Crawford Communications, Inc. of Atlanta has expanded its OmniBus Colossus playout capability to provide HD transmission services.

Crawford Communications' Colossus HD installation provides fully redundant primary and backup channels with file transfer to and from video servers and archive storage. These transfers are managed by OmniBus Cache Manager and Workflow Manager software.The Colossus system also provides traffic interfaces to the multiple client scheduling systems used at Crawford.

"We've been using Colossus as one of our SD solutions since 2005 and have been pleased with its performance," said Donald Rodd, vice president of engineering and technical operations for Crawford's satellite division."As a multi-use channel platform, it runs 26 of our redundant networks very efficiently. When we needed to enhance the existing system to provide HD capacity, the scalable Colossus architecture made it easy; the expansion went flawlessly and was completed in just a single day."

"We are very pleased to have taken our fruitful relationship with Crawford Communications a stage further with this installation," said Roger Kleckner, vice president of sales, Americas, OmniBus Systems. "Innovative providers like Crawford are forging the new services the industry needs, and as the developer of ground-breaking solutions for automation, business continuity and disaster recovery, OmniBus is delighted to be a supplier of this technology."

OmniBus Colossus is the market-leading multi-channel automation system, providing a robust and scalable solution to broadcasters across the globe. A full-featured automated transmission product, Colossus incorporates schedule management, event building and transitions, timeline monitoring, live-event management and cache management.

Crawford Communications, Inc., an Atlanta-based, privately owned company, is a leader in the electronic media services industry and has been offering domestic and international clients a full spectrum of video, film, audio, IP-media and satellite services since 1981. Crawford has evolved with technology to comprise the best in high-definition and standard-definition satellite transmission, television network origination and playback, satellite uplink truck services, multi-camera production trucks, studios, remote video production, media management, streaming media/webcasting, online services, high-definition creative editorial, film transfer and color correction, sound design and mixing, 5.1 surround sound, Blu-ray and DVD authoring, and standards conversion.