Cognacq-Jay Image Chooses VEDA

SGT, a leading European software vendor in the broadcast and media industry, has announced that Cognacq-Jay Image, a company of the TDF group, has migrated its media management and playout platform to VEDA.
As a leading systems integration provider for the broadcast industry, Cognacq-Jay Image offers, among others, production and distribution services for TV channels.
With the new VEDA-based platform, Cognacq-Jay Image can now easily manage and maintain the control room for multiple and diverse channels and benefits from a unified system in a homogeneous environment.
The migration project at Cognacq-Jay Image started in March 2010. Since June 2010, the VEDA platform has been used for the media management and the playout of six TV channels: National Geographic Core, National Geographic Wild, Voyage, Vivolta and two reserve channels.
Béatrice Lennoz Gratin, Sales Area Manager at SGT, said: "One of the main Cognacq-Jay Image requirements was that the migration process should not affect the ongoing operations and that the system should always be on air. The migration went smoothly without any disruptions whatsoever. Thanks to our powerful VEDA platform, no changes in the technical architecture were needed that would have impacted the way people work."
Furthermore, Cognacq-Jay Image had high requirements in terms of security and continuity of operations. Therefore, SGT built a playout solution based on an active/active security cluster. Each channel now has a channel back-up (a main channel and a synchronised back-up channel) to ensure highest availability of the system. SGT made sure that the transition between the old and new system went seamlessly. This also involved the transfer from the old database to the new VEDA Central Database. The playout and media management databases are now combined in one database in order to ensure perfect synchronisation and to facilitate information exchange.
In order to increase system reliability and ensure an uninterrupted playout, SGT specifically developed a new feature within VEDA Automation that enables operators to control the coherence of the playlist dates.
Nicolas Basdevant, Operations Director at Cognacq-Jay Image, said: "For Cognacq-Jay Image this important project was part of our global efforts to continually improve our playout platforms and to install new services to best respond to our clients' needs eg: digitalisation, advertising sales management, multi-support playout, high definition, security and flexibility of operations. Such a project, while the system was always on air, required a long preparation phase and rigorous execution. Throughout this project, we were able to count on the highly professional collaboration with SGT. Considering the complexity of the systems related to the Automation project and to the specific processes of each client on the platform, we could rely on the expertise of SGT's staff to build together for the complete migration strategy. Thanks to this migration, we now are able to easily propose new services and to quickly and flexibly create new playout channels."
(KMcA)