continued, “The BXF Gateway is also finally enabling us to squeeze our money’s worth out of the capital investment in DTV conversion infrastructure. This interface is allowing us to turn the machines loose and see the return on our investment. We’re jazzed to be the first in the country to take advantage of this opportunity.”

The BXF Gateway works in conjunction with Sundance Digital’s Titan™, FastBreak NXT Automation™ and FastBreak® NXT Entry Level Edition automation suites and is available now. For more information, visit: www.sundancedigital.com

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