NEW YORK—Amagi has partnered with Nevion to enable broadcasters to be faster, more agile and cost-effective in creating and delivering live content to viewers, especially premium content sports, Amagi said. 

The combined solution allows production teams, wherever they are located, to spin up and tear-down pop-up channels in the cloud and use them seamlessly in combination with their ground production, thereby overcoming the latency issues often associated with these types of hybrid workflows, it said.

The partnership brings together the cloud-based master control room (MCR) functionality of Amagi CLOUDPORT and the orchestration capabilities of Nevion VideoIPath. The solution makes it easy for production teams to integrate cloud-based MCR capabilities into ground-based production workflows without relying on technical specialists, it said.

"Amagi's collaboration with Nevion signifies partnership for progress in broadcast technology," said Srinivasan KA, co-founder and chief revenue officer of Amagi. "By combining capabilities of Amagi CLOUDPORT with Nevion's VideoIPath, broadcasters now have an advanced solution to elevate hybrid-cloud broadcast workflows, aiming to set a new standard of operational efficiency in the industry."

Amagi CLOUDPORT's support for VSF TR-07 (JPEG XS over TS) enables high-quality, ultra-low latency video transport between the ground and the cloud as if they were in the same truck or facility, the company said.

The integration with VideoIPath simplifies the workflow, including connectivity, for production and master control operators who can now seamlessly synchronize on-screen graphics, digital video effects and commercial breaks with minimal retraining effort. By putting the production team in control of hybrid workflows, the solution optimizes operational efficiency and significantly reduces costs, it said.

"This combined capability, which has already been deployed at a major U.S. broadcaster, marks a significant milestone in the industry's evolution, showcasing how our technology empowers broadcasters to achieve unparalleled efficiency and agility," said Jan Helgesen, head of product and solutions at Nevion. 

"With Amagi CLOUDPORT and Nevion's VideoIPath, customers looking to create hybrid cloud workflows can achieve spin-up, spin-down automation, enabling a single producer to manage production control on premise plus master control and ad insertion via a browser. Nevion is proud to join forces with Amagi, bringing our seamless connectivity, configurations, and resource management capabilities to enable this technological and workflow-transforming leap."

More information is available on the Amagi and Nevion websites.

NEW YORK—Amagi has announced that its broadcast-grade cloud playout product, Amagi CLOUDPORT is now available at the Google Cloud Marketplace. 

"Amagi enables broadcasters to thrive in a multi-screen world by helping them move beyond legacy workflows and embrace the advantages of unified broadcast workflows on the cloud,” explained Baskar Subramanian, CEO and co-founder, Amagi. “By collaborating with a trusted public cloud provider like Google Cloud, we are ensuring our services retain their quality while offering as many benefits as possible to our customers.”

Amagi has developed cloud-native solutions for the broadcasting industry for over a decade and Amagi's partnership with Google Cloud is a logical next step in Amagi's efforts to solidify its position as an innovative SaaS provider in media and entertainment, the company said. 

"Amagi's solutions have been continuously innovative,” said Kip Schauer, global head of media and entertainment partnerships at Google Cloud. “Our partnership will allow them to further accelerate their solutions' flexibility and efficiency, and help them achieve higher customer satisfaction.” 

AMSTERDAM—Amagi introduced an upgraded version of the Amagi CLOUDPORT broadcast-grade channel playout platform at the ongoing IBC 2022 convention here.

Offering a broad set of functions from media ingest to scheduling and playout, Amagi CLOUDPORT is designed to reduce the complexity of workflow management. With support for HD and UHD video quality, captioning, advanced graphics, low latency and ad placement, the solution offers a choice of redundancy levels to ensure channels never go down, the company said.

“The futuristic world of CTV-led Free Ad-supported Streaming TV awaits, and Amagi CLOUDPORT is your golden ticket,” said company co-founder Srinivasan KA. “By intuitively and efficiently managing channel playout, Amagi CLOUDPORT optimizes investments and resources for broadcasters, allowing them to focus their efforts on creating compelling viewing experiences across the linear TV and OTT value chain.”

Enhancements include: user interface changes to enable more efficient operation by one user; playlist management additions, including: editing layout; viewing past, current and future items; search and replace of assets; search filters; playlist versioning; show and break management; missing asset identification; and upgrades to advance simplicity and speed of operation, the company said.

