GHENT, Belgium—Limecraft has released Limecraft 2026.3 featuring improvements to make production and post-production workflows more structured and reliable as well as easier to automate at scale.

Limecraft, an AI-powered production platform, enables content creators to store, manage and share projects from initial rushes to thousands of masters. Limecraft workspaces can be customized for specific formats, such as scripted TV, documentaries and non-scripted entertainment, and can manage massive volumes due to finetuned AI services at its core.

The third platform update in its 2026 release cycle, Limecraft 2026.3 focuses on three key areas: file verification with ASC Media Hash List (MHL) support, extended AAF export configuration and faster transcription with broader language coverage.

Ingest workflows now support ASC Media Hash List files using Limecraft Edge. MHL files are created upon card offloads, establishing a persistent, interoperable record of file integrity. As part of this enhancement, users can choose the checksum algorithm employed for file verification. In addition to legacy MD5, Limecraft now supports xxHash64 and xxHash3 64-bit algorithms.

To improve interaction with the editorial workflow, Limecraft 2026.3 extends AAF export templates introduced in the previous release. Users can now define more precisely which material lands on which track in the resulting edit sequence.

Advanced track mapping automatically composes the intended sequence track by track, including master clips or auto-generated group clips, camera and audio device selection, auto-select camera angles, custom labels and per-subtrack labels for multi-channel audio. This is particularly relevant for multicamera, multitrack and high-volume productions where manual timeline preparation is repetitive and prone to errors.

Additionally, Limecraft 2026.3 introduces improvements to automatic transcription. Processing performance has been significantly improved, now accurately transcribing one hour of audio to text in less than a minute. This helps journalists, researchers, editors and subtitle operators use timecoded transcripts more quickly.

The release also broadens transcription language and locale support. Limecraft 2026.3 adds 35 newly supported languages and locales, including Latin American Spanish, Pashto, Somali, Maori, Luxembourgish, Belarusian and Kyrgyz, as well as a broad set of African languages, including Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Wolof, Lingala, Shona, Sepedi, Nyanja, Ganda, Oromo, Kamba and Luo.

Limecraft 2026.3 also offers a range of smaller improvements across the platform. These include workspace-level metadata, improved performance for bulk uploads via shared links, the addition of metadata changes in the Workflow & Activity pane, refinements to configurable AAF export templates and fixes relating to custom status display, table sorting, comments in shares, clip detail URLs, DNxHR transcoding and card offload job visibility in Limecraft Edge.

Limecraft 2026.3 is available now. Limecraft will host a live webinar on May 7 demonstrating the new features and their impact on production and post-production workflows. RSVP at https://us02web.zoom.us/.

See Limecraft at the Media Production & Technology Show, May 13-14, at Olympia London in stand F70.

More information is available on the company’s website.

DUSSELDORF, Germany—Elements will feature its new GRID NAS platform as well as the latest developments in its ELEMENTS media ecosystem at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22, at the Las Vegas Convention center.

GRID, built on Ceph, an open-source, distributed storage system, is a software-defined, scale-out NAS platform. It combines all-NVMe performance with the company’s automation engine and Media Library media asset management software. The company has begun shipping GRID to customers.

The company will also feature its Elements cloud production platform with AI integrations. At the core of the secure cloud platform is the flexibility for a future-proof and scalable foundation to boost performance and maximize ROI.

Its Media Library MAM enhances the platform with tools for tagging, searching, organizing and securely sharing media. API-driven automation and AI integrations generate rich, searchable metadata for faster, smarter and more collaborative production.

Elements will also feature its ELEMENTS NVME CUBE with a petabyte of RAW storage, 12 GB/s speed and a toolset that increases on-set productivity. It will also showcase workflows and integrations across the ELEMENTS media ecosystem, including a new Avid Media Composer panel that allows editors to search and browse Media Library assets, preview proxies and seamlessly bring media directly into their projects.

Building on this is VALET, which extends storage seamlessly into the cloud, which allows teams to offload inactive projects while keeping them instantly accessible with BLINK delivering enterprise-grade BeeGFS (Bee Global File System) performance across Windows and macOS for high-throughput environments.

See Elements at 2026 NAB Show booth N1717.

More information is available on the company’s website.

MONTREAL—New Delhi Television Ltd. (NDTV), one of India’s leading news and digital journalism companies, has selected Grass Valley to modernize its media asset management systems and to provide technologies that will enhance collaboration across its global teams.

As part of that effort, NDTV implemented Grass Valley’s Framelight X solution, which is powered by Grass Valley’s AMPP OS platform, to consolidate media assets, preserve metadata, and provide a unified, browser-accessible platform for managing and distributing content. Recently implemented, the deployment is designed to streamline workflows and improve operational efficiency.

Founded in 1988 and headquartered in New Delhi, NDTV is a pioneer in Indian news and digital journalism. Operating under AMG Media Networks Ltd, it reaches audiences across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, Mauritius and SAARC countries.

Grass Valley reported that the migration project involves transferring high-resolution media from NDTV’s existing GV Stratus system to the Framelight X storage pool, with Stratus Rules managing the migration process. Associated metadata is safely transferred alongside the content to ensure immediate accessibility in Framelight X, while automated workflows generate new proxy files, simplifying access and enabling faster collaboration. By consolidating assets into a single intuitive platform, NDTV gains a more efficient and flexible system that empowers teams to collaborate seamlessly across multiple regions.

“Our priority was to modernize our content management system while ensuring that none of our existing assets or metadata were lost in the process,” explained Dinesh Singh, chief technology officer at NDTV. “Framelight X has given us exactly what we needed: a seamless migration path, powerful asset management, and the confidence that our teams can collaborate more efficiently across platforms. This has been a 100% successful deployment.”

Evan Boyd, senior vice president for APAC at Grass Valley, added that “NDTV has been a trusted partner for many years, and we are proud to continue supporting their transformation journey. With Framelight X, NDTV is not only modernizing its content workflows but also future-proofing its operations to scale with evolving digital demands. This project demonstrates the strength of Grass Valley’s AMPP in delivering efficient, flexible, and collaborative solutions for media organizations worldwide.”

Grass Valley will be exhibiting at Broadcast India in Mumbai between Oct. 14-16 on stand D04.

BERGEN, Norway—Vizrt has unveiled Viz One 8, the company’s largest update to its enterprise Media Asset Management (MAM) system in more than 10 years. The update is built on a containerized backend.

The containerization makes Viz One a collection of small containers, rather than one large system. Each is responsible for specific services and can function, scale, self-heal and be updated independently, the company said.

This containerization makes the platform more flexible, scalable, resilient and upgradable while reducing operational costs and improving ingest, editing and distribution performance, it said,

This architecture provides more IT choice and flexibility by making it easier to deploy in an on-premises, cloud or hybrid technology stack. It simplifies integration across different technology environments and makes MAM workflows more adaptable to varying operational needs, it said.

Typically, MAM system upgrade is complex. It often sidelines broadcasters from the benefits of new features and innovations. Viz One 8’s container-based backend makes future upgrades easy, thereby enabling broadcasters and other content owners to stay current and competitive, it said.

Whether deploying the tools of the future for HDR, AI workflow integrations or new global content standards, Viz One 8 can adapt effortlessly without disrupting daily operations, it said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

BOSTON, Mass.—AI-powered MAM software specialist Axle AI will showcase its newly launched Searchr, a system that integrates its media search and management software with fast, high-capacity network storage in a portable 5-pound unit, at IBC 2024, Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

Searchr raises the bar in terms of media searchability and performance for small teams, even at remote locations, the company said.

A growing trend is for smaller teams to do quicker editing work close to the source of video ingest. Searchr allows these teams to capture, store, search, edit and repurpose large amounts of high-resolution video files. Searchr’s integrated AI-powered cloud transcription and local search capabilities help video teams quickly locate and repurpose their best media, the company said.

Priced at $4,995 for a 5 Terabyte configuration, $5,995 for 10 TB and $6,995 for 20 TB, Searchr combines several advanced software and hardware technologies in a small package that fits in a backpack. Its dimensions–8.5-inches x 8-inches by 2.5-inches—lends itself to field deployment and do-it-yourself networking. Additional terabytes of disk and NVMe-based storage can be attached to Searchr via hardware expansion units, the company said.

