FRISCO, Texas—MediaKind has introduced the MK/IO streaming solution that blends video quality and high reliability with the quality of experience that today meets the expectations of millions of viewers.

Built on Microsoft Azure, MK/IO offers a video streaming canvas for app developers, video platforms and others looking to improve the experience they deliver to customers, the company said.

MK/IO offers video-on-demand (VOD) and live streaming, encoding and packaging services for files and live video streaming with digital rights management (DRM) support and a native media player. It is built on Azure cloud and integrated in Azure Marketplace and offers application programming interface (API) parity and one-click asset migration for all Azure Media Services users, it said. 

“We pride ourselves on MediaKind’s heritage of quality and reliability led by innovation. As a strategic partner with Microsoft Azure, we have leveraged the power of Azure and its latest breakthroughs in generative AI, to develop MK/IO, a next-generation streaming solution. MediaKind's robust video services and capabilities provide an elevated level of functionality to deliver an exceptional streaming experience with unmatched video quality to empower new video apps and services with advanced features and continuous innovation,” said MediaKind CEO Allen Broome.

MK/IO is designed to offer a seamless migration for Azure Media Services customers to the MK/IO video streaming platform. Available through the Azure Marketplace, MK/IO integrates with Azure Storage, content delivery network (CDN) and billing, the company said.

Streaming of video assets previously generated with Azure Media Services is fully supported at launch as well as MKPlayer, a video player equivalent to the Azure Media Services player, it said.

"As one of our featured solution partners, I am pleased to announce the availability of MediaKind’s MK/IO platform that encompasses the entire range of Microsoft Azure Media Services capabilities," said Simon Crownshaw, director, business strategy, Media & Communications at Microsoft.

"Having partnered with MediaKind on the hugely successful NBA League Pass App project gives us confidence that Azure Media Services customers will be well served by MK/IO, and able to transition seamlessly to MediaKind’s new streaming platform." 

More information is available on the MediaKind website.

BURLINGTON, Canada—Evertz has announced that its DreamCatcher BRAVO Studio is now available on Microsoft Azure Marketplace. 

The DreamCatcher BRAVO Studio is a virtual live production studio that includes all the tools needed to create broadcast quality productions and is designed to provide media companies and enterprises a flexible and cost-effective all-in-one production studio for multi-camera live events,

“In the media and entertainment industry, content is king,” explained Mo Goyal, senior director, international business development at Evertz. “With the inclusion of BRAVO Studio to Microsoft Azure Marketplace, we harness the advantages of a cloud platform to enable content creators to produce high quality live events to tell compelling and engaging stories. As a Microsoft Partner, the availability of BRAVO Studio on Microsoft Azure Marketplace allows anyone to create and deliver a professionally produced, high quality live experience to their audience on any platform.”

BRAVO Studio captures multiple live camera feeds and Microsoft Teams participants and mixes them with other media (including video and audio). Creators and producers can enhance their production with comprehensive audio mixing, multiple video overlays and transitions, slow motion replays, highlight packages, and data-driven dynamic graphics. Using the global presence of Microsoft Azure, operators can access all of BRAVO Studio’s tools via an intuitive web interface from anywhere in the world to professionally produce any live experience. 

At the 2022 NAB Show, Evertz’ BRAVO Studio will be part of the Digital Experience Solution, a collaboration between Microsoft, Lumen, Evertz and MediaKind, which will be showcased on Microsoft’s booth (#W3017). 

Leveraging Microsoft Azure, BRAVO Studio will be used to produce a live, multi-camera podcast at Microsoft Booth throughout the NAB event. 

“With the addition of Evertz and their BRAVO Studio to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, we’re extending our platform to support the growing needs for live event production of the enterprise, media and entertainment industries – bringing a more scalable and flexible solution for content creation using the cloud,” said Simon Crownshaw, director, worldwide business strategy, Media & Entertainment at Microsoft Corp.

For more information on Evertz DreamCatcher BRAVO Studio visit Evertz’s 2022 NAB Show booth at N5907, or on the Microsoft Booth at W3017.

AMSTERDAM—Video stream tech provider Unified Streaming has announced that it’s flagship software Unified Origin is now available on Microsoft Azure. 

