Plamen Chardakliev from Playbox Neo in Sofia, Bulgaria presented his flagship product “AirBox” as part of the Channel-in-a-Box solution at the International Hybrid Exhibition and Conference Broadcasting / Cinema 2023. Post-IBC Kazakhstan, which took place on October 3-4 in Astana, Kazakhstan, on the territory of the Қazmedia Ortalıǵy technological complex.

Plamen Chardakliev: My name is Plamen Chardakliev from Playbox Neo Company. I’m a Broadcast Engineer at Playbox Neo, which is based in Sofia, Bulgaria, where our headquarters is located. The company has been in existence for 23 years, and we develop products for various types of broadcasters. Our clients include national and international broadcasters, startup television channels, webcasters, interactive TV, music channels, film channels, and even those with surface disaster recovery.

AirBox: Our Premier Product

I am about to showcase our main product called “AirBox,” which is part of our Channel-in-a-Box solution. Allow me to share my screen, please. So, this is our Playout. It’s been 23 years since its first release. It’s constantly upgraded with new features to make it more robust with each release. We are powering around 19,500 channels around the world.

Key Features and Usability

I’ll highlight some key features. In the center, you’ll see a playlist, presented in a column-style, reminiscent of an Excel sheet. It has a built-in logo generator, so if you need a channel logo, it can be generated directly from the Playout; there’s no need to search for it elsewhere. I’ve added a few items here for demonstration. Additionally, it has a built-in clip trimmer. For instance, if someone brings you a file at the last possible moment and you don’t have time to remove, let’s say, the five seconds of color bars at the beginning of the file, you can quickly find this spot here and apply the changes directly inside the playlist. Its main focus is automation, but on-the-fly changes by the operator are also possible.

Media Gateway: The Core of Versatility

Along with this, we introduce something we call the Media Gateway. It features a web-based interface from where you can manage your inputs and outputs. We support NDI, Blackmagic, or AJA for SDI for outputs, and similarly for IP outputs, we support UDP, RTP, SRT and RTMP output. The Media Gateway itself has a built-in monitoring system and a multiviewer, as well as an internal alarming system. Currently, you can see I have two players running here, Playout 1 and 2. I can see its sources; I have an NDI source here, an SDI source, and an SRT source from these two playouts running. I also have a switch group, which I will show you in a moment.

Alarming System: Stay Alerted to Issues

Let me share a few words about the alarming system. As you can see, we detect various issues like “no signal,” but the playout itself will also detect if there is a freeze – oh yes, you can see it detects there is a freeze. So, we are detecting black, no outputs, freeze alarm, and also audio alarm. You can set up your own thresholds for minimum and maximum decibels, as well as for silence. I’ll discuss a bit later how you can use this alarming system not only to identify issues but also for better purposes. If an issue is resolved, for instance, if I just release the playback, you don’t need to go and check it. Additionally, if you have an audio device, there’s a beeping, so you don’t need to stare at the monitor 24/7 to detect issues; there will be an audio alarm.

Dynamic Source Management

This product can be part of the playout itself but can also be a separate, standalone product, ensuring your inputs and outputs and transferring them from one type of source to another. To demonstrate, currently, I have two SDIs here as the output, DeckLink Duo 2 and DeckLink 4K Extreme, and they take Airbox one and Airbox two as their source using Blackmagic cards. As you can see, I have an NDI source here. If I go and select the NDI instead of playout one, the system starts working like an NDI to SDI converter. I can also select my SRT source, so the system will start working like an SRT to SDI converter. You can think of this as your video router but not only for SDI sources, for different types of sources.

Encoding and Outputs

The next thing I want to show is that we have built-in encoders here. Previously, it was inside the playout interface, but now we’ve moved it here, keeping the playout interface strictly for the playout operator. Working with a web browser interface means you can open it remotely on another PC without interrupting the playout operator’s operations. And because it’s web-based, you can open it on virtually any device, whether it’s iOS, Windows, or Android. If you can open a browser and have connectivity, you can access this interface.

We have encoders here. When you want to broadcast something from our system, you just need to prepare the encoder, add a multiplexer, and some settings for video codecs. If you have an Nvidia card, you can use it for encoding H.264 or H.265. Also, you can use your CPU for encoding if needed. I have two encoders here; I assigned playout number one to encoder one and playout number two to encoder two.

After setting this up, you can go to destinations and create, let’s say, an SRT output. I have one, and I assign encoder one to the SRT and so on. Again, you can choose another source for your SRT, as I mentioned. You can transform one type of source to another. I showed you how you can assign NDI or SRT to SDI output, but also, let’s say I have an SRT output here, I can choose my UDP source, so it will just change the protocol while keeping the same video and audio bitrates. For instance, if I receive a source from somewhere, let’s say a different country, I can transform it into UDP so everyone in my local network can use this source when they need it.

Another thing we added to our Media Gateway is our switch group. It’s like a built-in automatic changeover device. Currently, I am using SRT1 and SRT 2 as my sources. I will make a quick demonstration for you. As you can observe, the switch group is currently playing. I’ll utilize my VLC player here, which will enable us to view the UDP output, and for this UDP output, I actually use the switch group output. So, I can navigate to the switch group and manually toggle between the main and backup. It takes approximately two to three seconds to switch due to the encoding process. Additionally, this can be done automatically. For instance, if we lose a signal for some reason, it will automatically switch, provided I select our auto-switch modes. But you can also utilize our alarming system within our module. Sometimes, you might be broadcasting black, but there is still a valid bitrate for video and audio. Even though you are broadcasting black, for the software, it’s valid. We can leverage our alarming system to detect issues and make the switch.