Until now, systems with state-of-the-art media management and AI transcription were only available with expensive cloud subscriptions or in the case of on-premise systems, large server farms. Axle AI’s Searchr takes these capabilities to field capture and editing teams generating large amounts of content in areas like sports video, corporate video, YouTube channels, churches, governments and universities.

Axle AI’s included MAM media cataloging software, already deployed at over 1,000 sites worldwide, powers Searchr. Based on Axle AI’s modular platform architecture, the software can scan one or more volumes or folder structures (known as catalogs) on Searchr, the company said.

The MAM software offers:

• A simple browser interface for searching, browsing and playing media
• Drag-and-drop integrations with Premiere Pro, Resolve, Final Cut and Avid
• Elastic search for Google-style search capabilities across media files
• Automatic proxy generation for all files saved to Searchr
• Highly flexible user permissions that can be specified across one or more catalogs 
• 1,000 hours of bundled Axle Speech cloud transcription
• Integrated user interface for editing transcripts and annotating sub-clips
• Custom metadata fields definable on a per-catalog basis
• Two named user access, upgradeable to additional users
• Local network access and remote access options, including reverse proxy and VPN.

 Searchr also supports a range of add-on functionality from Axle AI and its third-party partners. These include: 

• Axle AI Connectr workflow automation
• Axle Tags on-premise AI processing, including semantic search, scene understanding and face, object and logo recognition
• Axledit collaborative browser-based editing and archiving interfaces to many leading cloud and LTO storage providers.

Direct video capture can also be supported via Softron, ToolsOnAir and other workstation ingest providers, and the system supports ingest from SSD drives captured on Atomos Ninja and Shogun devices.

Searchr includes innovative QNAP TBS-574X-i5 hardware, supporting:

• Collaboration workflows using standard protocols
• 13th-generation Intel i5 CPU with 12 cores and 16 Gigabytes of RAM
• 10GigE and 2.5GigE Ethernet ports for fast network connectivity
• Dual ultrafast Thunderbolt 4 interfaces, allowing direct concurrent client connections from 2 editing workstations
• Built-in RAID controller to ensure fault-tolerant storage  
• QNAP NAS operating 
• Full Mac, Windows and Linux client connectivity with support for any editing software
• USB-C 4.0. 

See Axle AI at IBC 2024 Stand 7.D12.

More information is available on the company’s website.

CYPRESS, Calif.—FOR-A and automation provider Aveco have entered a strategic alliance to provide and develop best-in-breed video production, automation, and asset management within one easy-to-use and cost effective solution.

As part of the agreement, FOR-A HVS Series production switchers, Insight video servers and ClassX graphics systems are now tightly integrated with Aveco ASTRA Studio production automation and GEMINI media management systems. 

The package is designed for broadcasters—particularly mid-sized, small-market and public stations—by providing them with an affordable, easy to use solution.

“We’ve been recommending FOR-A HVS Series switchers all over the world for years now,” said Jim O’Brien, president of Aveco. “They’ve got incredible horsepower and performance at a price point no other vendor can match. We’re looking forward to adding ClassX graphics and Insight servers into our combined solution. FOR-A’s high-powered production capability and reputation for reliability together with our production and MAM makes for a very competitive and inclusive bundle for smaller and mid-market TV stations. Having this level of technical sophistication within an affordable and easy-to-use system is a game changer."

Aveco’s ASTRA Studio is a fully automated studio production system and the industry’s only multi-studio production automation design. Within ASTRA, a rundown can be moved from one studio to another with the push of a button. This includes all settings for the production switcher, graphics, virtual set/physical set, monitor walls, camera robotics, video roll-ins, audio, lighting etc. ASTRA Studio is integrated with ASTRA MCR so both PCR and MCR automation are in the same system, eliminating "blips of black" or upcuts between these two parts of broadcast operation. Both also work closely with Aveco’s GEMINI MAM, a browser-based system that manages assets from acquisition through post for live production, playout, and archiving. ASTRA Studio also integrates with the NRCS (Newsroom Computer System) via MOS (Media Object Servers) and plug-ins to streamline news production workflows, the companies said. 

“The versatility and feature set of Aveco’s system are ideal for late-breaking news applications,” said Satoshi Kanemura, President, FOR-A Americas. “They’ve thought of every condition that may occur during a live newscast and included a solution. It’s an elegant technology that fits perfectly within our ecosystem. The combined capabilities of Aveco and FOR-A are unbeatable. Competitive products are far less customizable, much more complicated, and expensive.”

FOR-A’s workhorse switcher, the compact 2 M/E HVS-490, supports 40 inputs/18 outputs, 36 inputs/20 outputs or 32 inputs/22 outputs, including two-channel HDMI outputs with optional I/O expansion cards. In 4K, it allows 10 inputs/six outputs, nine inputs/six outputs or eight inputs/seven outputs. It also has 8 channels of 2.5 DVE as standard and can be optionally expanded to a maximum of 16 channels. FOR-A’s MELite technology extends the switcher’s 2 M/Es to 6 M/E performance. MELite is the building block for more easy-to-use features of the HVS-490, such as upstream and downstream transition effects. 

“The price to performance ratio with the entire HVS Series is unlike any others in the market,” added O’Brien.

We are at the dawn of the "composable enterprise” age, an era that will see business teams leverage existing digital capabilities to create new products and services without starting from scratch every time. A composable approach increases agility in digital transformation, relieves pressure on the IT team and frees up time for innovation.

Composability incorporates the basic principle of modularity; systems should be built from cohesive and loosely coupled components (modules). This means that a system will consist of different components with well-defined functionality which are interrelated and work together efficiently.

Media business composability is the mindset, technologies and set of operational capabilities that enable Media & Entertainment (M&E) organizations to innovate and adapt quickly to changing business needs. It’s based on applying modularity to M&E businesses to achieve the scale and pace required by business ambition. According to Gartner*, the idea of composable digital business operates on four basic principles: 

• More speed through discovery: Ability to discover and understand design opportunities to guide, track and secure change
• Greater agility through modularity: Partitioning a domain into managed components to scale and control change
• Better leadership through orchestration: Prescribing and negotiating interactions between components to enable recompositing and forming processes
• Resilience through autonomy: Minimizing dependence of components from each other to maintain integrity of change

Agility and flexibility are quickly becoming the two pillars of digital transformation success, allowing modular business capabilities to be assembled and combined. Packaged Business Capabilities (PBC) are software and service components that represent a well-defined business capability, functionally recognizable as such by a business user and reusable in the design of custom assembled products, applications, and services. 

Today's user interface technology, coupled with the composability of PBCs, enhances the application experience through simple plug-and-play actions. It is the codeless (NoCode) approach to software development, allowing applications to be created without any prior knowledge of traditional programming languages. Citizen developers, or less experienced programmers, can build applications by assembling PBCs and using graphical workflow designers.

If we can quickly create business-ready applications and solutions, then we can design and adapt new media services on demand. Media services can be simply defined as modular units which concentrate on a single business functionality. Modular media services can be easily reused in various contexts and can also be composed to satisfy new requirements. On the other hand, modularity in media services prevents the propagation of changes to other services and thus simplifies maintenance of service-oriented systems. 

The Future of MAMs
Composable digital business means creating an organization made from interchangeable building blocks. To guarantee M&E business continuity, it is necessary to have a strategy to integrate legacy media systems, such as CMS, DAM and MAM. 

The question immediately arises: Can a monolithic application be a PBC? The answer is YES, if the application offers an API organized into blocks of functionality. Each block would correspond to a different PBC, easily identifiable by a business user. It must be understood that this is a temporary solution to facilitate the digital transition to a composable architecture of the organization.

Legacy MAMs offer a level of automation restricted to the set of third-party systems that have been integrated point-to-point over the years. Today, many more functions are required and there are a multitude of media applications, as well as other IT products, to process complex workloads and create new media services, both in the cloud and on premises. In addition, the MAM vendor is responsible for keeping the 3rd party integrations updated to the latest versions in its orchestrator. The reality is that classic MAM orchestrators have become insufficient and can potentially hold back the digital transformation of M&E organizations. CMS and DAM systems are in a similar situation.

If we decouple the orchestration, automation and workflow design services from the MAM, moving them to an application and media systems integration platform, then we will achieve a more open and agile architecture for the M&E organization’s digital ecosystem. Moreover, product vendors (applications, media systems) are responsible for integrating with the platform and keeping it updated so that customers can choose them. The MAM is freed from the integrations and workflow design, which it delegates to the platform, and will be integrated as another application. 

