LOS ANGELES—Deluxe announced the acquisition of Sony New Media Solutions (NMS), which offers media platform services to leading global media companies, including Sony Pictures Entertainment. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The integration of Sony NMS into Deluxe’s existing digital media supply chain platform will offer media companies access to a comprehensive suite of services and technologies.

“This is an opportunity for Sony to contribute in a unique way to the media and entertainment industry,” commented John Studdert, vice president, Media Solutions, Sony Electronics Inc. “As NMS transitions to Deluxe, our expectation is that through this combination of leading solutions, the industry will benefit through improved workflows, better integrated supply chain solutions and so much more.”

The Sony deal follows Deluxe’s acquisition of Sundog Media Toolkit earlier in 2021, which extended its cloud automation technologies to customers worldwide, it said. Deluxe was acquired last year by Platinum Equity.

“We are delighted to welcome the Sony NMS team and customers into the Deluxe family,” said Cyril Drabinsky, CEO of Deluxe. “We believe we have created a best-in-class servicing and tech team. Joining the already robust system Deluxe has to offer, this allows us to strengthen our breadth of technology and workflows, while enabling NMS customers full access to Deluxe’s spectrum of integrated supply chain solutions including cinema, localization and distribution.”

Sony launched its NMS division, which was designed to consolidate its many media tech resources in the cloud in 2017. 

More information is available on the Deluxe website.

LOS ANGELES—Chris Reynolds has been promoted to the position of executive vice president, Localization and Fulfillment Services, by Deluxe, a provider of digital and cloud-based systems for content production studios and distributors.

Reynolds, who most recently was the senior vice president, Localization, for Deluxe, is taking over this newly created position within the company. Deluxe says that its localization and fulfillment operations are more interconnected, and in his new role Reynolds will be responsible for overseeing the two business lines worldwide.

Deluxe’s localization business provides subtitling, dubbing, captioning and audio description services to domestic and international markets. Fulfillment provides mastering, QC, transcoding, digital delivery and SaaS platform services for content owners and distributors around the world. 

Deluxe says that by combining the two operations it is increasing efficiencies and ensuring it meets industry quality, format and security standards.

For more information, visit www.bydeluxe.com.  

LOS ANGELES—Deluxe has announced the hiring of former Netflix executive Anna Lee to the company’s newly created position of chief strategy officer.

At Deluxe, a provider of digital and cloud-based systems for content production studios and distributors, Lee will be responsible for developing, communicating, executing and sustaining strategic initiatives for the company. She will report to Cyril Drabinsky, Deluxe’s CEO.

Lee was most recently at Netflix as the streamer’s head of Global Content Services. She began with Netflix in 2008 as vice president, Supply Chain Development, and later became vice president of Content Acquisition. She also was named the head of Global Screenings in 2019.

At Netflix, Lee created and implemented systems and frameworks for areas including asset deliverables and technical operations, optimization of operational efficiencies, creation, localization and distribution content assets.

“Anna is an exceptional leader and her experience in digital cinema, supply-chain workflows and the global OTT space will ensure that Deluxe can maximize opportunities give the dramatic shifts in the marketplace,” said Drabinsky.

For more information, visit www.bydeluxe.com.  

Add dubbing for television shows, movies and other entertainment to the list of production workflows impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Working in close proximity is verboten in the age of the virus, so the interaction between voice talent, sound engineers, directors and others in a dubbing studio presents significant challenges—so much so that at least one vendor is offering a new product to virtualize the process.

An email from Deluxe showed up in my in-box about the same time I finally had a chance to watch the season finale of “The Blacklist” on Netflix. The episode was a creative mix of live action shot before the virus brought production to a halt and comic-book-like animation to fill in the missing scenes.

The episode piqued my interest, which led me to finding an article about the production and lengths to which the actors had to go to record their dialog for the animation. That’s not to imply that Deluxe was involved, but the coincidence of my watching the episode and the email led to this Q&A with Chris Reynolds, executive vice president and general manager, Worldwide Localization, at Deluxe.

Deluxe has been offering One Dub, a cloud-based dubbing solution for the past several months. The product virtualizes the dubbing process, allowing talent and production crew to work safely from home while producing professional results.

In this interview, Reynolds talks about how the need to socially distance has impacted the dubbing workflow, the challenges that must be overcome, how standards are maintained while working from home and what One Dub is and does.

(An edited transcript.) 

TVTechnology: COVID-19 has prompted major workflow shake ups among M&E organizations. How has the need to social distance impacted dubbing? 

Chris Reynolds: The need to socially distance has had a major impact on dubbing. It’s commonplace in many countries to have voice actors in the same room as dubbing directors, sound engineers and others, and there are also group recording sessions that involve multiple voice actors working in very close proximity to each other. 

