To better manage its output in the current era of remote working, ARTE, the public service European culture channel, relied on some quick adaptations to its Pebble Beach Marina software.

Pebble-1    ARTE expands Pebble Lighthouse deployment during COVID-19 pandemic(1)

ARTE: Has adapted to a more remote workflow with some help from its playout software 

The focus was on its playout operations, including the management of playlists across multiple locations and countries. The ARTE team is also now using Pebble’s web-based Lighthouse product to monitor playlists in a consolidated view within a browser, whether at the broadcast facility or remotely and securely from their homes.

Peter Mayhead, CEO at Pebble Beach Systems, said that when ARTE had approached Pebble to expand its Lighthouse deployment and adapt its system, the vendor responded promptly. It added new user accounts for the operators and the maintenance team, allowing them complete access to view playlists, timelines and statistics from their respective remote working locations. ARTE also deployed the Channel Exception Monitor, which gives a consolidated view of any playlist errors across all channels, enabling early intervention if, for example, media is missing, or there are timing errors or invalid metadata in the list.

Mayhead added that for owners of Pebble’s Marina automation platform, the Auto List Loader feature helps ensure that programming isn’t interrupted, and that playlists are loaded reliably and automatically regardless of where the system’s operators are situated. The Auto List Loader, which can be remotely configured on Marina systems by Pebble engineers, enables broadcasters to run a process loading files from a local drive, or a network share, automatically into Marina. This ensures the playlists remain updated without operator intervention being required.