In this scenario, the new generation of MAMs will be focused on organization, documentation, review, collaboration, order generation and asset access traceability. It’s expected that the new generation of MAMs will be based on microservices, focused on asset management and integrated with the media integration platform, which guarantees interoperability and compatibility with the rest of the applications and systems of the M&E organization.

Agile Media Service Platform
Process automation has always been a key pillar of digital transformation initiatives, automating, orchestrating, and monitoring end-to-end business processes to create an efficient and scalable solution, however this remains a challenge for businesses. Many M&E organizations are adopting tactical automation strategies that focus on automating specific tasks aimed at solving specific problems:

• Business-driven automation: Automation efforts within companies are increasingly business-oriented rather than IT-oriented.
• Composability: Process automation based on reusable PBCs.

M&E organizations demand flexibility and agility to create new services by adding and/or replacing applications and systems from multiple vendors. Service modularity is thus a key concept for a service-oriented perspective of the enterprise. The future of flexibly designed media services lies in an agile media service platform, easily reconfigurable by self-sufficient customers, simplifying the addition of new capabilities and using reusable components:

• Identify automation opportunities
• Intuitively map/model business processes using PBCs
• Rapidly implement service-specific automated workflows

Users want seamless, effortless integrations and developers want to spend less time on repetitive software programming tasks and integration maintenance. The days of the traditional, complex monolithic content management systems, which generate huge dependence on software vendors to provide the agility required to integrate new applications within the digital ecosystem, are over.

The natural alternative to legacy systems is an application and system integration platform that provides the flexibility and elasticity necessary for the creation of new services in an agile and efficient manner. Using PBCs, which abstract the complexity of all the underlying technology, the customer can choose the components and systems they need to integrate to create their network media service supply chain.

Democratizing innovation really means unlocking the basic tools and creating PBCs for people who are going to innovate on their own. In fact, a composable architecture built with PBCs makes it easy for business users to participate in the design and implementation of new features and services.

Innovation is inhibited not by legacy systems but by a legacy mindset. Ensuring the future competitiveness of the M&E industry will require it to be more efficient, predictable, sustainable and resilient. This implies a change in mindset to overcome existing industry legacy systems and silo-thinking. Improved collaboration and innovation are crucial to achieving this.

Service orchestration and automation platforms are key to delivering customer-centric agility and the rapid move toward a composable media business. To accelerate digital transformation, improve customer experience, create new services, automate processes and optimize costs, we propose an agile and composable media service platform, which will pave the way toward future-proof and continuous innovation.

LONDON—As the cloud is increasingly applied to media production, the lines between ground-based and cloud-based media environments are becoming blurred. The asset management system provides the glue between them but perspectives on the best way to use it are changing. 

“Even if you think you know what cloud storage might cost, be sure you’re updated on all the recent facts, variables and combinations of services before making a move in either direction,” advises Karl Paulsen, CTO of Diversified. “Like SAN storage, cloud is an evolving and frequently changing environment.”  

We asked experts at a number of vendors to offer guidance toward the migration of assets, the cost of storage and MAM’s crucial role in orchestrating this. All agree that no matter the long-term advantages of cloud production a “big bang” move is unlikely to pay dividends. 

BIG BANG OR PIECEMEAL APPROACH

“Anyone involved in technology migration projects will probably tell you that it’s much easier building systems from scratch than migrating existing workflows to new systems piecemeal,” says Raul Alba, Avid’s director of solutions marketing. “But the reality is different. From our deployment experience, we’ve found a ‘tabula rasa’ approach [i.e. starting from scratch]  isn’t always right because a return needs to be made on past investments, or because entirely-new workflows will cause too much operational disruption. This means hybrid workflows will be important for several years, allowing every company to transition to the cloud at their own pace.” 

A hybrid scenario implies that the media lives, and is processed, both on-prem and in the cloud. In some situations, hybrid operations will be required regardless as it may be more cost effective to work on-prem before moving assets to the cloud. 

“Migration could begin with archive or short-form digital workflows, then move onto complex workloads once the organization understands the new ‘physics’ of working in the cloud,” says Lincoln Spiteri, vice president of engineering, Dalet Flex. “Users should be aware of both the advantages and limitations that come with working on the cloud. Lessons learnt should be used to optimize workflow.” 

Simon Eldridge, chief product officer for SDVI  similarly recommends taking a specific use case and getting that up and running before starting a process of iterating and optimizing.  “Don’t try to do everything at once—iteration leads to transformation,” he says. “The value of that quick win, coupled with the experience the team will gain from that initial migration will accelerate the process of implementation for the next use case, which will be logically selected based on its returned value and business impact.” 

Tedial believes the cloud has had a major impact on traditional MAM workflows and makes the case for a Media Integration Platform. CTO Julian Fernandez-Campon explains that this allows broadcasters to have the same workflows running on-prem or in the cloud, as the applications are integrated and multiple storage locations will be transparent to the platform. 

“A hybrid cloud deployment using a media integration platform provides a low-risk transition by moving operations in-line with business needs allowing them to pivot between local and remote operation depending on requirements,” he said.

COST CONSIDERATIONS

The cost of cloud can be a minefield. Among other things, costs vary based on where the physical data centers are geographically located. “It’s a bit like going to the smorgasbord,” says Paulsen. “Many items are à la carte.” 

Fees include monthly access, retention time, storage volume and/or the use of inherent capabilities of the store itself.  There are hidden costs for deletion of content. 

Paulsen says, “Use it once and quickly—a short term ‘put it there and take it back out’—and you’ll have one price. Leave it there for a lengthy period of time—another price. Need rapid access to an archive? You can watch previously expected low-budget costs to take off like SpaceX launching multiple satellites one at a time.” 

It stands to reason that media and entertainment companies  need to have a good understanding of the assets they ingest and how these will be used. This information drives decisions about how to optimize storage in terms of hot, cold, and archive storage tiers, which directly impacts costs.  

“MAM platforms should fully support cloud storage to balance out storage costs and timely media access,” says Spiteri. “For example, low-bitrate proxies enable low-cost access to archives. Source assets should be pushed to archive storage as soon as possible while lower bitrate mezzanine formats are a good option for editing.” 

Geoff Tognetti, senior vice president and GM for the content management business unit at Telestream offers four questions each organization has to address to “accurately estimate” cloud storage costs: 

What percentage of your existing content footprint should be migrated (typical cloud migrations we’ve seen range from 30-75% of current LTO storage, not counting copies)? 

Understand your cloud provider’s tiering policies and how those relate to your lifecycle rules on premise. 

What media format do you want to use for the assets that you store in the cloud, i.e. your production format, a separate mezzanine format, proxies, etc.? 

Estimate the impact on your current production workflows (number of drives/data movers dedicated to migration, off-hour scheduling, etc.) 

THE ESSENCE OF METADATA

Metadata is absolutely crucial, regardless of whether located in the cloud or on-premises. “Metadata is what drives the life of an asset from original bits and pieces to delivery of a final product, control workflows, targeting the right audience,” says Pavel Potuzak, CEO of Aveco.  

Having media stored anywhere is pointless if you can’t find it quickly when you need it.  

“If you can easily find and retrieve only what you need, you’re saving both time and money,” says Alba. “Having an adjustable data model, with time-based metadata and a sophisticated search interface is key to making media management systems efficient.” 

But creating metadata takes a lot of effort. “Here the AI-driven media analysis services of global cloud providers really excel,” Potuzak adds. “The quality of such metadata is amazing, yet behind the silicon-based intelligence there needs to be the carbon-based one to QC and/or correct the results.” 

In addition to object or technical metadata that is mostly considered in a cloud storage environment, you also have to consider other descriptive metadata such as transcripts, and visual logs.  

“Cloud access makes it easier to generate and preserve this data, and the ability to relate it with media files can save a lot of time in post,” informs Russell Vijayan, business manager for Digital Nirvana. “While such metadata is enhancing process speed, reducing time to market, and improving overall efficiency, there’s still no considerable data available to determine whether the current price points of storage could be justified. For the most part, high-volume users with a clear cognitive metadata plan and usage would stand to benefit.” 