In addition to social distancing, there is a lot of shared equipment and surfaces between recording sessions and actors—microphones, headphones and desks. Dubbing is a very collaborative process and adapting it to keep everyone safe has required space and equipment modifications, as well as new cleaning procedures.
There have been other restrictions in place that make some processes impossible. For example, different areas have travel restrictions that can make it impossible for participants to get to the recording studio. In other cities and regions, there are capacity rules that prevent studios from being able to have multiple actors in the same room.

For all of these reasons, studios have had to partially or completely move to remote recording to keep dubbing moving along.

TVT: What are the biggest obstacles to remote dubbing workflow?

CR: There are a variety of obstacles. The No. 1 obstacle is enabling a collaborative recording experience when participants aren’t in the same facility or room but still need the same level of interaction and engagement. To create the same quality output, it’s important that the roles of voice actor, dubbing director, sound engineer, sound editor and others can be maintained to get the best performance and technical quality possible.

Then there are the technical challenges. These range from the acoustics of the physical environment that voice artists have to work in, to the availability and quality of the equipment they’re using to record, to the security requirements in place for the content they’re working on. Internet connectivity can be a factor depending on the software solution being used. 

TVT: How does Deluxe’s new One Dub address what’s needed to support voice actors and others who can’t come into the studio and must work from home?

CR: One Dub allows participants to continue to collaborate and fulfill their various roles through an easy-to-use, secure cloud-based software solution. 

Each participant can log into the virtual recording session with access to secure streaming video and script, full-quality uncompressed audio and near-instant ability to collaboratively edit and review each line and take. No software needs to be installed as it’s all browser-based. While it does require internet connectivity, it’s been optimized to work even when connection speeds are below the recommended requirements.

Our new Session Sync feature allows all participants to sync their browser to the sound engineer’s so he can control the transport, playback and recording functions for the voice actor and director. 

Once the recording session is complete, it enables easy export into formats supported by all industry-standard Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs).

TVT: One Dub is rather new. Has it begun to take hold among dubbing studios?

CR: More than 1,000 recording sessions have been completed on One Dub over the past four months. Many more are scheduled. The projects range from streaming originals on the industry’s leading SVOD platforms to broadcast series and even specific actors for theatrical feature films, so it’s very wide-ranging. We license the product to dubbing studios, and have users in over 14 countries across multiple languages. 

TVT: Do these folks generally have what it takes in terms of technology and a soundproof room to work from home? I’ve seen some interviews where actors doing voice work say they get into closets to do their parts in an acoustically acceptable environment.

CR: Very few voice actors have professional recording environments, but that’s not absolutely necessary to produce a satisfactory recording. It’s important to recognize that the dialog in original version content is not often recorded in controlled acoustic environments, so even in someone’s bedroom you can do some basic things like turning off ceiling fans, closing windows and hanging up blankets to dampen the sound enough that you can get a very controlled response through an appropriate microphone. Others use closets or record in vehicles parked in garages, as do many voice-over artists and podcasters all over the world.

There are products available that can wrap around a microphone to block out unwanted reflections and other sounds, and even boxes that can be put on a stand for an actor to stand up in and have their entire upper body surrounded by sound insulation. In practice, we’ve found that most people prefer the simpler solutions like hanging blankets or finding a quiet room or closet.

TVT: What’s the typical One Dub setup? Can multiple voice actors in a scene work together remotely? Is latency too great to allow that?

CR: The current version of One Dub only allows one person to be able to record themselves at a time, but that doesn’t prevent having multiple people involved in a session. As the system is based on AWS and syncs the audio to each user’s timeline directly after each line is recorded, the interaction isn’t completely dependent on the latency during the live recording itself. Everyone hears the performance as it's happening, but immediately after each line is recorded the full resolution audio is transmitted to each user’s session where they can immediately play back what was just recorded in sync to picture in their own browser. This can be controlled by each individual, or they can simply sync to the sound engineer who can control the transport and playback each line so everyone can see it in sync and make accurate judgments, just as is typically done in the recording studio.

We are working on being able to allow multiple people to record themselves into the same session simultaneously as opposed to one at a time, but that will be in a future release.

More information about One Dub is available on the company’s website. 

NEW YORK—Deluxe yesterday announced the formation of the Deluxe Technologies division, the company’s response to the rapid changes its customers are experiencing across the content supply chain.

Morgan Fiumi

The division will draw on the talent of 250 Deluxe engineers at six locations around the world to develop solutions addressing the breadth of the supply chain, including content creation, marketing, localization, distribution and measurement.

