We have been dedicated to the development and deployment of control, management, monitoring and automation systems in the broadcasting industry for over a decade, accumulating extensive product and project experience. Our products are highly adaptable and widely applied to system management and control in studios, playout, transmission, Master Control Room (MCR), earth stations, OB Vans (outside broadcast vans), satellite uplink vehicles / DSNG vehicles, flyaway stations, equipment rooms / machine rooms, and more. We also provide comprehensive solutions for building large-scale broadcast command & dispatch centers.
Task Execution System
I. Overview
The Task Execution System is an end-to-end operations support system and resource grouping software solution supporting multiple manufacturers, applicable to the broadcasting, satellite communications, cable TV, telecom, and mobile communications industries.
As TV stations evolve in the broadcasting sector, system complexity and workloads increase. From the perspectives of safe playout, high-quality playout, and cost-efficiency optimization, standardized, process-driven, and automated solutions are needed to handle daily operations and improve efficiency. Optimizing system workflows and improving system efficiency have always been key goals for broadcast and television systems. IP-based broadcast systems are an internationally recognized development direction. The transition from traditional SDI systems to IT-based, IP-enabled, cloud-based, and resource-pooled systems is the most important topic in current broadcast and television systems.
Addressing the trends and challenges of broadcast IP migration and virtualization, this product leverages cloud and internet technologies to provide TV stations and online audio/video media companies with an end-to-end, fully automated intelligent platform. It also uses big data analytics to aggregate, store, process in real time, analyze trends, and provide recommendations from multiple data sources, improving the operational quality of broadcasting organizations and facilities.
The product collects business plans through reservations and scheduling, generates executable tasks from the relevant data, and lets the control system execute them automatically. It provides appropriate manual intervention mechanisms along with template and snapshot functions. Snapshots can be used to reproduce faults for troubleshooting, with sound control logic (including hardware panels managed by the platform). With this platform, device time allocation can be optimized to prevent unnecessary emergencies, ensuring expensive resources are not overused and similar resources are not left idle, maximizing overall resource utilization.
This software optimizes broadcast and television workflows, achieving system device IP migration, resource pooling, and cloud-based sharing and scheduling.
The product adopts a layered architecture. The upper layer handles reservations and transport. The middle layer contains the Task Execution and resource scheduling/allocation modules, along with system status monitoring modules related to task execution. The bottom layer includes the Monitoring System, Matrix Control System, and others. Details are shown in the diagram below:
1. This product manages and controls overall task reservation, routing, scheduling, resource scheduling, automated workflow management, and monitoring.
2. This product comprises four logical layers: UI layer, service layer, adaptation layer, and infrastructure device layer. It provides role-based and domain-based access control with multi-level user management interfaces.
3. The service layer delivers core business application management services, including task reservation, task scheduling services, resource management and scheduling services, user management, monitoring, and data collection and analysis services. It implements core functions such as user authentication, service acceptance, resource scheduling, and signal routing workflow definition.
4. The adaptation layer handles interface management and control of infrastructure devices and signal routing, as well as signal routing management and control functions.
This product provides the following core functions: reservation and scheduling, automated task scheduling and execution, monitoring, audio/video signal scheduling, and workflow automation. It also offers numerous value-added and derivative services covering multiple aspects of daily broadcasting operations.
(2) Complete solution for third-party SDN & gateway vendors;
(3) Encoders, decoders, video servers, ingest, playout;
(4) Studio, EFP, satellite uplink vehicle;
2. Scheduling:
(1) Scheduling events and assets;
(2) Vendor-neutral virtualization of system resources;
(3) Full virtualization, providing hardware transparency and maximum operational flexibility; services can be dynamically started and stopped based on load demand;
(4) Automatic resource reservation and allocation;
(5) Time-based crosspoint switching;
(6) Signal path allocation, configuring parameters of broadcast equipment along the signal path;
(7) For recurring complex setups, macro snapshots can be created and triggered with one click;
3. Playout Monitoring:
(1) End-to-end monitoring;
(2) Real-time access to any device from any vendor;
(3) Automation of complex configuration processes;
(4) Diverse alarm notification methods, including SMS, email, WeChat, etc.;
(5) Alarm filtering based on time, date, and events;
(6) Comprehensive alarm management;
(7) Scalable architecture;
4. Data Collection and Data Analysis:
(1) Massive data collection capability;
(2) Extraction of hidden data, data visualization;
(3) Intelligent trend analysis over long and short cycles, automated statistical analysis;
2. Full-process automation for broadcasting, with comprehensive automated task execution workflows that reduce the scope of manual operations and lower error rates. Process automation and intelligence are reflected in intelligent link allocation based on resource pooling, resource capability classification, and resource weighting, optimizing time allocation for each resource and eliminating conflicts.