“Strong” metadata gives organizations the ability to “track and understand the value of assets, drive asset lifecycle to help manage cost and ensure that correct assets are located and moved through production workflows,” according to Spiteri. 

Generally speaking, the more metadata that can be added automatically the better. The most important point, says Fernandez-Campon is the concept of “Metadata Aggregation” from multiple sources. “This provides a standardized metadata model to combine multiple metadata sources and provide business value.” 

Eldridge asserts that as soon as you move to the cloud, the data universe of “what can be automatically generated and collected by the system just explodes.” 

Contextual, time-based metadata is generated by QC or ML tools that have analyzed the content, he says. That metadata can assist operators looking to segment or make compliance decisions. Time, cost, and performance data can inform decisions around which tools you use and for what purpose.  

“Tagging data can be used to assign costs at a granular level based on process, asset, project, or network,” Eldridge said. “Rather than being considered as a sidecar to the content, metadata becomes a critical driver of your supply chains and an output that helps you further optimize.” 

THE EVOLUTION OF MAM

Eldridge is specifically referring to a “cloud-native supply chain model” which is the natural evolution of MAM, according to SDVI. It argues that traditional MAMs were built around fixed capacity infrastructure and heavily customized around use cases—therefore unfit for the agility required of cloud production.  

“Today’s media enterprises don’t want to worry about capacity planning or constraints, and they want to pay only for the services they consume,” he says. “Perhaps most importantly, they need to be able to predict cost easily in order to support good decision making. They need to allocate those costs accurately to fully understand the profitability of the products they make.” 

Dalet’s Spiteri, agrees; “MAM systems are morphing to media supply chain management systems, where a wide range of media types are managed with a wide range of automated workflows. Once these systems sit in the cloud, they become collaboration platforms, expanding their utility.” 

He adds, “Modern MAM systems cannot always fulfil every use-case and this is where it’s important that they offer integration tools and open APIs to create a truly business-driven ecosystem.” 

Avid’s Alba acknowledges that the term "MAM" can be associated with “complex, expensive and hard to maintain systems” but says that’s not the case in practice. “In fact, our users tell us these solutions are more important than ever both because of the amount of media and metadata being managed, and the number of outlets to which it needs to be delivered. MAM is an essential part of making media production workflows efficient.” 

Potuzak believes MAM is a well-established term with boundaries blurred enough already. “After all the PAM, DAM and others I would rather hesitate to introduce cloud (CAM),” he says. “MAM shall continue doing what it does now—manage metadata, media and workflows of all kinds. It shall do it across premises and cloud and extend to all delivery channels, not only linear and VOD. It enables people to work anywhere, anytime and on any client platform.”  

A further point worthy of consideration is that cloud relegates the once painful, time-consuming, and labor-intensive process of media migration to history. That’s a misconception, asserts Tognetti. “Just as moving from one LTO version to another was inevitable, so is moving from one cloud vendor to another. Cloud storage providers have no incentive to facilitate any migration outside of their products.” 

The solution for this, he says, is to look for agnostic content management that provides tools “to automate the migration process for all vendors” through cost-effective, and non-disruptive workflows while serving the lifespan of content. 

M&E organizations need a scalable and elastic platform that allows them to rapidly build, deploy and iterate on its supply chains as business needs evolve. Call it a MAM if you like but asset management has never been more important. 

PRAGUE— Aveco has debuted its new Gemini Media Asset Management (MAM) solution for cloud, hybrid-cloud and on-premises use. 

“The introduction of the Gemini MAM brings powerful tools that are easy to use, so people can concentrate on the task at hand, anywhere in the world and on any browser,” said Pavel Potuzak, CEO of Aveco. 

GeminiI manages media and AI-enriched metadata, plus timeline annotations describing any frame or segment of an asset, utilizing speech-to-text transcription, subtitles, or markers (e.g., soccer goals) utilizing secure HTML5, the company said. 

Assets are under control across all types of storage — in the cloud, NAS and SAN, video servers, as well as LTO and non-spinning disk archives.  

The architecture of Gemini scales from thousands to millions of media assets, from tens to hundreds of users, from out-of-the-box workflows to the most complex operations involving third-party media appliances. 

An integrated frame-accurate proxy video editor works together with popular NLEs and online rendering services to optimize news and production workflows. In addition, Gemini provides users with more creative power to assemble news stories and packages, without having to deal with separate and more complex systems, the company explained. 

For redundancy, Gemini MAM server components use a multi-node architecture. This means that if a node goes down, the remaining nodes continue to provide all services without interruption. Additionally, performance can be easily scaled up by simply adding more nodes.

More information on Gemini is available at gemini.aveco.com. 

AKRON, Ohio—AI-driven automation and media asset management are key components of today’s state-of-the-art broadcast facility. At TCT, we achieve this with Aveco and TVU.

TCT, a religious television network primarily covering the midwest, operates 53 channels of master control automation on 24 call letter stations in SDI and transport stream splicing, all centrally managed. We produce 12.5 hours of new studio programming per week, plus we’re digitizing our 43-year tape library, 70,000 hours, which includes many famous interviews and TV shows. We’re building a unique online portal featuring this vast amount of content. The automation of these processes into one integrated system has transformed our operation.

A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT

To use content, first you have to find it. TVU’s MediaMind AI does transcription, facial-and-object recognition, on-air captioning and compliance reporting. This is integrated with Aveco’s Media Asset Management, Master Control and Production Automation, making all content easily searchable, automatically, with a rich set of workow innovations.

We have been researching AI, MAM and latest-generation automation for the past ve years and our selection of Aveco and TVU reflects exceptional due-diligence from our team and from our main consultant, Jim Ocon, the well-known ex-CTO of Gray Television and a recognized pioneer on several key areas of broadcast technology.

To make this huge step, the engineering design teams at Aveco and TVU provided extensive guidance, especially Jim O’Brien, president of Aveco, and Paul Shen, CEO of TVU. The vendor teams along with TCT’s engineers, especially Royce Erikson on our staff, have together achieved a system that could’ve only been dreamed about a short time ago.

A highly automated MAM, master control and production process allows individuals to focus on their contributions to TCT, knowing each part is integrated into a full system. The automation and MAM screens are configured to reflect the level of experience and responsibility of each user group. To nd and use content is profoundly faster; the efficiency and bottom-line management benefits are enormous.

SIMPLIFYING THE PROCESS

It’s not just the overarching impacts, but often the details that make a big difference. For example, one master control automation screen run from home or at the TCT facility easily shows all details of every location, whether it’s SDI or stream-splicing (the same Aveco user interface also extends to cloud resources.)

FCC compliance logging and reporting used to take up most of one person’s time across all stations; with the automated system, it’s a few minutes. Finding out what was said in famous interviews of the past used to take real-time viewing and typing—now it’s fully transcribed and fully searchable in minutes.

Producers wanting to use a clip from an interview earlier in their live show used to require a staff member to quickly type notes; now the transcript is there while the production is underway.

For those producing and editing TV shows, finding content is the most time-consuming task; now media can be located instantly, the quality of productions skyrocket and the required production time plummets. That’s a good combination.

TCT has a long reputation for excellence in broadcasting. For decades, the company has innovated and, in the process, has developed into one of the strongest and healthiest broadcast groups, with particularly rapid growth in recent years. We’re poised for more.

Having an automation and MAM platform like what we’ve developed with Aveco and TVU makes expansion dramatically easier and all aspects of the company more scalable.

We’re proud of what we’ve achieved, the growth path is clear for many years to come and matching the accelerating pace of consumer consumption, in broadcast on-air as well as online, gives TCT great ways to continue growing.

Bruce Hart is the vice president of engineering and operations at TCT Network. He can be contacted at brh1@tct.tv.

For more information, visit www.aveco.com.

PARIS—Dalet has unveiled the Dalet StoreFront, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) portal that allows the company’s customers to create a marketplace for their B2B clients, partners and affiliates, the company said today.

With the Dalet StoreFront, multiple users can access content stored on a Dalet MAM using advanced search tools. Search results are filtered to show only relevant material to a qualified client.

At the heart of the Dalet StoreFront is the Dalet MAM orchestration engine, which enables content preparation and delivery. The new storefront makes the shopping experience easy and maximizes exposure to inventory, boosts the likelihood content will be repurposed and enhances retail opportunities, said Dalet.