Unified Origin via the Azure marketplace provides the broadcast-grade capabilities of Unified Origin in a more flexible and cost-effective way, making it easier for many online broadcasters and video providers to launch OTT services, the company said. 

The move means that the software can easily be used for one-time live events, or to cover extra loads in video streaming workflows. It will also help customers start small and gradually scale up as their video streaming needs grow, Unified Streaming reported. 

“Unified Streaming has been providing expert software to some of the biggest broadcasters in the world for close to a decade now and we’re very excited to open up Unified Origin to a much wider variety of customers,” said Simon Westbroek, vice president of global sales at Unified Streaming. “More and more streaming companies want to take ownership of their video workflows. To be successful, they need flexibility in a way that is quick to launch and cost-effective, while delivering a broadcast-quality experience. Unified Origin delivers this and we’re looking forward to further expanding our product offering on Microsoft Azure.”

Unified Origin enables online broadcasters and video service providers to stream their live and VOD content from one unified source to multiple clients and devices. Broadcasters and video providers can ingest video in a single format and package it on-the-fly to all the common streaming formats that are used today, including HLS, MPEG-DASH, HDS and HSS. It supports all the major DRM systems (Adobe Access, FairPlay, Marlin, PlayReady and Widevine), timed metadata (including SCTE-35 for ad insertion), and accessibility features, such as captions and subtitles. AVC, HEVC, HDR and Dolby Vision are also compatible, the company said. 

“Many streaming providers prefer to take a look at the Marketplace first to build their streaming workflows with best-in-class modules”, said Veronica Labad, channel sales at Azure at Microsoft. “They get the best components for their requirements. With Unified Origin, that is especially the case with its history of supporting the likes of BBC, Disney, and HBO.”

More information is available at www.unified-streaming.com.  

WALTHAM, Mass.—Zixi has teamed up with Microsoft Azure to provide its technology for media and entertainment companies to securely and reliably distribute video content over IP using Azure, the company announced in a press release.

Zixi Broadcasters will be deployed on Azure using ZEN Master, a control plane that enables users to manage large-scale configurations to orchestrate, analyze, monitor, alert and report on live video streams and devices across the Zixi Enabled Network. With this, users can connect their Azure account to ZEN Master and configure Zixi streams with Zixi Broadcasters. Integration with Azure Blob storage allows for conversion and delivery of streams to Content Delivery Networks for playout.

With this integration, Azure customers are able to use Zixi’s method of configuring IP networks for video transport in real time, Zixi says.

The Zixi Software-Defined Video Platform accepts 17 industry protocols and containers, including Zixi, NDI, RIST, SRT, TCP, BBR, Multipath TCP and WebRTC. Zixi tech also uses congestion-aware and network-adaptive forward error correction, error recovery, bonding of multiple IP transmission paths and dynamic feedback to control encoder rate.

Azure customers who use Zixi to deliver streams of live events can utilize Zixi’s Nvidia-based GPU transcoding to deliver video to any device in the world in a variety of formats. On Azure, Zixi Broadcaster takes in the live video stream and transcodes it to HEVC/H.265 and H.264. OTT, social media or esports content can be repackaged into HLS, DASH and RTMP, backhaul into Zixi protocol and output using MPEG-TS, RTP and UDP for reintegration into broadcast systems.

“Partnering with Microsoft gives our customers deploying on Azure dramatically increased deployment, flexibility and global reach,” said John Wastcoat, senior vice president, Alliances and Marketing, at Zixi.

For more information, visit www.zixi.com.  

REDMOND, Wash. & BURBANK, Calif.—A new collaborative effort between Disney and Microsoft will strive toward developing new production and post-production processes—or as the company’s put it in their combined press release, from “scene to screen”—for content via the cloud.

The two companies have agreed to a five-year partnership that will see Microsoft become an innovation partner with the Walt Disney Studio’s StudioLAB as they develop new ways to create, produce and distribute content via the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Avid is also working closely with Disney and Microsoft on these developments.

Using Microsoft’s cloud alliance with Avid, the companies say they have already produced media workflows that are currently running in the cloud, including collaborative editing, content archiving, active backup and production continuity. Using Avid products like Avid MediaCentral, MediaCentral | Cloud UX, Nexis | Cloud storage and Avid Media Composer—all of which run natively on Azure—are said to provide the foundation for transforming content creation and content management.