3. Provides an event response mechanism enabling automated modes such as linkage and follow.
IV. Advantages
1. End-to-end full-process automation based on intelligent resource scheduling and allocation, improving the operational quality of broadcasting organizations;
(1) The platform covers reservation-automatic execution-summary statistics, a complete automated workflow;
(2) Simplifies operations, eliminates the previous tedious device setup process before the program starts, now can quickly deploy, ready with one key;
(3) A complete task automation workflow execution solution reduces the frequency of manual operations and lowers error rates; the platform's full workflow automation covers but is not limited to the following links: reservation scheduling, task orchestration, snapshot freezing, macro one-key application, task execution, post-event analysis and statistics, scheduling plan-duty log, whiteboard collaboration, asset management, etc., a complete automated business process connecting external customers, program departments, operations and maintenance departments, management personnel, suppliers, system builders, and other links;
(4) Software intelligence, through resource pooling, resource capability classification, resource weighting, intelligently recommends optimal links, reasonably allocates the time occupancy of each device, prevents unnecessary emergency problems, ensures expensive resources are not abused, similar resources are not idle, maximizing the utilization rate of various resources;
(5) Efficient collaboration between system and personnel, and among personnel. In addition to automatic email, SMS, and WeChat push notifications, the system provides H5-format mobile pages with multi-panel real-time updates covering task orchestration, studio/device enable/disable status updates, and task device parameter presets, convenient for on-duty staff at various locations, especially those inspecting equipment rooms or field maintenance personnel.
2. A unified interface to manage the entire operational ecosystem, providing a unified operational control environment;
3. Cross-vendor and cross-technology capability;
4. Reservation and scheduling as a seamless collaborative workflow;
5. Significantly reduces operational costs and improves service quality;
6. Multi-vendor integration;
(1) Seamlessly integrate any device, service, and system from any vendor;
(2) Multi-vendor, multi-protocol driver agents allow integration of any vendor's devices, services, and protocols, regardless of protocol;
7. Enables customers to intelligently manage pooled resources;
8. Flexibly scalable, deployable on small systems as well as enterprise-wide large systems;
9. Centralized management;
(1) The monitoring and control capabilities provided can be applied to equipment monitoring in an OB Van, and can also be extended to centralized management of international broadcasting organizations spanning multiple continents, as mentioned in our China Unicom project case;
11. Provides diverse clients including browser-based access, tightly integrated with smart mobile devices, supporting anytime-anywhere system access and promoting collaboration between personnel;
Provides multiple methods including mobile H5 pages, SMS push, email push, and WeChat terminals, including enterprise WeChat groups, improving collaboration among personnel in different regions, different companies, and different departments.
Mobile H5 page
V. User Interface
1. Browser-based interface, no client software installation required
2. Provides event push and data publishing interfaces. The goal is to enable linkage and information exchange between subsystems on the basis of close personnel collaboration. It offers standardized API interfaces for building workflow automation systems and integrating with other customer business systems to achieve full interoperability.
VI. Architecture
1. Microservice architecture;
2. Easier to maintain throughout the application lifecycle;
3. Enables broadcasting organizations to achieve greater agility, significantly shortening the implementation cycle for various improvements;
4. A set of secure, portable, high-performance applications supporting the widest range of computing platforms, installable and runnable on all operating systems that support Java, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OSX, and BSD;
5. Cloud-native applications, fully leveraging cloud environment inherent characteristics, including elastic scaling, geographic distribution, and advanced automation.
Screenshots on this page show the Chinese user interface. English materials are available on request.
