Radio and television automation firm ENCO and newsroom computer system specialist Octopus Newsroom have partnered to streamline news production and playout workflows for broadcasters across the globe.
Leveraging the two companies’ support for the Media Object Server (MOS) protocol, integration between their respective solutions eliminates disruptive workflow barriers to let journalists focus on creating compelling, informative stories.
ENCO’s MOS-enabled ActiveX plugin enables journalists and news producers to access ENCO asset libraries directly within the Octopus client interface. Users can search the ENCO library, preview clips, trim media as needed, and bring the results into their stories by simply dragging and dropping the desired items. Building on the Octopus software’s ability to combine multiple media elements within each story, the integration allows journalists to easily incorporate library assets including graphics, audio and video into their scripts.
Avoiding the need for producers to manually push rundowns, running order changes in the Octopus NRCS are automatically reflected in the ENCO automation system. The Octopus software can then trigger the ENCO system via the MOS protocol to play out the assets.
While the integration was initially qualified for radio broadcasters using Octopus Newsroom with ENCO’s DAD audio automation system, the same MOS Gateway interface is used in ENCO’s MOM (Media Operations Manager) television automation platform – thus enabling a similarly efficient workflow for Octopus-powered TV news organizations.
“Working with ENCO to integrate our solutions was a true pleasure,” said Milan Varga, Technology Partners Manager at Octopus Newsroom. “Other integrations we’ve done have often been a bit clunky initially and needed a lot of development refinements, but the integration between ENCO and Octopus worked almost seamlessly right out of the box with only minor configuration adjustments. This shows that ENCO follows the MOS specifications very closely and has kept up to date with advances in the MOS protocol. The result seamlessly bridges news production and playout to make operation easy for journalists.”
ENCO President Ken Frommert added, “We continue to expand our ecosystem of third-party integrations to let customers flexibly choose exactly the right solutions for their needs. Octopus offers a strong NRCS solution and has built a solid international market presence, particularly in Asia and Europe. Our new partnership and integration let existing and future Octopus radio and television clients easily take advantage of the benefits of our full-featured automation solutions.”
ENCO MOM offers television broadcasters, cable operators and streaming media providers a platform for organizing, managing and automating critical production and integrated channel playout tasks.
ENCO DAD provides radio broadcasters with a audio playout automation, control and management system.
Octopus 8.1 is designed for use by television, radio, sports and “esports” broadcasters.
The integration will be highlighted at IBC2018 in Amsterdam, where ENCO will exhibit at stand 8.A59 and Octopus will showcase its solutions in stand 7.A39.