Nearly all Dalet customers, ranging from news networks that share assets across affiliates to sports leagues servicing licensees will benefit from the Dalet StoreFront, the company said.

“As audiences grow at a global scale, so does the need for more content. Maximizing exposure and facilitating discoverability of our customers’ new or untapped materials is more important than ever before,” said Luc Comeau, market director for MAM and Supply Chain at Dalet.

“However, with this opportunity for increased content ROI comes additional supply chain complexities. Dalet StoreFront enables clients to tap into a rich Dalet MAM inventory with greater efficiency and speed, resurfacing and monetizing otherwise dormant archives, all within the familiar shopping experience that today’s digital shoppers come to expect,” said Comeau.

Taking advantage of the familiar online shopping model and leveraging intuitive browsing to discover content, the Dalet StoreFront makes shopping easily actionable, the company said. It eliminates the back-and-forth exchanges necessary when email is used.

“Requests for content via email and disparate file delivery services are manually intensive and leave far too many opportunities to repurpose and resell content on the table,” said Comeau. “Dalet StoreFront identifies the shopper and presents all of the relevant content options they can choose from, ensuring maximum catalog exposure while keeping content rights intact.”

The Dalet StoreFront makes it easy to license content, the company said. Content owners identify and tag content rights for their licensees and establish rights for visitors and potential licensees.

Dalet StoreFront secures content inventory by keeping all source content under the control and management of Dalet MAM. Only after an order has passed through all checks, automated by Dalet Orchestration, can fulfillment happen, thus creating a segregated browse/shopping experience from the source catalog.

More information is available on the Dalet website. 

2019 was truly action-packed for the Media & Entertainment (M&E) industry. The wheels of consolidation gained major momentum with several megamergers taking place—from Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox to NBCUniversal and Sky merging key operations. The VoD space got a lot more crowded, with giants like Apple, Disney and others making their foray.

With all these changes shaking the industry landscape, content creators are increasingly looking to re-engineer their media supply chains for greater agility, flexibility, operational efficiencies and cost benefits. From small-time studios to international broadcasters, everyone is rethinking their technology choices and weighing their options. Here are the top five tech trends we predict will have a major impact in 2020:

1. Multicloud solutions will redefine the Media Asset Management (MAM) landscape

The need for speed and scalability along with ongoing improvements in cloud security will drive content creators to embrace MAM solutions based on multicloud architecture. These empower users with the flexibility to leverage elastic, best-of-breed public cloud infrastructure or tap into on-premise infrastructure as required. Users will be able to extend and virtualize their supply chain without having to make additional investments in MAM installation for each site. This flexibility will not only help save costs, but will also drive operational efficiencies.

2. Increasing demand for a connected media supply chain

As cost and time pressures continue to weigh down content creators, fragmented supply chains will give way to connected supply chains. The focus will be on automation, and in many cases the transition to using one, single software across the enterprise rather than multiple standalone solutions. This will make asset management far more efficient and cost effective, especially for media enterprises with an extensive global footprint. Centralization will enable them to enjoy 360-degree visibility and economies of scale by consolidating business processes. At the same time, it will provide flexibility to speedily identify, onboard and monitor best-fit global talent for managing rush volumes and time-to-market pressures.

3. AI to take the center stage of media supply chains

Artificial intelligence (AI) will increasingly become a key enabler, powering intelligent, next-generation media supply chains. AI solutions will be instrumental in speeding up content operations and reducing workloads for human operators. Media enterprises will focus on how such solutions can help solve strategic media use cases and how they can be consumed efficiently given the challenges and costs of deploying AI solutions at scale. There will be focused usage of AI solutions with microservice architecture and an increase in demand for metadata that is contextual, accurate and actionable. We believe 2020 will see AI being applied to key areas in the content value chain, including content generation, content enrichment, content preparation and content delivery. In addition, more media enterprises will consume AI as part of their MAM ecosystem, in areas such as metadata enrichment, search & discovery, localization, remastering, sports highlights, trailer creation, playout monitoring and OTT distribution.

4. VoD explosion to drive adoption of automation-led technology

The VoD universe will continue to experience cut-throat competition, as new, big-ticket entrants with massive content libraries will challenge the existing players. At the same, purchasing power limitations may lead to “streaming subscription fatigue” setting in. While the speed at which consumers demand new content will increase, the willingness to pay will limit the market, where only the best will succeed. These forces will compel content creators to focus on enhancing operational efficiencies like never before. In a bid to tap new global markets and achieve faster time-to-market, content creators will search for new avenues of automation. Business processes such as localization, compliance versioning and digital distribution will be prime candidates for automation.

5. Standards-driven approach towards metadata management

Taking cues from the manufacturing sector, media enterprises will adopt a more organized approach to managing metadata. Metadata created at different stages in the supply chain—such as production, Quality Check (QC) and cataloguing—will be captured and carried forward to avoid wasted effort and to drive efficient execution of downstream operations. Content creators will explore new ways to capture and hold the highest quality of content metadata by adopting standardized data models such as Entertainment Industry Registry (EIDR). They will also introduce best practices around data interchange and electronic metadata exchange across the content supply chain.

All in all, with a burgeoning number of content hours to be managed, 2020 will see content creators turning towards innovative, holistic supply chain management solutions to enhance efficiencies and lower costs on the back of automation, data analytics and centralization.

Chandar Muthukrishnan is senior vice president, client solutions for Prime Focus Technologies.

In an ever increasing market, broadcasters, content owners and distributors need to find effective ways to increase viewer choices through more content, new services and expanding to new markets. TV Technology is offering a one-hour webinar on these types of strategies, “How to Implement an Intelligent Content Media Platform,” with the following speakers:

Bea Alonso, director of product marketing, Dalet

Luc Comeau, director of market strategy & portfolio - MAM, Dalet

The webinar examines how MAM technology can be leveraged to manage content production and distribution workflows to meet today’s new distribution demand while reducing labor costs and maximizing return on investment.

You can now watch the webinar on-demand.

NEW YORK—Dalet has struck a deal with what it says is a prominent North American broadcaster to use its Dalet Galaxy five system to build a next-generation, borderless multiplatform newsroom serving the broadcasters 24-hour news service.

Using advanced cloud and AI technologies, all of the broadcaster’s production and distribution operations will be moved to the Dalet Galaxy five platform, a unified Media Asset Management, workflow orchestration and editorial environment.

The Dalet Galaxy five is based on a video over IP infrastructure that uses the SMPTE ST 2110 standard and that uses the cloud to help news networks scale remote bureaus, field resources and workflows. It has integrated cognitive services that can accelerate the metadata enrichment of content archives. There is also a hybrid architecture with AWS that provides native disaster recovery capability b offloading on-premise capacity to the cloud when needed.

Specifically for the partnership with this broadcaster, the Dalet Galaxy five will underpin the multiplatform production and delivery workflow, integrating broadcast system and supporting field and bureau workflows with an updated remote editing user experience, per Dalet. The platform will also facilitate metadata-driven operations that automate complex media processes, distribute tasks and streamline workflows.

“Dalet Galaxy five is able to facilitate standard news, long-form programming and digital workflows simultaneously,” said Frederic Roux, vice president of sales, Americas, Dalet. “The transition to the platform brings immense efficiency to the operation with limitless options to implement future workflows and iterate quickly with new, digital-first initiatives.”

More information is available on Dalet’s website.

Media Asset Management (MAM) systems must undergo a fundamental transformation from simply a repository for audio, video, graphics, animations and associated metadata to an intelligent content factory that enables Media & Entertainment companies to streamline content production and distribution, says Bea Alonso, director, product marketing at Dalet.

“Content owners and distributors face a daunting challenge as their media supply chain is under strain to keep pace with their desire to exploit new markets and distribute content quickly and efficiently,” says Alonso.

Alonso, along with Luc Comeau, market director, MAM, at Dalet, will present their views during a TVTechnology webinar, Nov. 20 at Noon EDT. The hour long event, “How to implement an Intelligent Content Media Platform,” will examine how MAM technology can be leveraged to manage content production and distribution workflows to meet today’s new distribution demands while reducing labor costs and maximizing return on investment (ROI).

A major impediment holding M&E companies back from fully capitalizing on new distribution opportunities is their existing workflows, says Comeau. “Often M&E businesses find themselves with multiple departments acquiring and producing content in different formats, storage that is disconnected and geographically diverse and a lack of searchable metadata. Further, their content import workflows are disjointed, downstream distribution workflows are paltry or non-existent and there is limited visibility into content consumption and distribution.”

