Ross Video enhances channel-branding portfolio

Ross Video announces changes and additions to their XPression channel branding offerings for IBC 2014. These product enhancements will offer customers tighter integration with other XPression products and workflow simplification.

First introduced at NAB 2014, XPression Brand-it, the automated channel branding workflow server, is now unified with XPression Tick-it, the collaborative ticker workflow server, under the same user interface and core architecture. Built in cooperation with Bannister Lake Software, the two products can even run on the same machine, if necessary, for customers who have purchased both.

In addition, the XPression Automation Gateway, Ross’ basic automation interface for channel branding, has undergone a facelift with new support for the XPression Project Server and Datalinq Server. With this new functionality, users will be able to populate generic templates with data and take them to air from a single automation recall ID. Running locally on each XPression, the Automation Gateway is programmed to look for revisions to graphics associated with that channel on the optional XPression Project Server and dynamically updates the engines without human intervention.

“There’s no silver bullet when it comes to channel branding,” says Brian Olson, Director of Marketing Product Management for XPression at Ross Video. “Every facility has a different automation system, a different traffic system, a different workflow for operations, just to name a few things. That’s why we’ve taken a multi-faceted approach with multiple products that serve different areas of the branding space. We’ve also tried to isolate the workflow to our own gear as much as possible with just a few outside handles. That makes it much easier to go into totally disparate environments and get someone on-the-air quickly.”