“The combination of Azure’s hyperscale capacity, global distribution and industry-leading storage and networking capabilities with Disney’s strong history of industry leadership unlocks new opportunity in the media and entertainment space and will power new ways to drive content and creativity at scale,” said Kate Johnson, president of Microsoft US. “With Azure as the platform cloud for content, we’re excited to work with the team at StudioLAB to continue to drive innovation across Disney’s broad portfolio of studios.”

LOS ANGELES—Verizon Digital Media Services and Microsoft have teamed up to offer a VDMS global streaming platform on Microsoft Azure.

The full enterprise of the Verizon streaming service will be available on Azure and work in combination with Azure’s services to support broadcasters and content providers. The new offering will support the accelerated consumption of online media and OTT services.

Verizon will work with Microsoft to integrate Azure Media Services, Microsoft AI and Microsoft machine learning technology to increase the personalization and experience for viewers.

Microsoft plans to assist with the awareness of the platform through its own salesforce.

Examples of the streaming platform and how the Verizon and Microsoft technologies work together will be on display at both company’s booths (VDMS, SU3605; Microsoft, SL6716) at the 2019 NAB Show in Las Vegas.

MUNICH—Microsoft Azure users will now have access to Cinegy’s Air Cloud Pack, as the company has announced it is making it available on the Microsoft marketplace. The Cinegy Air Cloud Pack consists of the Cinegy Air Pro Bundle and Cinegy Multiviewer.

Cinegy Air Pro

Air Pro consists of a control panel and playout engine. The control panel features an interface for control of one or more playout channels connected via TCP/IP. The Cinegy Air Pro playout engine executes the playlist provided to it and renders video and audio to air.

The Cinegy Multiviewer enables broadcasters and production houses to receive RTP/UDP streams via Ethernet and locally or remotely monitor those streams. An analysis and alert system is also available that detects signal problems as they occur.

The Cinegy Air Cloud Pack is now available on the Microsoft Azure marketplace.

WALNUT CREEK, CALIF.—XenData and Microsoft Azure have put its heads together and come up with a hybrid cloud service that combines XenData’s Cloud File Gateway and Microsoft Azure’s Storage. The combined system allows existing file-based applications to use cloud storage without the need for modification.

The complete hybrid storage system is configured by XenData, including setup of the Azure storage subscription. XenData serves as the single point of contact to give technical support for the complete hybrid storage system that covers both the XenData Cloud File Gateway and the Azure storage service.

Benefits of the XenData – Azure storage system include the ability to be scaled to multiple petabytes; tailored local and cloud storage policies; scheduled time windows so applications can write to local disk while scheduling the upload copy being made to Azure; Partial File Restore support; standard file sharing and security.

XenData will demonstrate the hybrid storage system at IBC 2017.

NEW YORK—Microsoft Azure has earned a spot at the Olympics, as NBC Olympics has announced it will utilize the system to provide cloud encoding and hosting with video workflows. Azure will be tasked with providing streaming services for NBCUniversal and NBCOlympics.com for the second time, having previously done so for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

By using the Microsoft Azure, NBC Olympics will be able to provide live and on-demand multiplatform streaming coverage to a variety of connected devices, including connected TVs, tablets, smartphones, and PCs. The streams will be available through the NBC Sports app, which can be downloaded for free via Android, iOS, Roku, Amazon, Windows 10 tablets, Xbox, Windows Phone, PC and Mac.

Microsoft has additional services that it is providing users especially for the Olympic Games. Among these are a daily schedule, athlete information and predictions from Bing and a new Interesting Outlook calendar functionality on Outlook for enabling viewers to add specific events to their schedules.

The 2016 Summer Olympics take place in Rio de Janeiro starting Friday, Aug. 5 through Aug. 21.

Read more about how broadcasters are covering the Rio Games at our Live@TheRioOlympics social media hub.

MONTREAL—Video streaming and media management system provider Haivision has announced that its Media Gateway system is now available on Microsfot Azure.

Now on Azure, organizations can utilize the cloud to scale live video workflows with minimal IT intervention. The system provides ease of setup and commissioning, without putting a strain on the network at the source location.

The Media Gateway can be used in the cloud for transporting high-quality video using Internet connections; enterprise video distribution and broadcast backhaul and distribution.