Other new capabilities include the ability to set placeholders for assets and graphics in the Amagi CLOUDPORT media library and the generation of notifications of missing video, audio, caption and secondary files.

See Amagi at IBC 2022 Stand 5.C76.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—SaaS provider Amagi recently concluded a project with the Freemantle-owned Buzzr, a vintage game show network, to transition its broadcast operations to a fully cloud-managed setup. 

Using Amagi’s cloud platform, Buzzr integrated its broadcast workflows across over-the-air, cable and digital OTT operations to a single unified platform.

This was done with Amagi’s cloud playout SaaS platform CLOUDPORT. With Buzzr moving its content library of old game shows to the AWS cloud, CLOUDPORT helped the network create, deliver and manage the channel for both OTT and broadcast. CLOUDPORT gave Buzzr real-time access to all parts of its broadcast workflow, as well as provider greater transparency and flexibility to check for potential issues and to fix them, said Mark Deetjen, general manager for Buzzr.

Buzzr has a portfolio of more than 40,000 episodes of iconic game shows. It is broadcast in 67 broadcast markets, and is available on Dish and OTT platforms, as well as for streaming over its own website.

For more information, visit www.amagi.com.  

BANGALORE, INDIA—Amagi this week launched its Cloudport UHD playout platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which allows broadcasters to leverage the scalability, reliability and security advantages of the AWS cloud to meet their UHD playout needs.

First showcased at the 2019 NAB Show and enhanced based on feedback the company received, Cloudport UHD playout is now being launched as a commercial product, the company said. 

The UHD playout solution relies on AWS EC2 compute instances without drawing on GPU processors to provide dynamic broadcast graphics, Dolby Surround Sound and captioning along with its core playout function.

“Given the dynamism in UHD market in terms of evolving HDR standards and varying degrees of platform readiness across the globe, this solution provides future-proofing of UHD implementations for content owners and TV networks,” said Baskar Subramanian, co-founder of Amagi.

“Cloudport UHD eliminates the need for broadcasters to invest in capital infrastructure that can become redundant with the changes in the marketplace”.

Overall, Amagi manages more than 200 channels in over 40 countries. The Cloudport T playout platform offers dynamic graphics, remote management via Web UI, automated alerts and cloud MCR capabilities. The product is offered on a pay-as-you-go basis. The cloud-based solution enables TV networks the technical and commercial flexibility to spin up and down channels, create pop-up channels and regionalize feeds.

For more information visit the Amagi website.

NEW YORK—Cloud-based technology provider Amagi was the method of choice for Cinedigm to deliver its CONtv channel to the Twitch social video service, specifically using Amagi’s CloudPort cloud-based channel playout platform.

CONtv is a digital network billed as a devoted fan space, providing original programming and a digital catalog of film and TV titles. By using the CloudPort platform, CONtv is available as a 24/7 linear offering on Twitch.

With CloudPort, CONtv can stitch together a linear OTT channel in a few weeks, without having to use a separate custom-designed solution for periodic live events. CloudPort enabled Cinedigm to control the entire broadcast workflow—including playing live and library graphics, playlist scheduling or customized ad insertion—through a web user interface.

Amagi, which was founded in 2008, made its official U.S. debut in 2017.  

NEW YORK—Cloud-based channel playout specialist Amagi today announced its U.S. launch, making the company’s CloudPort platform available immediately to U.S. television broadcasters as well as digital OTT channels.

The company, which counts among its international clients Vice Media and Turner Broadcasting, offers an alternative to satellite and fiber delivery to support the expansion of TV networks across geographies and onto various platforms to reach new audiences.

However, with Amagi’s CloudPort playout solution it is possible to air linear TV channels around the world without incurring the cost of satellite or fiber deliver, the company said. CloudPort allows broadcasters to spin up and down new channels as needed and to deliver them anywhere from the cloud, the company said.

The product also enables broadcasters to setup and monitor multiple feeds as well as localize content, Amagi said. CloudPort combines the cloud with artificial intelligence to automate playout. Using AI, CloudPort addresses tasks traditionally done manually, such as managing schedules and detecting black frames.

Besides linear broadcast, CloudPort can enable on-demand services for consumers via OTT, the company said.

Linear TV and OTT broadcasters in the U.S. can now purchase CloudPort as a standalone or as part of SkyLight, the company’s all-in-one cloud-managed broadcast service solution. The company is also now selling its Storm and ThunderStorm monetization platforms in the U.S.

More information is available on the Amagi website.