HUNT VALLEY, Md.–Sinclair Broadcast has deployed innovative cloud-based news and content gathering and production workflows by combining technologies from Avid, Sony and Marquis Broadcast. This new approach integrates Avid MediaCentral, Sony Electronics’ C3 Portal gateway service and Marquis software and leverages 5G networks to reduce connectivity costs while enriching the flow of news metadata to accelerate the speed of its news operations. Using this method, we’re getting news to air faster than ever.

Our fundamental strategy is to democratize news acquisition, with every journalist or photographer having fast content delivery to news production centers. This transformation requires a collaborative approach to streamline the workflow. We’re engaged with Avid on its MediaCentral news production platform, Sony on cameras and C3 Portal and Marquis to enable complex workflow integrations. 

New News Workflows
We’ve enabled real business and operational benefits, with fast story turnaround and structured metadata automatically delivered to newsrooms, which can then cut several versions of the same story to deliver to digital platforms faster and with improved relevance. We have six stations engaged to refine the technologies and we’re continually optimizing workflows for best ROI and operational outcome. 

There are challenges to overcome but we’re moving closer to having access to all content in near real time. The next steps are around compression efficiency to increase quality while reducing bandwidth consumption and improving metadata transparency throughout the process.

Fundamental to Sony’s C3 Portal news workflow is the automatic preservation and enrichment of metadata from the point of origination. C3 Portal supports pushing metadata to the camera before shooting commences; for example, iNEWS slug information and assignment data, preserving this metadata throughout the production process when the story checks into Avid MediaCentral. Future workflows will allow rights information—and therefore genealogy—to be automatically maintained from creation throughout the edit and into archive.

Another powerful component of the new solution is the ability to send proxy video quickly back to the news production center via 5G network and Sony’s C3 Portal. The Marquis integration enables the “edit while record” feature in Media Composer so stories can be edited as soon as the proxy file starts ingesting. With a wide choice of Sony proxy resolutions, news organizations may easily take the proxy to air within seconds for fast news turnaround.

Sony's C3 Portal
This workflow automates extraction of sequence information from the Avid low-res proxy edit. With this sequence data, Marquis automatically retrieves the high-resolution media from either Sony’s C3 Portal, and the originating camera or originating camera cards. Assuming a 10:1 shooting ratio, this partial extraction process results in a 90% reduction in 5G data transferred and network bandwidth required. 

Using the dynamic relink feature in Avid, the high-res content simply drops into the timeline and automatically substitutes the low-res content, thus transforming news production. 

For more information on Sony, visit https://pro.sony/ue_US.

BERKSHIRE, ENGLAND—A recent partnership between Marquis Broadcast and NewTek is said to enable automated ingest to Avid systems. With the Medway automation system from Marquis supporting NewTek’s TriCaster multi-camera video production system broadcasters and content creators gain an ingest to edit workflow.

Marquis Broadcast’s Managing Director Chris Steele says that the integration allows content to be transferred automatically from TriCaster to Avid via Medway while the source is still in record. This is done by Medway creating an additional server type for the TriCaster that uses the NewTek API to browse clips and manage the transfer of media. The workflow reportedly supports both interplay PAM and non-interplay based Avid systems.

Marquis is a provider of content workflows and media integration software with offices located in Berkshire, England.

NewTek is a developer of integrated multi-camera video production systems with its headquarters in San Antonio.

BERKSHIRE, ENGLAND—To help streamline the delivery of project files for popular TV series “The Walking Dead” and “Fear the Walking Dead,” Los Angeles-based post production company Mad Old Nut Productions has acquired Marquis Broadcast’s Medway interoperability engine.

Medway logo

The Medway system improves the efficiency and ease of digital workflows by integrating broadcast content applications, allowing products such as edit platforms and third-party MAMs and automation systems can work together.

For Mad Old Nut, the Medway enables an Avid sequence to move to MXF OP1A with embedded captions and 12 tracks of audio, eliminating the converting process, according to Tom Ulman, founder of Mad Old Nut.

Headquartered in the U.K., Marquis Broadcast creates product that helps move media and metadata between different systems in broadcast and post-production workflows.

PANGBOURNE, ENGLAND—Marquis Broadcast has announced it will bring a pair of its workflow products to CCW in New York, the Project Parking version 4 and Edit Bridge.

Project Parking version 4 is an archive and retrieve system that has been developed to become a complete Avid storage management system. The unit monitors how media storage is used, regularly reports usage, shows usage over time, in addition to archiving projects and executing analysis in the background.

The Edit Bridge is Marquis’ new integration for Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Avid Interplay. The system allows users to edit Interplay content directly in Adobe Premiere Pro or After Effects. Users can also view thumbnails, find media and select for editing.

To see these products, visit Marquis at booth 1013. CCW 2015 takes place from Nov. 11-12 in New York.

PANGBOURNE, ENGLAND – TV One, a Maryland-based cable network, has recently acquired Marquis’ Avid storage management platform, Project Parking. Created to serve the African-American community, TV One will use the Marquis technology to manage its Avid projects.

Project Parking

According to Greg Kessler, manager, operations and technical support at TV One, Project Parking will be installed on the stations LTO server, to act as the gatekeeper between the Avid ISIS network and tape archive. The platform will help manage the station’s Avid storage and archive projects with the media as needed and track that information within the archive. Now with the ability to delete old content from active storage, TV One can be more open in its ingest policies.

TV One reaches 57 million households and is the home of the NAACP Image Awards and News One Now.

Marquis Broadcast is a provider of content workflows and media integration software based in the U.K.