NEVADA CITY, Calif.—Telestream has announced an acquisition of Masstech, which constructs hybrid cloud-based storage and asset lifecycle management systems.

This move follows Telestream’s acquisition of EcoDigital and its Diva MAM platform back in October. Telestream has now made 10 acquisitions, which the company claims makes it the leading supplier to the content storage/management segment for the Media & Entertainment market.

Under the terms of this new deal, all Masstech resources will be transferred to Telestream. The company’s engineering and product management functions will be integrated with Telestream’s Content Management Business Unit and will be led by Geoff Tognetti. The goal of this unit will be to combine Masstech intellectual property with EcoDigital’s Diva into a single product.

Masstech’s support team, sales and pre-sales team will join Telestream’s global customer sales and support network.

“Following the EcoDigital acquisition, this investment decision made natural sense and it is strategic in its very nature,” commented Dan Castles, CEO and co-founder of Telestream. “The knowledge base gained through the Masstech acquisition is complementary to what we have been doing and want to do in this area.

“This transaction brings together nearly two Exabytes of M&E content under the management of Telestream products in over 1,000 operational systems. With this market leadership comes a critical responsibility to work with our customers as they navigate a hybrid operating environment with assets on premise and in the cloud,” Castles concluded.

“Telestream has effectively rolled-up the archive management sector in less than six months through the acquisitions of Diva and Masstech,” said Joe Zaller, founder of Devoncroft Partners, a market research firm. “The real winners are the customers since a company of Telestream’s scale is likely to bring stability to the archive management sector through greater investments in both R&D and enhanced service and support.” 

The deal has been completed, though no financial details were shared.

For more information, visit www.telestream.net.  

WHITELEY, U.K.—Masstech has updated its Kumulate video storage management platform with a new set of features and enhanced modules the company says make video storage and content management simpler, more intuitive and cost effective.

The next-gen Kumulate platform is underpinned with a new database and architectural structure, and features an enhanced REST API to improve communication between Kumulate modules, the Kumulate core platform and third-party services for seamless workflow creation. In addition, the containerized structure of Kumulate v2, along with microservices architecture will offer enhanced on-demand scalability, in whatever cloud or hybrid environment customers prefer, as their storage and content processing requirements dictate.

“Since we launched Kumulate in 2019, we have deployed Kumulate in just under 100 media companies around the world. They are now realizing significant operational efficiencies and cost benefits,” said George Kilpatrick, CEO at Masstech. “The latest generation of Kumulate, available to all current MassStore, Kumulate and FlashNet users, expands functionality and prepares our customers for the future, with easier cloud deployment, simplified storage location management, and a next-gen, intuitive interface.”

Kumulate’s modular design lets users start with the core storage management functionality and add modules at their own pace, adapting to new revenue streams as required. The latest Workflow Orchestrator module has a revamped interface, with new drag-and-drop templates for quick workflow creation, including dedicated migration templates for those looking to move video assets and archives to new cloud environments. New analytics and modelling modules improve reporting and planning and the recently released Kumulate Gateway and Kumulate Gallery modules improve automation and monetization opportunities.

In addition to improved storage & media management, Kumulate now supports hashing for cloud transfers, keeping content secure as it moves across storage tiers. Additional support is now included for transcode formats such as OpenEXR, as well as improved integrations with Avid MediaCentral and Adobe solutions making Kumulate one of the most flexible and well integrated storage management options available. Kumulate v2 also features even deeper integration with AI and Machine Learning solutions from cloud providers such as AWS and Azure, to allow integration of cognitive services including speech-to-text and facial recognition into standard workflows.

The entire platform has undergone a design upgrade featuring a refreshed next-generation interface, with intuitive details such as drag-and-drop functionality for easier platform configuration and storage location control. 

Masstech is now offering Kumulate customers capex and opex agility, with flexible pricing models that adapt to their requirements. The Kumulate platform is now available via subscription and SaaS models, allowing customers to easily add modules and services to adapt to new revenue streams.

George Kilpatrick added: “Our users require us to provide leading-edge business and financial upgrades in the same way as we provide them with next-gen technology. The introduction of these new flexible pricing options, along with Kumulate’s completely modular feature set and containerised structure, creates a powerful proposition for customers.”

The latest version of Kumulate is now available as a free upgrade to all existing users.

For more information, visit www.masstech.com. 

WHITELEY, U.K.—Masstech is adding two new modules to its Kumulate video storage management platform, the Kumulate Gallery web-based storefront and the Kumulate Gateway content acquisition portal.

Kumulate Gallery provides a platform to display and sell content. It utilizes user-defined attributes to automatically publish content to the relevant storefront, allowing users to reach B2B and B2C audiences. Customers can browse, preview and purchase through the web store-style interface, which can be customized and branded.