MAM technology holds the key to solving these issues by transforming existing workflows into an intelligent content factory tuned to choreograph the distribution of content to multiple platforms—one that leverages component-based workflows to maximize efficiency and ROI for M&E businesses, whether they are distributing their content to other businesses or directly to consumers, says Comeau.

The webinar, moderated by TVTechnology Editor-in-Chief Tom Butts, will also examine the questions of whether there is a business case to be made for investing in multi-platform distribution automation as well as where the ROI is in multiplatform distribution. There also will be the chance for those attending the webinar to have their questions answered.

Registration is currently open for the webinar. Simply click on the link and register.

Stand A41-7, NATEXPO, Russia, 5-7 November 2019: Cinegy, the global leader for broadcast playout software on premise, hybrid and in the cloud, will demonstrate its award-winning Cinegy Air PRO, Cinegy Capture PRO , Cinegy Multiviewer, as well as Cinegy Desktop and Cinegy Newsroom on the Bavarian Pavilion at NATEXPO in November.

Cinegy products can process mixed SD, HD, 4K/UHD and 8K formats - as well as handle HDR - for capture, playout, monitoring, news, editing, or MAM. All technology being shown at NATEXPO is available immediately.

In addition, Cinegy has now optimised its entire product line to be 8K-ready and deployed in the cloud. One of the early adopters of the open source SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) protocol, Cinegy has SRT baked into all technology, including the license, which removes any concerns about whether users have the legal right, proper subscription, or adequate bandwidth to deploy the software.

“We are proud of our reputation in this region and always value NATEXPO as a good opportunity to meet with existing, as well as new customers”, explained Tanya Zolotuskaya, Sales Manager, Cinegy GmbH. She added “This is an exciting time for our technology which matches the ambition of broadcasters in the region”.

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About Cinegy
Cinegy develops software solutions for collaborative workflow encompassing IP, capture, editing and playout services tools, integrated into an active archive for full digital asset management. Either SaaS, virtualizable stacks, cloud or on-premises, Cinegy is COTS using standard IT hardware, and non-proprietary storage technology. Cinegy products are reliable, affordable, scalable, easily deployable and intuitive. Cinegy is truly Software Defined Television. Visit www.cinegy.com for more details.

Media Contact:
Jennie Marwick-Evans
Manor Marketing
jennie@manormarketing.tv
+44 (0) 7748 636171

Remember when we were told we would stop using paper because of computers? When we’d all have flying cars? And how technology in broadcast and media was supposed to make things easier? It seems like none of these promises of the future—made in the past—have come true. Why?

I won’t dive into paper usage or flying cars (I’ll settle today for a good electric car), but media management really should be easier. So why isn’t it?

Is it that we now deal with an ever-increasing amount of media? Is it that today’s media includes a ton of metadata or not enough? Is it that we now have so many formats? The answer is a resounding “yes” to all of these questions… and others.

IT’S A MESS

The majority of today’s “modern” media environments are often inefficient and disorganized, costing you time, money and peace of mind. Assets aren’t properly organized and tracked, probably taking up space on expensive near-line storage (or even sitting in a file room somewhere) and causing delays in production.

Is your facility one where archives are spread across tape and cloud, and locating the files you need is time consuming and cost prohibitive, especially with cloud egress fees when you move the wrong file? At times, do you have so many assets coming in that you can often miss the details your teams need in order to create better content? Are workflows spread across systems that can’t communicate?

That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.

So, what should your media world look like? That’s a question worth answering.

There’s a saying when it comes to media—I don’t know who said it first, but they were right: “Your media is useless if you can’t find what you’re looking for.” And you’ve got more and more media every day.

MAM—media asset management—is supposed to make all your painful media issues disappear. But that hasn’t been the case. So, let’s design a MAM system that deals with all the pain points of handling media today, tomorrow and into the future.

POINTS TO PONDER

Here are some guidelines. You can think of it as a shopping list, or a comparison to what you have today or even a wish list.

Let’s start with the media itself. You need to be able to handle multiple resolutions (from proxy to 4K and potentially higher), as well as a multitude of file wrappers. Whether you convert to an in-house file format is a choice each facility will need to make on their own, the pros and cons are too exhaustive for this article. But what do you do with all that media? Where should it live?

While you might think that the answer depends on if your organization is in one or multiple locations, that’s really not the case. If assets are potential revenue drivers, the safest place is in the cloud, where backups exist. In that way, you can take advantage of cloud-based workflows to better unify and provide the flexibility to work from anywhere, and several other advancements that the MAM can take advantage of, like having a single place to search for everything.

Metadata should be easy to create, from simple names, dates, locations and topics all the way up to entire transcripts, where AI can play a massive role. And that leads us directly into storage that is searchable, efficient and flexible; with a variety of ways to search. If you’re looking for that one piece of footage among thousands (or millions), you need to be able to find it fast. And not everyone is great at coming up with search terms (how many times have you had to reword a Google search to find what you were looking for?). That’s a place for more AI.

Here’s an example: Let’s say that you needed to find every instance of when every senator said a specific phrase, going back to 2016. That would be an insane search, were it not for the transcript included with the metadata. Too many results; limit by party affiliation or timeframe. Not enough; expand the timeframe.

Have the ability to not only archive media—(which is only half of the equation)—but to be able to restore that media intelligently.

Make sure your MAM plays nice with your other systems and workflows. You want a clean process, not roadblocks. It may be hard to believe, but some operations still rely on sneakernet.

Have the right creative tools that seamlessly interface with your MAM so that producers, directors and editors don’t have to think about the process, they only have to think about being creative.

I’ve mentioned AI above, and it deserves an explanation. Today, while AI may seem like something we’re still waiting for (unless you’re Google or Amazon), it’s perfectly suited to work in a MAM. AI is simply any technique that enables a computer to do a rules-based task just as a human would. Add some AI machine learning and AI gets better at doing that task. Add deep learning to machine learning and speech and image recognition becomes commonplace for AI algorithms.

That’s where a MAM should be today. To paraphrase from an old 1970’s TV show: MAM should be better than it was before. Better. Stronger. Faster. But it shouldn’t cost six million dollars.

Namdev Lisman is executive vice president of Primestream.

Tedial, the leading independent MAM technology solutions specialist, will be unveiling significant new features to its cutting-edge, award-winning sports and live events solution, SMARTLIVE, on stand 8.B44 at IBC 2019. The company will also unveil upgrades to its Tedial Version Factory 2019 for the first time in Europe.

SMARTLIVE MULTI SPORT Configurations
New for IBC 2019, SMARTLIVE will feature MULTI SPORT configurations, which allow users to generate automatic highlights or auto-clipping for any genre of sport quickly and easily. Visitors will see a dramatic increase in the number of highlights that SMARTLIVE can generate automatically due to the significant expansion of sports genres. This is a key addition to the list of the solution’s fast-growing capabilities. Totally agnostic to all data feeds, Tedial’s metadata engine makes it simple to add new configurations to the system as and when required.

In addition, SMARTLIVE and Tedial’s Evolution MAM now includes a new module that allows all types of content to be published to any social network in just one click. Enabled by the system’s capability to create social publishing campaigns directly inside the MAM, content includes clips, highlights or historical media etc. This will be demonstrated on the stand throughout the show.

Tedial will also highlight its technology partnership with Speechmatics. By integrating Speechmatics’ industry-leading Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) technology with SMARTLIVE, operators can search for comments made during a sporting match or live event, automatically create file locators and import a file or drop it into a watch folder and manually generate the speech-to-text from the commentary track.

Providing operators with faster access to content, Tedial will showcase its new SMARTLIVE bundled solution that can easily be deployed on top of the customer’s existing production environment. This is key as it provides sports broadcasters with a highly efficient solution that can be up and running very quickly. As well as these new features, Tedial will highlight the financial and operational benefits of operating SMARTLIVE both on premises and in the cloud.

Esther Mesas, CSO/CMO, Tedial explains, “These latest additions enable production teams to significantly increase their efficiency and output without needing to scale up, leaving them more time for creativity, such as personalized stories that enhance the overall viewer experience. SMARTLIVE maximizes efficiency, output and profitability for broadcasters of sports and live events. It also enables overheads to be reduced by cutting costs without having to compromise on the quality of their solution. We look forward to demonstrating these new features and benefits at IBC 2019.”

