AFA Streams Into Webcasting with Contract from Microcast
Microcast, the "world's largest Internet video-delivery network", has selected AF Associates, Inc. (AFA) to provide technical design and integration services for its new facility in Danbury, Connecticut. Scheduled to launch in the Spring of 2000, Microcast will be capable of delivering more than one million video streams simultaneously at broadband speed. AFA, the nation's leading systems integrator, maintains headquarters in Northvale, NJ and operates a facility in Burbank, CA.
"Our requirements included a systems integrator capable of uniting the Broadcast and Internet worlds," said Paul Nash, CEO and founder of Microcast. "A. F. Associates' extensive experience with television systems combined with their skill, talent and foresight into cutting edge technology made them the ideal choice to seamlessly blend these technologies into one environment."
"Microcast is on the cusp of rapidly redefining broadcasting and communication," said AFA president, Tom Canavan. "AFA is determined to play a leading role in guiding Microcast and all our clients through this technology and assisting them in leveraging their assets for these new models of distribution."
A. F. Associates is designing Microcast's Master Control Room to serve two functions. The architecturally unique room will monitor the status of the audio/video stream and network distribution as well as monitor all incoming/outgoing program feeds. The room will be furnished with free form consoles and a 180 degree wrap around monitor wall. Monitor displays will be projection utilizing Miranda technology, and the rear projection screens will be capable being configured to display any combination of up to 16 feeds. Full audio and video monitoring for all incoming program feeds and all outgoing Internet feeds will be available simultaneously. Control of the room will be accomplished by a simplified touch screen that can access all pieces of equipment.
AFA is also providing design and integration services for all programming ingest systems at Microcast. The systems will be capable of preparing and editing up to 24 simultaneous program streams. Based on server technology, the ingest process can be fully automated for live feeds and manual tape ingest.
A combined video server ingest capacity of 700+ hours using MPEG2 and a cache of 100,000 hours provide rapid on-line access to all frequently used video material. Under HSM control and archive management, material will be "aged" and off-lined to a 1000+ TB tape archive using multiple robots and drives for later retrieval. Data transfer rates throughout the system can reach 25X real time between the main video servers, cache and tape archive.
Microcast's unprecedented combination of infrastructure, bandwidth and technology will give consumers on-demand access to thousands of hours of live feeds as well as archival material via the Internet in a seamless, high-quality environment. Program segments will be sponsored by regional advertisements based upon the location and profile of the viewer.
Microcast, founded in 1998, is the broadcast standard of the Internet. The company provides content providers with a turnkey video streaming service, advertisers with unparalleled one-to-one relationship marketing capabilities, and consumers with live and archived video programming on demand.
A. F. Associates, Inc. is a Video Services Corporation company (Amex: VS). AFA is an industry leader in the design, engineering and fabrication of fixed and mobile television facilities. Services include design, engineering, consulting, detailed design, documentation, prewiring, installation, and commissioning for broadcast, cable, satellite, production/post production and corporate video markets.