The Kumulate Gateway is designed to streamline the content acquisition process by providing a single location for content submissions and automating the compliance-check process. Customizable settings enable Gateway to automatically reject or approve content and send notifications to a supplier. A dashboard provides visibility of assets and their status. Kumulate Gateway can approve content to be submitted to Kumulate workflows such as transcode, relocation to deep storage and distribution to other departments or locations.

Masstech is now offering virtual demos of the Kumulate Gallery and Gateway modules. For more information, visit Masstech’s website. 

WHITELEY, U.K.—The past year has seen a major transformation for Masstech, a U.K.-based provider of technology solutions to the M&E market, according to George Kilpatrick, who just marked his first anniversary as CEO of the company. 

As the former head of media and entertainment, EMEA, at Amazon Web Services, Kilpatrick was brought onboard to expand Masstech’s focus from storage management to a wider scope of content management, providing vendor-agnostic storage solutions to a wide range of M&E customers. Along the way, the company was also honored for its work in hierarchical storage management (HSM) with a Technical Emmy this year. 

“It’s been an interesting year,” Kilpatrick told TV Technology. “We’ve changed our whole approach to the market, which was basically looking after archives under Avid or other MAMs to now providing a full content management suite.

“So we can do orchestration of workflows, we can search more effectively, we have a much more effective UI where customers can in effect do content management rather than just looking after an archive in someone else's MAM,” he added.

The result of this expanded focus is Kumulate, which was launched at the 2019 IBC Show. Described as a “new intelligent storage and asset lifecycle management platform,” Kumulate’s unique workflow orchestration enables customers to automate multivendor and multiformat file transformations, across unlimited storage tiers in a hybrid cloud environment. Plus, it streamlines metadata interchange between third-party systems and metadata enrichment services to enable users to attain even more value from their assets.

Kilpatrick says this move enabled the company to go from maintaining and optimizing archives and storage as a provider of middleware to managing the entire storage chain, regardless of storage platform.

“We’re agnostic, we don't actually provide storage ourselves or LTO or on prem. In fact, now, we can manage any storage whether it's in the cloud, private, AWS or Azure and we continue to look after people's content sitting on prem,” Kilpatrick said.

Current events have forced broadcasters to ramp up their remote production capabilities as most stations and networks have had to adapt to broadcasting from home over the past two months. Kilpatrick says Masstech had already been preparing for this transition.

“The most interesting thing out of this COVID-19 situation is how those conversations [about remote production] have been happening for the past several years,” Kilpatrick said. “I came from AWS and we were talking to customers about cloud, remote editing and the advantages for quite awhile.”

Kilpatrick says Masstech has been spending a lot of time over the past several months explaining to its existing customers how they can use their existing solutions in a remote environment.

“We’ve been helping them with training, free software for free licenses to connect to cloud, basically helping them to allow their editors to produce content at home, upload it, pull archive material for editing on Macs, doing the changes and then uploading them to their production suites, all across the world,” he said.

One feature of Kumulate that has been particularly helpful for remote production has been a recently introduced virtual file system, according to Kilpatrick.

“VFS is our cloud connector and that's been very useful for customers to, for example, buy some more cloud storage, that allows them to access that,” he said. “Sometimes our customers can't send engineers to their tape rooms anymore or they want to limit engineers on site, so they're basically setting up new areas of storage for them.

“Two of our biggest news customers in the U.S. wanted the ability to search for assets on their archive and literally download them to the editors' desktop in their home so they could edit there and then upload to wherever it was required,” Kilpatrick added. “So we enabled those customers to do that. Clearly there are security implications so we’ve had to do that in a very controlled way but for these guys, this is their own content from their own archives so it was pretty easy for us to design that for them.’

Several other new product introductions were planned for the now cancelled 2020 NAB Show, including a new Adobe integration for Kumulate; Gateway, a new platform for controlled ingest from multiple sources; and Gallery, a new content distribution platform that Kilpatrick says they will provide more details on in the near future.

WHITELEY, U.K.—James Whitebread has joined Masstech as chief digital officer (CDO), the company announced today.

Whitebread, who takes the position after 15 years in product design and development for sports and media and entertainment, most recently served as chief technology officer at MarcoPolo Learning. He has been responsible for development of products and builds for IMG, BT, UEFA, Disney, Warner Bros., FIFA, Technicolor, Amazon Prime, TATA and Cardinal Heath Care.

Before holding the CTO position at MarcoPolo Learning, Whitebread was vice president of product and technology for UI Centric. Prior to that, Whitebread was director of digital at Technicolor. 

Earlier this year, Masstech, a provider of intelligent content storage and lifecycle management solutions, announced the appointment of George Kilpatrick as its new CEO. Kilpatrick joins Masstech from Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he was industry lead, media and entertainment, EMEA. Kilpatrick also previously worked at several divisions at Technicolor.

TV Technology Editor in Chief Tom Butts recently spoke with Kilpatrick about the future of Masstech and the industry's move to the cloud. 

