Nebula concepts and terminology

Playout control
Nebula user guide index
Introduction to Firefly

Site

A Nebula instance. A site may be a broadcaster or broadcast network with one or more channels sharing the configuration, subset of assets, or users. Each site has its own database, configuration template, and users.

One site can run on multiple servers, but it is not possible to run multiple sites on a single machine (unless virtualized).

Node

A server running Nebula. Nebula is highly scalable and each site can use several nodes to distribute media processing tasks across the network.

Service

Nebula services are server-side programs, with many different functions. Some extract metadata from media files, some transcode assets to different formats, control playout servers, and so on. Services may be distributed to many machines across the network and can be controlled using the Nebula web interface.

It is also possible to build custom, site-specific services for very specific tasks.

Firefly

Firefly is a desktop client application for Nebula, which is used for most editorial tasks. It can run on Windows and Linux workstations and enables users to work remotely (if the site configuration allows it).

Asset management

Assets and folders

An asset is a database entry that can receive an unlimited amount of characteristics, such as associated media files, metadata, etc. Assets, that share the same default characteristics are of the same folder, such as movie, episode, song, story, jingle, etc.

Folder selection also determines, which metadata keys are displayed in the asset editor.

Content type

Content-type is an asset attribute defining what type of content asset represents. Following content types are available:

Media type

Assets may not be necessarily linked to media files. Special assets such as series, have media type virtual. These assets are just database records with metadata attached. Following media types are available:

View

Views serve as the main filter of assets in the browser. Each view can be configured to contain assets from specific folders, with the given status and matching certain conditions. Additionally, each view have a default set of metadata displayed as columns in the browser table.

Within the view, you can sort assets by the displayed columns and filter further using full-text search or advanced search queries.

Actions and jobs

Action is a predefined process such as transcoding an asset to a different format or transfer to remote storage. Each action has certain conditions, which an asset must match to start the action automatically or to allow manual triggering. When triggered, a job is created. A job is therefore defined by an asset, an action, and custom settings.

You can monitor the status of a job and its and progress both in Firefly and the web interface.

Scheduling and playout

Channel

Typically a playout channel. Each site can have several channels. In some cases such as a VOD application, Nebula may be configured without any channels.

Event

A calendar entry. In the case of linear playout scheduling, an event is an “EPG” program block. An event belongs to a channel and has its start time and other metadata such as title and description.

Users can view and edit events using the scheduler view in the Firefly application.

Item

Generally, an item is an instance of an asset scheduled in an event playlist. Several special types of items (without relation to any asset) may be inserted to a playlist as well, such as live events, placeholders, etc.

Rundown

List of all events and items for one day. A Firefly rundown module displays complete daily playlist in a single view.

As-Run

An as-run log is the actual and accurate list of items which have been played out. Nebula provides a mechanism to filter and export the log to various formats for clients, collective rights management organizations, etc.