Here is our output from our switch group. That’s how you can actually change the sources. I’m demonstrating this now at the output level, but you can also use it at the input level. Let’s say you are broadcasting a Champions League match. You get the main source through satellites with an SNG truck, but as a backup, you have an SRT source over the public internet. So, in case there is a severe thunderstorm over the stadium and the satellite connection becomes unstable, the system can detect some issues and automatically switch to your backup source.

SCTE Triggers and Broadcasting Flexibility

Another feature we have here is that we support SCTE triggers for both SDI and SRT or UDP output. We support SCTE-104 for SDI, both input and output, and SCTE-35 for the SDI, again on both input and outputs. Our playouts can act as either a sender or a receiver. To demonstrate, I will use the SRT Source. My live input, “Live 1,” is taking the SRT Source from playout number one, so let’s start playing our files on playout number one and use this live source here. I have two commercial programs on the second playout, which are separate from these bookmarks. This bookmark here will send the scheduled trigger, and you’ll see it jump to the second block. It doesn’t need to go in order; you can select which one by sending a specific splice event ID. Again, second command will bring us back to the beginning. So, if you are broadcasting from a different country but want to play some local commercials, you can use our playout as a local commercial inserter. Once again, you can see now it will send the command, and it will start playing the first commercial block.

I’d like to share a real use case. Several months ago, I worked with an online user, a customer from Latin America, who needed to broadcast a Volleyball championship. As you may know, in volleyball, there are time-outs, each lasting one minute, and this is typically when commercials are played. The customer was figuring out how to send triggers to the television so they could start broadcasting commercials and then automatically return to the live feed from the OB van. He assigned these triggers to our shortcut button here inside the interface. So, he manually clicked when the timeout started, sending the triggers to the Playout, which then began playing local commercials. When the timeout ended, he sent another trigger to bring the player back to life.

Title Box: Advanced Character Generator

We also have our Character Generator, called Title Box. It’s very user-friendly, and I can demonstrate what you can achieve with it. You’ll see how the system works automatically. The Playout sends commands to the Title Box and loads to start. If you review these particular project, we have a total of 76 objects, combined into different slides.

Now, the system automatically initiates one graphic after another. The graphics come from the CG and are part of the Channel Box, along with the graphics and the playout itself, which is ingest because all our inputs are here inside the Media Gateway. It’s quite convenient. Any of the sources that you saw inside the module here can actually be selected. For instance, I can select the NDI source, the SRT Source, or directly the Airbox or the UDP Source, even the switch group I can select as my source. And you can ingest in two formats simultaneously. I have a Sony XD cam HD as the main preset, but you can actually create your own presets. Let’s say I want to build my MP4 preset for my website so I can adjust my videos and broadcast them, then yes, I can use the GPU encoder for the h.264. I just select my Video standard, let’s just name it MP4. Also lets select the audio channel and in a matter of seconds, it’s very easy actually, you can create your own preset and assign it as a secondary format for your ingest, and go ahead and start recording.

A few seconds after you start the recording, it’s possible to review what you’ve recorded so far. So, you can see where this is MP4 for my MP4 format and MXF for my Sony XD cam HD preset. So, I can go inside the player and review what I have so far while I’m still ingesting. Let’s say you are ingesting football match, you can put a mark and say now this is the first goal home team. This will create a metadata file that later, if you put on this timeline of the editing software like Ediousor Adobe Premiere, the editor will see the same marks over his timeline so he can easily navigate through the video material.

Ingesting: More Than Just Recording

You saw how it works in manual mode, but we also have a schedule mode where you can create a schedule based on time and the day of the week. Also, we support compliance; we have compliance modes where you can ingest, let’s say, in our compliance built-in formats to 2 megabits maximum. So, split every hour, you can add for how many days the system will keep the files and then automatically delete them. Different countries have different requirements from their authorities for how long you need to keep the video material.

NAS Support and Content Management

Lastly, I’d like to address a common question from our customers: “Can I ingest directly on NAS (Network Attached Storage)?” Actually, we recommend ingesting locally because, typically during ingest, we have write redundancy. This means that if there’s a glitch and you lose your content, it’s safeguarded. Simply ingest locally, then assign an out-transfer template. We do have an out-transfer template that you can create. When the ingest finishes, the system will automatically take the file and place it in your desired location, and it can also delete it from the ingest video story, so you don’t need to manually manage the storage itself.

Time Delay for Broadcast Customization

In the Media Gateway, we also have a feature called time delay, which is beneficial for customers who are broadcasting in different time zones. You can automatically delay your outputs. For instance, here I have a 30-minute delay. I just need to select its source, and it automatically starts delaying it. After this source, let’s say I want to delay the encoder one, and then assign it to my destinations, I can assign this delay to my UDP output. It will retain the feed for 30 minutes, play it, and then delete it. It’s very straightforward to use, and you can create your time delay in a matter of seconds.