TV Technology:Congratulations on the new appointment! Can you give us a little bit about your background and why you decided to join Masstech?

George Kilpatrick: I’ve been in this space for about 20 years, originally in the telco business and now media. Before Masstech I was with Technicolor for about nine years and then with Amazon Web Services for about two years, and then I joined Masstech. At Technicolor I ran the U.K. business for media services, which used many of the similar tools to distribute content to Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, and in fact, developed a number of cloud-based products.

At AWS we created a product called Showcase and then a product called Pulse, which worked to help both producers—in Pulse’s case—to develop much more efficient remote workflows for production companies and post houses; that’s gone on to be used by Technicolor now I believe. I also worked on distribution workflows as well.

I guess I got into cloud six or seven years ago. Clearly it was fairly rudimentary when we started, but I could understand and see where the power was, especially for media and entertainment, especially for distribution for production companies. In fact that’s why I went to AWS, because they asked for someone to, in effect, drive that business of the industry from here. And that’s what I did when I was with them.

TVT:What drew you to Masstech?

GK: With Masstech, for me it’s a very interesting space. Masstech was playing in the same area in terms of intelligent management assets and from my perspective, where, I believe, that product line could go given some of my experiences with cloud.

There’s a limited number of people who really understand the intersect between cloud and existing storage solutions and media—understanding in detail different file types, different workflows, different customer requirements and the subtle blends between what does a production company need, what does a distributor need, what does a broadcaster need.

I think clearly there was a wish for someone to bring in more cloud experience and some of the processes and more the way of thinking that is key for a company like Masstech.

TVT: Two years ago, Masstech bought SGL, how has that integration gone?

GK: We’ve combined SGL technology and the MassStore technology in our solutions. Both products—what we call FlashNet—originally came from the background of on-prem solutions but as we talked to our customers, they were all clearly engaged in discussing the full spectrum of options—from a full cloud solution and an on prem solution.

What we have found is that having been evangelists for the cloud for the last two years, we have a more realistic approach and I think hybrid is clearly the way ahead for the foreseeable future. We're uniquely positioned to help clients take that move.

They may take it slow, or in some cases a more aggressive stance, but it's very unusual that we have not found any customers yet go entirely cloud. So, if there's a hybrid element, you need some form of middleware layer to manage their assets in their multiple buckets, some in cloud, some NAS, some on-prem.

TVT:What is the biggest challenge facing broadcasters and media companies in adopting cloud technologies?

GK: Customers are intrigued by cloud but in some cases, maybe confused by what it can and cannot do. Yes, they can store and compute, but they were not aware, for example, that the UI was not provided for them, or that actually their assets are still their own to manage, not managed on their behalf by a cloud provider. So there's a degree of education that is still required.

There are also technical challenges and the cost model are very much at the top cost of any conversation. For example, egress charges—although customers might make a kind of OPEX model where they pay for what they use, they're also concerned about uncontrolled usage and they’re also concerned about egress charges in media workflows and because they work with such large files the costs can build up for pulling files from a cloud bucket.

There's also a degree of honesty needed so that when customers are looking at cloud they need to understand that what their full true costs are today. They need to include all of those things they don't like, such as overhead and engineers that have to go visit their data centers and utilities like air conditioning, etc.

Training and knowledge are also challenges. A lot of the cloud providers do try to do that but I think we are uniquely placed because we are helping people with real workflows and what advantages it can bring. Because we work in workflows with our customers on a day to day basis and support them, often we are the first point of contact for that conversation.

TVT:What impact has AI/ML had on expanding the reach of Masstech's platforms?

GK: We have integrated a number of AI technologies from multiple cloud providers—normally we're doing that on the behest of a customer who has a specific requirement. I think it's fair to say that it's still early. The theory is very exciting, with metadata tagging archives so they're better placed for monetization, for example.

The reality is that these can be slightly cost-prohibitive so we're working with clients to work with subsets of archives and data tools so we can come up with really focused cost-effective solutions for their particular needs.

So we're definitely seeing it and getting requests for it but whether we’re getting fully running production customers I'd say it's still early. We're testing a lot with people but I haven't found anyone in the media universe where we are using it really aggressively yet.

TVT:What other industries are you looking beyond broadcast media?

GK: Clearly our focus is M&E but it's more about video and video knowledge that we have and of course that is transmutable to other industries. We are looking at a number of relevant industries including oil and gas and medical, etc. If you think about airports storing huge amounts of surveillance data and the increase in file size because they're starting to use higher grade formats such as UHD, for example; that is having a massive impact, not only because the amount of storage is higher but then the actual complexity of searching and using that content means that systems like ours are going to be in more demand. It's a very small part of what we do today but I can see it growing.

TVT:What will Masstech be showing at IBC?

GK: We will be introducing our new Clover product to Europe. It has a reduced scale but the same functionality based on our MassStore product.

