Nebula

Nebula is an open-source software for television and radio broadcasting workflow automation. We put great emphasis on simplicity, modularity and quick response.

Thanks to open standards, API, and source code available, Nebula can be integrated into existing workflows as well as new installations.

Key Features

Media Asset Management

Simple and fast media catalog based on EBU Core includes a description of asset genre, editorial format, atmosphere, rights, relations, and technical metadata, while its very fast search engine makes navigation among media files very easy.

Low-res preview allows editorial review, trimming and sub-clips creation.

Video and audio cross-conversion and normalization

A preliminary media analysis and normalization guarantee its standards compliance. This process includes metadata extraction, aspect ratio fixing, crop and rotation detection, smart frame rate and size normalization and EBU R128 loudness correction.

Automatic cross-conversion servers transcode files for playout, web, low-res proxies, customer previews, etc. For h.264 and HEVC, Nebula can take advantage of NVIDIA nvenc and leverage the speed of transcoding using GPUs.

It is possible to start conversions automatically (rule-based) or trigger them from the user interface.

Linear scheduling

Firefly client provides a simple and user-friendly way to schedule linear broadcasting. Macro- and micro-scheduling patterns are finished intuitively using drag&drop, including live events.

Nebula has also the ability to schedule for playback assets, which aren’t finished yet. As soon as a media file is created the media file and rundown item are paired automatically.

The optional Dramatica module makes program planning even easier; depending on the particular broadcast scheme, Dramatica selects and automatically completes convenient shows, self-promotions, trailers, and fillings.

It is the way to create a playlist for a music station where an algorithm automatically creates a playlist based on a predefined scheme. Each clip in the rundown is picked by its editorial format, genre, tempo, atmosphere, etc.

Playout control

For linear broadcasting, it is possible to use servers like CasparCG, Liquidsoap or Conti. Broadcasting can run autonomously with and option of starting blocks at a specified time.

Users - master control room operators - can interfere with the rundown using Firefly client, executing graphics or change run order until the last moment.

Playout control module offers a plug-in interface for secondary events execution such as CG, router or studio control, recorders control and so on. Right at the operator’s fingertips.

Dynamic Character Generator (CG)

A CG render engine can insert a large variety of graphical elements generated from metadata such as tickers, subtitles, banner ads, charts, weather graphics, currency rates, traffic information, clock, etc.

Infographic elements are allowed to be generated both from public data resources or a content management system.

Web publishing

Nebula can be linked to a company website via the API. Media files are automatically uploaded to the web or social networks after the planned program is broadcasted.

Statistics and reporting

Nebula allows generating various statistics and reports for collective rights management societies like OSA, DACS, etc. in an xls file.

Management and monitoring

A simple web based interface allows various management tasks (services and jobs monitoring, user management…) as well as simplified MAM access for editorial work without Firefly installed.

Nebula provides extensive system metrics in Prometheus format. Grafana dashboard can be used for their visualization and alerting in case of problems.

Reliability

Nebula is under active development and is in production since 2012 with no intenitons of abandoning the project, and we have a roadmap for several years. We listen to our customers, and we change our priorities in order to meet requests from the production.

We do not try to have tons of features noone will ever use - we spent many years sitting next to Nebula operators, learning from each other, and we believe that Nebula covers all common tasks in a broadcast environment.