Tedial Version Factory 2019
The company will also show Tedial Version Factory 2019 upgrades for the first time in Europe. Tedial Version Factory is a single efficient and cost-effective workflow that supports millions of file inputs, transforming them to delivery configurations, ready to be distributed to multiple platforms from a single operator screen. Updates include, managing ‘on-the-fly’ assembly of unique versions, including pre, post and mid-roll insertions; matching contractual distribution requirements for timely deliveries; enabling IMF-compliant low-resolution proxy edits on media and templates, so seasons of episodes can be managed with a single configuration.

Using the company’s Version Factory and HYPER IMF, its end-to-end IMF workflow now supporting 2018 SMPTE IMF standards, Tedial can easily support existing and new platforms, delivering content in the correct format with audio tracks and subtitles in the correct language, as well as any additional components required (artwork/trailers etc.).

As part of Tedial’s Evolution MAM demonstration the company will also show new features to its Evolution aSTORM content management solution, which transparently manages various tiers across departments and locations or in the cloud, for the first time in Europe. aSTORM now includes numerous cost-saving features including, optimizing transfers between sites for reduced transfer costs; and improved tape migration workflows between technologies for increased resource efficiency resulting in lower migration costs. aSTORM also now supports Oracle cloud storage.

“The industry is undergoing a major transformation,” adds Mesas. “We deliver systems that provide a combination of features to optimize operations and content management at all levels on premises or in the cloud to ensure systems work efficiently according to each customer’s changing requirements. Come and see us on stand 8.B44 and find out more.”

Spanish public broadcaster Radiotelevisión de la Región de Murcia (RTRM) is partnering with VSN, a provider of media content automation and management systems, to develop and deploy a media management and storage system for its audiovisual library. The broadcaster will use the VSNExplorer media and business process management platform to manage and migrate its content from its current system.

RTRM will also use VSNExplorer platform’s Business Intelligence module, enabling its users to access a complete auditing toolset, as well as customized analytic reports, to perform detailed performance analysis and detect inefficiencies in the company’s processes and trends. This module allows users to generate reports based on information within the system, eliminating the need to use third party systems or manually performing the task.

“We are very grateful to RTRM for awarding this project to VSN, with a technical assessment that corresponds to the efforts made by our team in order to present the offer best adapted to their needs.”, states Álvaro Montalbán, Sales Manager at VSN for the EMEA region. “We expect this project to be a great success, thanks to the close collaboration of RTRM and all the departments engaged in the project.”

BOSTON, Mass.—At NAB Show New York EditShare will showcase its EFS scale-out intelligent shared storage solutions and Flow media asset management, which is now compatible with third-party storage.

The XStream EFS storage family of products allows collaboration with creative editing/compositing and grading solutions and features native drivers for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, mitigating performance degradation compared to standard IT transactional hardware that leverages sharing protocols such as SMB or NFS.

New capabilities for XStream EFS storage solutions emphasize security and accountability. The company says the EFS XStream Auditing dashboard is the industry’s first purpose-built scale out storage solution with auditing designed for the media and entertainment market and to deter cybercriminals by providing system administrators with a digital footprint of all file interactions.

The new software-defined Flow, now available, has been re-engineered for non-EditShare storage environments such as Avid NEXIS, StorageDNA and Amazon S3. Bringing search, browse and retrieve capabilities as well as tools to assemble media to static media storage, the new software-defined MAM platform maximizes the value of customers’ existing storage infrastructure by adding an intelligent media management layer that the company says can manage millions of assets across multiple storage tiers in different locations.

EditShare will be on the show floor in booth N332.

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In today’s fast-paced media environments, more new content is being created than production teams can possibly manage without specialized tools. At the same time, the clock is ticking for digitizing historical content that exists in legacy, analog formats like tape before the original content degrades. It’s critical that all of these assets be logged and tagged so that they can be found easily, but teams have no time to do this essential work.

In addition, the current generation of media asset management tools has evolved in an environment where they have been starved of metadata. As a result, content teams’ options are limited to pulling technical metadata from media files or streams, extracting meaning from file and folder names, or manual logging.

UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL

Artificial intelligence is beginning to change how media organizations meet these challenges. A new and emerging breed of AI platforms for media analysis, when paired with leading-edge media asset management tools, offers great potential for transforming media workflows and making it easier than ever for operations to access, manage, and archive tremendous volumes of content. Through powerful tools such as speech-to-text and automatic language translation, AI engines bring new power to the MAM task of logging and tagging content—with the ability to tag assets automatically based on attributes such as people, places, things, and even sentiment.

But hold on: a few caveats

It sounds almost too good to be true: suddenly you can unlock the potential of all of your content and make it immediately searchable, reusable, and monetizable. At last, you can get some traction on those digitization projects and get a better handle on all of the content in your existing library! But wait—while the potential exists to realize these benefits someday, the truth is that the technology needs to overcome some issues in order to become mainstream.

One area that needs improvement is accuracy. While AI analysis is getting better all the time, particularly with speech-to-text offerings from players such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM, fine-tuning is still needed. For instance, the engine might not be able to distinguish between U.K. or American English, and abbreviations and jargon are likely to generate mistakes. The industry is still working on easy methods to train the AI engine to recognize these language variations and correct mistakes. Also, for image or video analysis, the sophistication of AI tools varies considerably. Some platforms offer only very basic video analysis, meaning the best way to capture metadata for people, places, objects, and sentiments is to make a set of image sequences and analyse them manually.

AI aggregators can help users avoid some of the costs and complexities of setup by making it easier to choose the right AI engine for a specific task. But even so, picking the AI tool that’s best for a given activity is not trivial. At the same time, cost structures across the industry are far from transparent, making it difficult to work out the total expense of applying AI to a media library. It’s a multi-step process: first, you have to figure out how to get your content into the AI engine—which is often in the cloud. That might involve having to create a video proxy, separate the audio files, create an image sequence, and other steps, and then uploading the content and managing its lifecycle. Should you leave the content on the vendor platform or delete it to save on storage? Is it in the right format for the AI engines to understand? Which AI tool should you run, and is there a separate cost for each style of analysis? There might be different price tiers for different content formats; for instance, 4K assets might cost more. With each vendor having its own price list, it’s pretty difficult to compare apples to apples.

Also, the technology is advancing so quickly that any AI analysis done today may have to be refreshed later, as the tools improve. Managing these refreshed data sets, especially if they have been corrected or updated by a human after the original analysis, adds another layer of complexity. And of course security is a concern, especially if the data is uploaded to cloud providers.

THE AI-MAM CONNECTION

As these powerful AI technologies continue to mature, strong media asset management capabilities will become increasingly important. On the metadata side, tools that can store, search, and easily correct a huge volume of time-based metadata are crucial. Good metadata and user interface design are vital to keep the system from overloading users with too much information. And on the workflow and automation side, feeding the AI engines with the right data and automating the analysis, while keeping down costs, will separate the true enterprise offerings from the also-rans.

So what might an AI-powered MAM solution look like? One approach is to supercharge the MAM system’s logging, tagging, and search functions through integrations with leading AI vendors and aggregators, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM. Integrations with best-of-breed AI platforms and cognitive engines could allow the MAM to leverage advanced AI-based speech recognition and video/image analysis, with the flexibility to be deployed either in the cloud or in hybrid on-premises/cloud environments.

Here are a few of the advanced capabilities that could result:

• Speech-to-text, to automatically create transcripts and time-based metadata

• Language translation

• Place analysis, including identification of buildings and locations without using GPS-tagged shots

• Object and scene detection (e.g. daytime shots or shots of specific animals)

• Sentiment analysis, for finding and retrieving all content that expresses a certain emotion or sentiment (e.g. “find me celebrations (in a sports event)”)

• Logo detection, to identify when certain brands appear in shots

• Text recognition, to enable text to be extracted from characters in video

• People recognition, for identifying people, including executives and celebrities

THE NEXT FRONTIER

Of course, these capabilities are just the start. The MAM system can also be a powerful tool to train and improve AI engines; e.g. content manually tagged in the MAM could perhaps be used to identify the executives in a corporation. The MAM could use this manual tagging to train AI engines to do a better job of logging and tagging new content.