Going forward, we're going to further develop our microservices architecture and containerized architecture and will be converging the multiple solutions that we have within the product set so that we simplify it for our customers, because I think one of the things I've recognized is the need to make it easier to understand on the ground for customers.

We have multiple parts of our solutions, we have a workflow engine, we have a virtual file system, we have a transcoding engine, but we would like to modularize it so you as a customer can pick and choose what is suitable for them. Traditionally some of our solutions are headless, we're just going to architect them in a more containerized way. 

WHITELEY, England—Masstech has announced the appointment of George Kilpatrick as its new CEO, succeeding Joe French, who is stepping down after 20 years with the company.

Kilpatrick joins Masstech from Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he was industry lead, media and entertainment, EMEA. Kilpatrick has previously worked at both Technicolor Inc. and Technicolor Media Services Ltd.

“I’m very pleased to be joining Masstech as CEO,” said Kilpatrick. “It’s an exciting time for the M&E industry, and Masstech has a significant role to play. I’m looking forward to helping guide the company towards our goal of harnessing the latest Cloud and ML innovations to deliver the most innovative storage and content management solutions to our customers.”

“George’s extensive experience of the M&E space was of course a key factor in our decision,” added Roger Flynn, chairman of the Masstech Board. “The market is changing, and the Cloud is becoming more important to all M&E businesses. George’s previous roles, particularly most recently at AWS, make him the perfect candidate and we are extremely pleased to have secured him as the new Masstech CEO.”

Kilpatrick will take up his new role on April 5.

CHARLOTTE, N.C.—For the past four decades, Raycom Sports has produced collegiate sports content for syndicated and cable packages. In addition to our current partnership with the Atlantic Coast Conference (handling production for the conference’s Regional Sports Network and providing production services for ESPN’s upcoming ACC Network) we have also produced live mobile and documentary content for the Carolina Panthers, Blizzard Entertainment, The Basketball Tournament and Hot Wheels Monster Trucks Live. As Coordinating Producer, I have worked with our great staff and freelancers to produce Emmy-winning content for Raycom Sports since 2004.

We were recently presented with an exciting but daunting challenge to digitize our entire video library. While our current video workflow has been fully digital for multiple years, 40 years of content creation left a massive amount of invaluable historical assets on videotape. Our overall collection of nearly 40,000 tapes ranged from high definition formats like HDCAM and DVCPro to Betacam and 3/4 inch.

THE GOLF CHANNEL EXPERIENCE

We had to consider many factors when developing our solution. Off-site housing of a video library can be very effective with the appropriate budget, but it’s tougher for mid-sized production operations like ours. Since storage is a monthly cost in any remote library arrangement, all conversations about storing our video library elsewhere to lower expenses resulted in contingencies of lowering the quality of video archived or increasing the turnaround time for assets retrieved, and these concessions were unacceptable or too cumbersome.

So how best to store these new digital assets locally? Having utilized XDCAM cartridges since our jump to high definition, we had witnessed first-hand the durability and read/write speed benefits of Sony’s disc-based solutions. That experience, combined with the massive Optical Disc Archive (ODA) workflow implemented by the Golf Channel, among others, demonstrated that massive asset libraries could be stored locally without using data tape. Having also seen the Carolina Panthers implement the ODA solution, we were convinced ODA was the best fit for all of our production needs.

Thanks primarily to the tireless efforts of our Production/Archive Manager, Rob Chorney, Raycom Sports has digitized over 20,000 videotapes as of Dec. 1, 2018. The material digitized, which is comprised of ACC football and basketball games since 1983, represents about 85 percent of our Atlantic Coast Conference content and about 60 percent of our overall library. Our Sony Optical Disc Archive PetaSite implementation consists of three chassis housing 190 slots of ODA storage and four Gen2 drives. This footprint gives us over 600 TBs of storage in our active repository. Masstech’s Flashnet middleware allows editors working within our Avid Media Central environment to archive and retrieve assets from within the Avid GUI, providing editing efficiency. Additionally, having assets more readily available for distribution has increased our video licensing revenue.

We are extremely pleased with the PetaSite system and its potential for scalability. With the coming release of Gen3 technology, I am confident our video library will be securely housed by Sony for years to come.

Alex Farmartino is coordinating producer at Raycom Sports. A 14-time MidSouth Emmy winner, he has worked since 2004 in live mobile broadcast and documentary production. He can be reached atafarmartino@raycomsports.com.

Find out more athttps://pro.sony/ue_US/.

TORONTO & FAREHAM, ENGLAND—Masstech and Software Generation Ltd. (SGL) are joining forces to form a new company, Masstech Innovations. This new endeavor will serve the broadcast and media industry as a provider of technology for the management of media assets, per the official announcement.

Left to right: SGL co-founder Bernie Walsh, Masstech President and CEO Joe French, and SGL co-founders Paul Moran and Dave Bray.