Chief Innovation Officer Morgan Fiumi will lead the new division, and the company has appointed Andy Shenkler as its chief product officer to head up development of technology and platforms.

The decision to launch a new division is in response to the pressures Deluxe clients are experiencing that grow out of technology changes and the way content is being consumed, says Fiumi.

In this interview, the Deluxe chief innovation officer talks about the evolving content supply chain, the need to simplify and manage the complexity of content prep for multiple locations that require various resolutions using different codecs, DRMs and metadata schemas and how the division’s offering will provide customers with on-demand access to the services they require.

TVTECHNOLOGY:In the Deluxe press announcement, you say this is the initial step in transformation of Deluxe becoming a virtualized platform company. Could you elaborate?

MORGAN FIUMI:Surething. The purpose of creating this group is to have a strategic alignment to respond and add more value to our customers and content owners.

As you know, the market is changing quite a bit as far as pressure on existing business models, technology changes and obviously how content is being consumed. It’s become increasingly important for content owners to reach their global audiences in very sort release windows.

Deluxe has always been a partner in providing the content supply chain, but the requirements of the supply chain have changed and now it requires much more specialization, scale and speed.

So, the concept behind the platform is to have a broad set of services accessible on demand in a very transparent and easy way. [We want to] provide value and allow our clients to leverage all those sets of services across the supply chain in an easy and fast manner.

These can be our existing products, such as software products, fully managed services or access to specific talent across any of the phases of the supply chain—upstream from our creative services, visual effects, color and editorial services to package and distribution to our localization all the way down to distribution of the content.

TVT:I have interviewed Deluxe for years, visited your booths at many trade shows and had several conversations about the company’s offering of virtualized playout and master control from the cloud. Is that part of this new offering?

MF: You bring up a good point. Historically, we have put out specific solutions. You are referring to our MediaCloud offering, which is very innovative, cost-effective and scalable when compared to handling [playout and master control] in a traditionally capital-intensive environment.

So, MediaCloud is a successful product for IP-based distribution. But I think in the past, it was put out as a standalone product and it didn’t fully leverage the services around it.

You can imagine if you think about content prep coming into an offering like MediaCloud, a lot goes into normalization and prepping of that content—sort of a prequalification QC process, all of the potential compliance versions, localized versions. There is a lot of media processing to enable that distribution, and we want to be able to provide those solutions, not just for IP but any sort of distribution.

We think it is important to approach it as an integrated offering and have it available as an open architecture, so if I just need playout, I can API in and access those services, but you can also leverage the whole breadth of the offering around that distribution.

TVT:The press release says the traditional supply chain has grown organically and become overly complex. What examples come to mind?

MF: There are many. The macro reasons [it is so complex] are if you take any one piece of the supply chain there are so many technology formats, and at the core, it lacks standardization across that. We help address that complexity.

If you are a content owner and you want to get it on all of these platforms, there is a plethora of formats and specs that the content needs to be prepared for. It’s not that I create just one package, but within one package I may have many resolutions, codecs, DRMs, metadata schemas and localized versions.

If you think of the whole spectrum from digital cinema down to home entertainment and digital distribution and including support at the end devices, you need to have a very flexible and scalable way to create all those versions in a very resource-efficient manor where you are managing the efficiency of the upstream work. So, the quality of the encodes, the quality of the picture is maintained throughout all the downstream versions.

Every time there is a new device or a new OTT offering, that generally requires a whole new set of capabilities that needs to be supported and integrated. I think it is the seamless integration of all those systems that creates a lot of complexity.

That’s why—as far as content owners [are concerned]—it becomes much more efficient for them to focus on creating great content and customer engagement and rely on services, such as Deluxe, to help them solve all of these issues.

TVT:We’ve talked about the MediaCloud offering and how that’s now buttressed by this end-to-end service offering. One of its benefits is the ability to spin up and spin down MediaCloud as needed. Is there a similar concept underlying all the services from the new division?

MF: Yes, that’s very much at the core. If you look at playout that’s just one example.

It’s really about how can I have access to the best possible resource in the most efficient manner and transparency on status pricing, but also have access guarantees around SLAs [Service Level Agreements] and quality. That sounds very simple, but it is actually very complicated.

Obviously, Deluxe has many years of [developing] capabilities. [The company offers] creative talent and software applications where we think the solution is really having those sets of services very much available—whether it’s a single unified portal or API with access to them on demand and have all that transparency and guarantee around them to be able to turn them on when I need them and turn them off when I don’t.

It’s a tailored offering that is not one solution for all content owners but rather whatever complements their supply chain and gives them the best possible resource at any given time.