User interface

The full power of ASTRA's comprehensive automation and media management is condensed into simple, intuitive and attractive screens. The automated process is presented clearly and can be overridden manually at any moment. When the system requires an operator to take action, the system's instructions provide detailed information on current status and required steps.

The user interfaces to AVECO automation system has been designed with TV operators looking over the software engineers' shoulders. Therefore our GUI interfaces are targeted accurately to the technical tasks at hand and easy to learn and easy to use.

AVECO systems can adapt the user's interface to any language or describe commands in any terms, as preferred by each customer.

The user interface runs in Photon, the QNX windowing environment, which runs on top of the QNX real-time operating system. These client GUIs can be presented on any client including PC terminals running on other operating systems.

What follows is a number of screenshots which show examples or the user interface for different tasks. As you look at these interfaces, please keep in mind that the information and look presented can be configured to your preference and needs. GUI's can be configured per user or per function to display information which is particularly important to that user or that function.

The screenshot above shows several layered control windows. It shows the playlist and thumbnail view of clips on the videoserver. It has the videoserver control panel and the time calculator that calculates time and frame increments.

A TV station's basic work cycle may look like this:

First, media has to be ingested. The screen shot below shows the GUI tool for manual ingest from controlled devices such as VTRs, videoservers, NLEs and others:

This following screen shot shows a look at clips after they have been recorded on to the videoserver and is similar for tape archives or data archives. These clips can be added to playlists with a simple copy and paste command.

Here is a screen shot of the playlist for one TV channel:

Our automation systems also support development and definition of auxiliary playlists, which we call blocks. Blocks allow operators to prepare, preview, edit and store sequences of videomaterial which then can be pasted to the playlist and aired. Here is screen shot of block sequence:

Each devices controlled by AVECO automation has its own GUI control window.

Small routers are presented in the form of a wiring diagram:

Bigger routers then use more traditional form to show the status and allow for control.

Control of the subtitling system looks like this:

Creating tape backups (or spot reels) is done with adapted blocks to control the videoserver channel for playout and the VTR for record.

Each application is worked out to the smallest detail to provide the users the best functionality. The goal is to keep it simple. Most of the information presented is on a gray background. Gray is used for presenting information that is not critical for the user to take action. Color rules on top of the gray direct users attention to critical tasks and status.