Masstech President and CEO Joe French has taken an increased ownership position and will run the combined business from the U.K. headquarters. SGL founders and directors Bernie Walsh, Dave Bray and Paul Moran will eventually retire after a period of consulting with the combined entity. FPE Capital will be the majority shareholder in the new company.

“The merger provides us with an opportunity to grow and develop solutions, particularly on-ramps to the cloud and managed services, faster than we could have done as two smaller independent companies,” French explained.

Financial terms of this deal have not been disclosed.

LAS VEGAS—At the 2017 NAB Show, Masstech will bring flexible cloud configurations for MAM workflows to minimize on-premise equipment while maximizing content value. Masstech's new CloudFlex technology enables hybrid workflows for transcoding and other media processing tasks on-premises, with bursting to the cloud when workloads require additional computing capacity.

Masstech’s MassStore lets MAM users adopt cloud-based operations at their own pace by deploying the entire platform or individual components in public or private clouds, as well as locally on virtualized or physical systems. Cloud-hosted MassStore integrates seamlessly with existing environments while shielding users from the underlying complexity.

The Masstech platform automates the creation of rich metadata for MAM and newsroom users, making stored content easier to find and sort, without the expense, inconsistency, and time-consuming effort of manual metadata entry. New speech-to-text capabilities convert dialogue within media clips to indexed text, enabling automated tagging and categorization.

Masstech’s MAM now offers more efficient integration with Avid’s MediaCentral framework, including MediaCentral|UX, and a re-engineered transfer engine delivers three to four times faster transfer speeds for moving content into and out of Avid Interplay.

The platform also offers an updated HTML5-based plug-in for greater integration with newsroom computer systems, and SAM News Solution users can now efficiently and automatically archive, restore and share content between sites.

The 2017 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 24-27. Masstech will be in boothSU3202. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

TORONTO—Workflow and media asset management provider Masstech recently promoted two of its own to new management positions. Savva Mueller will now serve as the vice president of product management and marketing, and Joseph French has been named the director of North American sales.

Joseph French and Savva Mueller

Mueller came to Masstech in 2012 from Avid; he also previously worked at Tektronix and two Wisconsin television stations. In his new role, Mueller will develop and oversee Masstech’s product roadmap and out-facing marketing communications strategy.

French has been with Masstech for seven years, previously managing all U.S. call-letter station accounts for the company. French will now manage the sales team that reps broadcasters and media organizations across the U.S. and Canada.

TUCSON, ARIZ.—At KVOA-TV, Tuscon’s NBC affiliate, we used to archive by recording the selected clips to videotape out of our editing systems, tying up both systems and staff. We kept archived content in a three-ring binder, and if we wanted to restore the archived clips we needed to recapture them from tape. The whole process was very inefficient.

We wanted our archive management solution to be more efficient, freeing up our journalists and resources so they could focus on creating content. The solution needed to make it easy for users to archive, find, and recall clips without needing to understand technical details, or requiring a lot of training. And it needed to fit our budget.

IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENT
Masstech’s newsroom media management solution met all of our criteria. We were immediately impressed by its ease of use, and we particularly liked that it integrated directly with our AP ENPS newsroom computer system, enabling users to interact with the archives without leaving the NRCS interface. The Masstech solution also integrated seamlessly with our Imagine Communications Nexio playout servers and Velocity editing software, streamlining our workflow.

The Masstech system has allowed KVOA to archive 45 TB of storage in its library, per Aaron Diezman.

We started using the Masstech solution immediately for all new content and recently began to use it to ingest legacy archived footage. Our Masstech system now manages more than 47,000 assets totaling approximately 45TB of storage in our Spectra Logic T50e LTO data tape library, and we add between 300 and 400 clips to it each week.

The move to the Masstech solution allows our staff to spend more time on more productive tasks. Whereas our old process took our users and systems away from preparing for the next newscast, it’s now pretty much “fire and forget.” The users never have to leave the NRCS interface, and archiving happens in the background without interrupting production.

NEW TOOL FOR JOURNALISTS
Finding, viewing, and retrieving archived content is easy, too. Our journalists can search the archive using ENPS’s native tools, and preview the video right from the ENPS interface. Once they find what they’re looking for, they can restore it from the archive and move it into the editing environment by dragging-and-dropping within the NRCS.

The system has proven to be stable and reliable. On the rare occasion when we needed help, Masstech’s support team has been very responsive. We’re about to deploy the latest version of Masstech’s comprehensive MAM software, and are looking forward to the improvements it will bring us.

The Masstech newsroom media management solution has given everything we were looking for, and their ongoing advances position us well for the future.

Aaron Diezman is assistant director of engineering at KVOA-TV, with management responsibilities for the engineering department and IT infrastructure. He can be reached atadiezman@kvoa.com.

For more information, please visitwww.masstech.comor call 905-946-5712.