The industry is being transformed by AI and the explosion in sometimes low-quality metadata. Only the most powerful, flexible, easy-to-integrate, secure, and scalable MAM platforms are embracing this challenge and will thrive.

In the right hands, AI becomes the key that unlocks the next generation of MAM technologies.

Dave Clack is CEO of Square Box Systems, makers of the CatDV media asset management solution.

Basingstoke, UK — June 12, 2018 - EditShare a technology leader in intelligent scale-out storage, AQC and media management solutions, announced today that the international post-production division of Red Chillies Entertainment, redchillies.vfx, has selected the EditShare EFS scale-out storage platform as the base infrastructure for all future projects including its upcoming project titled “ZERO”, starring the world-renowned actor Shah Rukh Khan. “ZERO” is a first-of-its-kind visual effects-based movie. To manage the complexities around the advanced visual effects’ scenes, redchillies.vfx will rely on EditShare Flow media asset management (MAM). Fully integrated with the EFS scale-out storage nodes, Flow provides key ingest, transcode, search and retrieve functions. Flow also provides key automation capabilities, allowing redchilies.vfx to minimize redundant tasks while automating more complicated transactions. “It is important for Red Chillies to be supported with best-of-breed solutions that can manage the challenges of our visual effects-heavy productions,” comments Keitan Yadav, COO of redchillies.vfx. “EditShare was the only vendor to demonstrate support for 66 streams within a single node. This level of performance combined with the ability to easily scale the system and manage the assets in collaboration was key in the decision to make this investment.”

redchillies.vfx was set up in 2006 by Shah Rukh Khan, Keitan Yadav & Haresh Hingorani with an aim to provide a full-fledged post-production service to the fraternity along with international VFX services. EditShare will effectively connect rechillies.vfx and NLE systems via the EFS scale-out storage platform. “EditShare supports industry-standard applications from Adobe, Autodesk, Avid, Blackmagic Design and more,” comments Peter Lambert, APAC sales director, EditShare. “For redchillies.vfx, this means centralizing assets and providing tools to collaborate on building VFX scenes with the capability to play back complex VFX scenes in real time.” For the proof of concept, EditShare supported real-time playback of 24 layers across four machines simultaneously.

Lambert concludes, “EditShare’s presence across the Indian market has grown considerably over the past 24 months. This can be attributed to the investments we have made in sales and support teams in India in addition to a full suite of offerings that work just as well with industry-standard solutions as it does across its own product line, supporting the modern productions that are producing some of the world’s biggest blockbusters.” The workflow implemented at redchillies.vfx along with EditShare’s new automated quality assurance system, QSCAN, can be seen at the upcoming Broadcast Asia exhibition in Singapore from June 26-28 at EditShare stand 6J4-04.

About EditShare

EditShare is a technology leader in networked shared storage and tapeless, end-to-end workflow solutions for the post-production, TV, and film industries. Our ground-breaking products improve efficiency and workflow collaboration every step of the way. They include video capture and playout servers, high-performance central shared storage, AQC, archiving and backup software, media asset management, and Lightworks – the world’s first 3-platform (Windows/OS X/Linux) professional non-linear video editing application.

©2018 EditShare LLC. All rights reserved. EditShare is a registered trademark of EditShare.

Press Contact

Nick Govoni
Zazil Media Group
(e) nick@zazilmediagroup.com
(p) +1 (978) 866 7354

In the 1957 movie “Desk Set”with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, the story line revolves around the introduction and use of a computing machine (EMERAC) at a network broadcaster to help improve efficiencies. In today’s real world of media asset management, workflow efficiency and throughput are still top-tier goals, but are now achieved through innovative Media and Entertainment (M&E) software apps and in cloud computing. The varied and diverse solutions available today enable management to better handle all aspects of MAM. In fact, the more recurrent or complex a given workflow, the more beneficial these solutions become to automate the steps in managing the business of content.

Unfortunately, at some firms, investments are being made at a department level leading to “islands of automation” with duplication of content, huge costs and a lack of agility and collaboration. These poorly integrated technology stacks are insufficient to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving digital media landscape that includes the challenge of managing, producing, repurposing, distributing and monetizing large volumes of content.

In recent years, companies have struggled with conventional OTS (off the shelf) or homegrown MAM software in an attempt to solve these issues, but the solutions lack scalability across diverse departments and locations, and do not support strong upstream and downstream collaboration across the content supply chain. Media enterprises that invested heavily in on-premise MAM software often did so because of a lack of high-speed IP networks, integration with existing legacy production and broadcast systems, and a reduced dependency on internet performance and local area connections. In addition, on-premise deployments were subject to data storage restrictions and had a fixed production environment due to slow software upgrade cycles.

CONSUMER VIEWING HABITS

Stepping back for a moment, the need for improved management of all aspects of the business can be attributed in part to the change in consumer viewership behavior. New behaviors are driving second screen viewing, personalized viewing instead of family viewing and instant gratification through binge watching instead of regular drip-fed consumption of content. These changes shape the need for more high-quality premium entertainment content, increasingly targeted to specific audiences rather than the one-size-fits-all content approach of television. Going forward, personalization will remain the central theme of any TV viewing experience. This will drive innovation in content and ad targeting, especially in the over-the-top multiscreen space. Content creators will be tasked with the need to offer relevant and engaging content like never before.

The changes in viewing behaviors have also driven an increase in third-party content production houses. To best take advantage of these newly available content sources, M&E enterprises need tightly embedded content logistics workflows, with seamless integration across departments within the enterprise—production, marketing, technical operations and multiplatform distribution. Just like other industries, M&E enterprises should adopt an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that can act as a one-stop-shop to manage, review, process and publish content across all the platforms and devices of the broadcast universe.

More specifically, what they need is a media ERP suite that automates the content supply chain and builds a connected enterprise using both cloud and on-premises resources. An automated content supply chain is different from a conventional content supply chain as it can more quickly cope with changes and enables stakeholders to collaborate anytime, anywhere, on any device.

In the hybrid cloud model, the application software (MAM, database, BPM and enterprise service bus) and metadata are on the cloud while content storage, streaming, transcoding, auto QC and accelerated file delivery applications are on premise. Designers can partition workflows across the private side and the public side—based on a variety of drivers—and achieve the security, reliability, performance and reach that are needed for each function.

ENHANCING WORKFLOWS

In essence, hybrid cloud technology brings content to the center of the business, automates business processes and ensures concurrence and mobility of workflows using the same virtual resources. It provides strong integration with legacy systems and enables workflow orchestration across enterprise, supply chain and partner ecosystems. This in turn helps organizations enhance efficiencies and reduce costs.

Other advantages of SaaS (Software as a Service) based ERP are many. For instance, end users pay only for the services they use and the scale they need, knowing they can move up or down the functionality/scale ladder as necessary. Moreover, centralized software execution and management requires no end user software patching/upgrading; it can be deployed for small, medium or large systems and has rich APIs available for customization as needed.

Moving MAM to the cloud with solutions like Prime Focus Technologies CLEAR Media ERP vastly improves throughput and workflow efficiencies for every aspect of the content production, management and distribution while lowering total cost of operations (TCOP). As viewing behaviors continue to evolve, broadcast and production facilities will inevitably require new MAM solutions to remain competitive and relevant in the market. Prime Focus Technologies' CLEAR Media ERP with Hybrid Cloud infrastructure just may be the perfect solution they’ll be looking for.

T Shobhana is vice president and head of global marketing & communications for Prime Focus Technologies.

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—U.K.-based Media Asset Management and technology provider IPV has announced that it recently integrated its Curator Content Factory MAM system at Hearst Television. Serving as the core infrastructure for Hearst’s Group Registry of Content, it helps the system connect creative service producers and editors across the U.S. With the IPV Curator, Hearst has developed an internal distributed cloud environment where content is ingest and logged and available globally.

Curator features a metadata governance engine that can capture and organize metadata when added by a user or by an automated metadata extraction engine. This allows for a quick search and discovery of content, according to IPV. Curator uses open standards, like FIMS, to provide standardized integration touch-points for third-party systems. At Hearst, the Curator integrates with Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Signiant Media Exchange + Agents, Telestream Vantage and EMC-Isilon Storage.

Hearst began rolling out the Curator Content system in March 2015; it became available in all of Hearst’s 30 TV stations in February.