Canal+ adds EVS Cerebrum control and monitoring for MCR, TX overhaul

Canal+ has selected the EVS Cerebrum control and monitoring solution for a major overhaul of its in-house MCR and TX playout management workflows. The Vivendi-owned French premium television channel and Entertainment streaming services becomes one of the first customers to implement an EVS media infrastructure solution since EVS acquired Axon early May.

Canal+ is one of the first to purchase the Axon Cerebrum system since Axon was acquired by EVS.

Canal+ is deploying Cerebrum, the highly advanced broadcast control and monitoring system, to centralise and streamline its broadcast operations.

In what is one of the largest Cerebrum projects to date, the new system will enable Canal+ to upgrade its legacy technology and improve its production workflows.3D view of MCR3D view of MCR.

Previously, Canal+ integrated manual operations for incoming broadcast feeds and playout management, enabling it to operate multiple channels simultaneously through various processes and control systems. The French broadcaster realised that there was a need to upgrade and automate its existing operations with a centralised and unified broadcast control system.

The new solution will automate and simplify its workflows enabling an operational cost reduction while also improving the quality and reliability of operations.

With Cerebrum, Canal+ now has the flexibility to control both legacy SDI products and modern IP equipment. The EVS media infrastructure enables Canal+ to create a completely new workflow for optimising the management of the incoming feeds, their processing and routing. Thanks to a very intuitive user interface, the solution can be fully customised by Canal+ engineers to adapt the system to their specific future production needs.The ease of use and the quality of the user interface allows Canal+ engineers to perform any change without the need to involve EVS support staff. This provides Canal+ with significantly more flexibility as well as the ability to move to IP more confidently in the future.

For this project, EVS also developed a new license option for Cerebrum called CRBM Scheduler, which provides Canal+ with a bespoke timeline for its scheduled events.

“We needed a comprehensive media infrastructure solution that would give us the control and flexibility needed, during this exceptional transformation period, to provide the high-quality content our viewers expect in the most efficient way possible, and we have found that with EVS,” said Ralph Atlan, CTO at Canal+. “By transforming our legacy workflows we’ve put ourselves in the best position to capitalise on next-generation technologies and continue to evolve our business to stay ahead of the competition.”

Ian Hollamby, Cerebrum product manager at EVS added: “Canal+ was one of EVS’ first ever customers and has been a long-time valued partner, so we are perfectly positioned to help deliver this next-generation unified broadcast control system to help Canal+ centralise as well as unify its operations. With added capability to switch to IP in the near future, we’re on hand to support Canal+ achieve its long-term ambitions and vision for success.”

For more information on EVS and its complete range of live video technology for broadcast and new media productions, please visit www.evs.com.