TORONTO & SIMI VALLEY, CALIF.—Workflow and media asset management system provider Masstech has partnered with data storage manufacturer Qualstar on a new LTO tape-based archiving technology.

Qualstar’s tape libraries are now interoperable with MassStore technology that powers all Masstech media management systems. Qualstar’s LTO-7 tape technology is specifically highlighted for its ability to meet the needs of media and entertainment customers. All Qualstar libraries are offered with all tape slots fully licensed and available.

Combined installations of Qualstar and Masstech installations are already in use in television network and newsroom environments.

TORONTO & HACKENSACK, N.J.—With the goal of simplifying the path between remote contribution and TV newsroom non-linear workflows, Masstech and LiveU they are teaming up on a new partnership. The two companies will integrate their technologies to reduce time to move live ENG content into production workflows for journalists to access.

Combining Masstech’s media management systems and LiveU’s Bonded Video Transceiver automatically makes recordings of all LiveU-delivered live streams visible and accessible to everyone using the relevant newsroom computer systems and editing systems. In addition, LiveU IP-bonded field transmission units appear in the NRCS as wire stories with linked video files and embedded previews, while Masstech technology allows journalists to use drag-and-drop actions to preview the video, transfer the clip to production systems, archive the video, or share it amongst users and other stations.

As many as 10 stations in the top 50 markets have reportedly already deployed the new Masstech and LiveU integration.

TORONTO—Venezuelan media services provider VC Medios has acquired two new MassStore platforms from MassTech, building off a previous installation. The MassStore system manages and automates file-based production and digital delivery workflows.

VC Medios initially used the MassStore platform to automate the transfer of file-based content between in headquarters in Caracas, Venezuela and a partner facility in Florida. Now the company uses the MassTech system to manage the movement of content across locations and internally between VC Medios’ archive, post-production and playout workflows.

One of the two newly acquired systems was deployed to the company’s recently opened Bogota, Colombia production center. The second was added to its headquarters to support operations for IVC Net.

MassTech is a provider of software systems for managing digital media content. It is based out of Toronto.

TORONTO—Masstech’s range of advanced workflow and media asset management systems has added native support for LTO-7 compliant storage devices.

LTO-7 specifications support a native, uncompressed storage capacity of 6TB per tape cartridge, as well as increase uncompressed tape drive data transfer rates up to 300MB per second. LTO-7 drives are backward compatible with LTO-6 cartridges, and can read both LTO-5 and LTO-6 tapes. Content from older tapes can be transferred to LTO-7 with automated MassStore workflows. The MassStore platform provides direct, native integration with storage types, including LTO libraries from vendors.

Support for LTO-7 storage devices is available through a software update for the MassStore platform.

NEW YORK—With the onset of 4K and higher-resolution video formats comes the inevitable impact on storage. By some accounts as much as 12 terabytes of content is being produced daily, and it has to be stored somewhere.

The cloud is increasingly becoming an option. Cisco’s annual Global Cloud Index report predicts cloud data centers could execute 78 percent of all IT workloads by 2018, compared to just 22 percent for traditional (on premise) data centers.

A GOOD TIME FOR TRANSITIONING?
Numerous broadcast vendors, as well as major players such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon offer off-site storage solutions where video can be transferred for longtime archiving and backup. With so many options, the time to make the transition to the cloud could be now, especially if existing hardware systems are due for an upgrade.

“For those operating on production systems that were installed in the 2007–09 timeframe, they are reaching the end of life, and now is the time to look to an infrastructure that is cloud-ready,” said Jay Batista, general manager of Tedial’s U.S. operations, a division of the Spanish-based provider of media asset management software.

The cloud can be used to archive content and also provide access as needed.

“This is a great time to look at your business,” Batista added. “If you are producing scripted programming and push it over to a distributor or syndicator the cloud offers a way to save daily raw cuts as well.”

Production facilities can also leverage the cloud and pump up the storage or ramp it down as needed for short-term storage said Batista, especially as there can be times when more media comes in due to peaks in a sports or news cycle.

Mike Palmer, vice president of business strategy at Masstech Innovations “For those looking at the news model or daily content that might need to be retrieved often, a privately hosted cloud service works best,” said Mike Palmer, vice president of business strategy at Masstech Innovations, a Markham, Ontario-based provider of digital media management systems. “It offers immediate access and the storage cost is low.”

It may be necessary to watch key performance indicators to determine when more or less cloud storage is needed in the short term.

“Those business analytics are available, and can be set up to measure traffic and how it corresponds to storage on the cloud,” said Batista. “It is this cyclical nature of business that will determine the best way to leverage the cloud.”

SEND AND FORGET
Although increasing file sizes could prompt more broadcasters and media companies to turn to the cloud for longterm archiving, the move is not without issues. In many cases the cloud could be a “send and forget” option primarily.

