Following on the heels of its acquisition of Blue Order (based in Germany) in January, Avid has announced a new media asset management platform that brings together the production workflow and administration tasks necessary for content creation, file sharing, distribution, and rights management under a single user interface. The new product, part of Avid’s Interplay family of networking products, is designed to help customers tackle their business needs and technology challenges in a tightly integrated, cost-effective way.
The Interplay product family now offers more than just project collaboration. It brings a wide array of enterprise-level media asset management tools to make media organizations more productive, according to Kirk Arnold, Avid’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.
The new Integrated Media Enterprise software platform allows users in the commercial production, broadcast and high-end post industries to streamline their operations and be more productive. It combines database management technology from Blue Order and Avid’s own Interplay production asset management (PAM) platform to provide easy integration of third-party technology and the ability for any vendor to create and publish Web services based on a universal standardized protocol.
Interplay makes media workflows more productive with a host of production capabilities, support for the most commonly used file formats and low-res (proxy) browsing, seamless third-party compatibility, and new ways to connect devices and systems — whether are in the next room or remotely located.
The Avid Integrated Media Enterprise platform addresses issues related to all of the most important processes involved in the content creation and distribution chain (such as production, traffic, billing and rights management). A series of software modules address service-based architectures and flexible IT-based infrastructures, including: an “open media catalog” that allows customers to maximize the value of their assets; a “rich media repository,” providing users with tightly integrated access to different types of media across all parts of the organization; and, a modular architecture that facilitates workplace collaboration by integrating ingest, production, archive and distribution operations.
For example, the open media catalog serves as a single repository of all media and the essence of audio and video assets, which can be efficiently tracked and repurposed as needed. This allows users to gets more value out of their existing archives.
The Avid/Blue Order partnership began several years ago, as the two companies have shared customers around the world. In fact, several broadcast news customers have already implemented the joint Blue Order and Avid solution and are now experimenting with new business models that support multiple locations and remote collaboration. An international broadcaster at the 2008 Summer Olympics Games in China also implemented the solution.