There are three main issues to consider when determining whether to archive to the cloud, according to Alex Grossman, vice president of media and entertainment at Quantum, a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of storage management systems.

“The first issue is how secure is the cloud, so that you know it is archived but won’t get touched by anyone,” Grossman explained, adding that content owners should be able to feel secure that the cloud is reliable. “Are multiple [backup] copies maintained and how do you prove that?” he asked. The only way to ensure that the content has been actually backed up is to do auditing by downloading it and that can cost money.

The third issue isn’t just that the content will be there but that the cloud provider will be as well.

“What happens if the cloud vendor opts out of the business?” Grossman asked. “This leads to how you might move the content to a new place. These are the things not so much to worry about, but to consider when moving content to the cloud.”

The biggest issue however could remain cost, especially as video production moves to 4K, where files truly put the “big” in big data.

“One aspect to keep in mind with the cloud is that this isn’t a onetime payment,” said Chris Luther, director of professional services at SGL Broadcast, a U.K.-based provider of archive and storage management software for post production, news, sports and government. “You are in fact paying for that storage every month forever. It might only be a fraction of a cent per file, but files larger than 2GB often have to be broken up, and consider that 4K is about a gigabyte a minute. So every production needs to be broken up into two-minute chunks. In many cases we are seeing that broadcasters may be expecting too much of the cloud at this time.”

Michelle Munson, CEO, AsperaON THE DOWNLOAD
What goes up to the cloud will need to be downloaded when needed, and this is another factor that has to be considered, especially as cloud facilities could be geographically far from a production facility. The cloud is only going to be as reliable as the infrastructure to transport that data over vast distances, and should the connection be slow or unreliable, the data can be difficult, even impossible, to download or otherwise access. This creates more pressure on available bandwidth, according to Michelle Munson, CEO of Aspera, an Emeryville, Calif.- based next-generation software technologies transport vendor.

“We’re seeing that volume has grown and that only serves to take more bandwidth on the pipe,” she said. “Today you need to move terabytes of data, and we are striving to make all storage equal, independent of location or the amount of any data.”

The size of the files remains that issue, for the up and download.

“It is a double problem,” said Colin Dixon, founder and chief analyst of nScreenMedia a research firm that covers online media. “Today’s video files are massive if they are uncompressed and this takes up a lot of bandwidth, but every time the file is needed it can take a long time to download it.”

The time it takes to download is the other half of the equation, as the content might be safely archived but not immediately accessible when it is needed.

“It can take a long time to get the content, so in many cases you need to plan around it,” said Savva Mueller, director of product management at Masstech Innovations.

PRIVATE OR PUBLIC?
Some of the issues surrounding cloud archiving can also be overcome by creating a private cloud as opposed to utilizing a public cloud-based solution from Amazon or Microsoft.

“Public [cloud] at a price per gig can add up, and that can be a hard model to justify for archiving,” said Palmer. “Local storage to your own cloud servers can be a larger upfront cost, but you own that [cloud server] forever.”

Such a solution could be hosted externally or in a company’s own data center, and could take advantage of the economy of scale. A lot of this depends entirely on the type of content that is being archived and when it might be needed.

“If you are looking at a news model then a privately hosted model could be better,” added Palmer. “There is immediate access and the storage cost is low.”

By contrast, for short-term storage with a finite amount of data, a public cloud could be the better option. Yet the public option does mean giving up some control.

“There are still a lot of execs out there who are worried about the cloud,” noted Tedial’s Batista. “The content may not be secured and that can be a problem.”

In some cases these concerns are magnified based on where the public cloud may be located.

“You don’t have control where the data is stored,” said Luther. “Why would anyone trust that their content might not end up on a server in China and be replicated even before it is officially released in America?”

For the coming year, Munson expects that demand for cloud storage will continue to grow, even as issues such as file size, security and cost need to be addressed.

“The use of cloud infrastructure will become more commonplace,” she said. “It is no longer an experiment. We are seeing the industry take techniques from high-performance computing and tie it to video production.”

WASHINGTON—WJLA is the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. and is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sister station NewsChannel 8, a regional 24-hour cable news network, is housed in the same building. The two stations share newsgathering resources and produce more than 130 hours of live news each week.

Ernie Ensign helped oversee the installation of Masstech’s newsroom media management system at WJLA.

A long-term news archive solution was needed for WJLA and NewsChannel 8. With the high volume of valuable material we produce, it was crucial the content be reliably archived, easily searchable and quickly available for retrieval, enabling journalists to rapidly incorporate it into new productions. In addition to storing the media assets, the selected system needed to archive the news scripts as well. It was also essential the system be easily scalable to expand with our long-term archive needs.

EASY ACCESS
Sinclair selected Masstech’s newsroom media management solution to meet the stations’ needs. WJLA’s Masstech system was deployed in June 2015 and was initially integrated with our AP ENPS newsroom computer system (NRCS) and Imagine Communications Nexio playout servers, alongside Velocity for editing. For storage, the solution uses a Spectra Logic LTO tape library. Installation took place in the background, completely transparent to our ongoing news operations. Masstech’s support team helped keep everyone in the loop during every step of the process, ensuring the system performed as expected, and accommodated our training needs.

Masstech’s integration flexibility was crucial when we subsequently switched our NRCS from ENPS to Avid iNEWS at the end of the summer. The Masstech software integrates seamlessly with both platforms, enabling users to access its functionality through the NRCS user interface and acting as a transparent bridge for our archived content. When searching and retrieving content for reuse, our journalists don’t need to think about whether the video and story were archived from ENPS or iNEWS, the Masstech software automatically takes care of the technical details.

Our previous archive had been detached from our newsroom computer system. Now, Masstech’s plugin integration with iNEWS puts all of our archived content in one place and puts users just clicks away from any potentially needed asset.

WEALTH OF CONTENT
Masstech has helped streamline our newsroom operations by not only putting archived content at producers’ fingertips, but also integrating content from other news stations in the group. With just a few clicks, producers can pull content into our internal workflow from any Sinclair station and add that material to their shows, saving time while enabling more content-rich productions.

We archive between 450 and 500 stories a week through the Masstech solution by indicating in iNEWS which stories we want Masstech to process. It works unassisted in the background to automatically archive all of the content we may need at a later date, without disrupting our production workflow. Newsroom personnel don’t need to perform additional tasks to accommodate the archive process.

The Masstech system at WJLA currently manages around 80,000 assets totaling more than 15TB of content. That number will continue to grow rapidly as we archive new content and bring in more of our legacy archives, which span spinning disks and more than 2,500 Blu-ray discs.

Masstech has exceeded our expectations, and we are now considering additional opportunities the Masstech system can enable for the station and the group.

Ernie Ensign is director of engineering at WJLA-TV. He holds SBE certifications of CBTE and CBNE, and has 20 years of television experience spanning news, operations and engineering. He can be reached ateensign@sbgtv.com.

For more information, visitwww.masstech.comor call 905-946-5712.

TORONTO—A trio of staffers at Masstech’s headquarters in Toronto have been promoted. Iulian Ionita has been promoted to senior vice president of engineering and support; Annie Pradeepan to vice president of finance; and Fiona Tsang to marketing manager.

Ionita, who has spent 16 years in the broadcast and production operations and technology, will lead the support team to provide customers satisfaction from product installation to delivery.

Annie Pradeepan

Pradeepan has been with Masstech since 2000. Her new position makes her responsible for overseeing accounting, finance and investor relations.

Tsang will now head the development of new marketing campaigns, as well as continue to manage trade shows, public relations, web and social media initiatives. Prior to joining Masstech, Tsang worked for iPR Ogilvy and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

TORONTO—Sinclair Broadcast Group has announced it has acquired a number of Masstech’s Masstech for News systems to create a centralized hub for sharing content among all of its news-producing stations. Masstech for News is a newsroom sharing, media management and archiving system that will simplify movement of video and stories between Sinclair locations and archives.

Masstech for News

A number of Sinclair stations already featured Masstech for News, but the new installation raise the number of stations by more than 50 percent. The system offers these stations automated local archive management; drag-and-drop sharing workflows; and access to content in the archives of other similarly-equipped Sinclair locations.

Additional features offered through the Masstech for News system are the Masstech Media Wires feature, which enables journalists to push selected stories and videos to other stations across the group; and the Video-Follows-Text technology, which ensures all text, metadata and media are transferred together with a drag-and-drop option.

Sinclair Broadcast Group owns and operates 163 TV stations in 79 markets.

Masstech is a provider of software for the management of digital media content and related information. The company is based in Toronto.

TORONTO—Masstech has announced its slate of offerings for IBC 2015, including its latest media asset management and newsroom software technology. Co-exhibiting with partner MOG Technologies at booth 7.K28, the companies will spotlight the integration of MOG’s mxfSPEEDRAIL ingest systems and Masstech’s media management platforms, enabling automated workflows from production and ingest to archive and distribution.

Latest version of Masstech media asset management software

Masstech’s media asset management system, MassStore, features a new HTML5 user interface, support for unstructured metadata, search engine enhancements, embedded player and more. The platform allows media organizations to store, find, reuse, move and manage their content.

Among the newsroom technology on display, Masstech offers archiving and sharing capabilities directly within journalists’ familiar newsroom system interface, which eliminates workflows barriers for faster production of stories.

In addition, Masstech will demonstrate scalable content storage management technology, as well as automated workflows for third-party integration.

Masstech’s media asset management technology will also be on display at the Disk Archive Corporation stand, 8.B38f, working in conjuction with the ALTO-II secure, disk-based media archive.

IBC 2015 will take place from Sept. 11-15 in Amsterdam.