At the IBC2026 Show, SDVI will give European media organizations their first hands-on look at the next-generation Rally media supply chain management platform.

The centerpiece of SDVI's presence will be a live demonstration of the platform's redesigned orchestration engine, new graphical supply chain builder, and agentic AI interface.

SDVI will also showcase new AI-powered integrations for ad break detection, speech translation, and subtitle correction, along with new support for connecting on-premises infrastructure into Rally-managed, cloud-orchestrated supply chains.

Together, SDVI reported that these developments help media organizations respond to the intensifying pressure to create more content, deliver it to more destinations, and adapt it for more markets, all while giving their operations teams more flexibility.

“IBC2026 is where we bring the next generation of Rally to our European customers and partners for the first time, and it is the top highlight of what we are showing this year," said Geoff Stedman, chief marketing officer, SDVI. "Beyond the platform itself, we continue to expand what Rally can do with our partners, showcasing new AI-powered integrations for ad break detection, speech translation, and subtitle correction. And for many of the media organizations we meet at IBC, how Rally works alongside existing on-premises infrastructure matters just as much as what is new in the cloud, which is why our hybrid infrastructure support is such an important part of the story this year.”

More specifically, SDVI said platform introduces a redesigned orchestration engine built on a declarative architecture that separates the control plane from the data plane, enabling a new graphical supply chain builder, a modular supply chain functions layer, a supply chain rewind capability for faster troubleshooting, and a new foundation for agentic AI integration.

IBC attendees can get hands-on time with the new graphical interface at the SDVI stand (5.F88) and see firsthand how it changes the way media supply chains are built, operated, and monitored.

It will also showcase new Rally integrations at IBC2026 that build on an already extensive ecosystem of technology and application partners. These integrations bring specialized capability into the Rally platform, delivering a more complete and efficient media supply chain without requiring operators to work across disconnected systems. SDVI described those integrations as follows:

• Ad Break Detection: SDVI will demonstrate AI-powered ad break detection using Vionlabs in combination with Accurate.Video Validate Ad Detection mode, accelerating the identification and creation of ad breaks with greater accuracy and speed.
• Speech Detection and Translation: Rally integration with ElevenLabs delivers AI-powered speech detection and translation, including high-quality voice synthesis for audio translation into new languages.
• Subtitle Modification: Edit subtitle text, timing, and positioning with Accurate Video Subtitle integrated with Rally Access, streamlining subtitle corrections and avoiding costly external fixes.
• Hybrid Infrastructure Support: SDVI will demonstrate how Rally connects on-premises storage systems into cloud-orchestrated media supply chains using Spectra BlackPearl as a software-defined storage gateway, giving media organizations a practical way to bring existing on-premises infrastructure into a Rally-managed workflow without a full migration to the cloud.

SDVI will demonstrate how its Rally media supply chain management platform offer media operations teams the tools needed to meet the demand for high-volume content processing, expanded channel distribution and faster time-to-market during the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

SDVI will showcase an expanded Rally Connect distribution network, new integrations with technology partners across AI-powered localization, content processing and storage management as well as a first look at major new innovations coming to the Rally platform.

New Rally Connect enhancements include added support for dozens of endpoints, including Amazon Prime Video, YouTube TV, Tubi, Pluto, Sling and Philo, as part of Rally Connect, the module that automates packaging and content delivery to distributors.

New capabilities include native MovieLabs multi-locale support for streamlined international deliveries and optimized transcode profiles that deliver efficiency gains. The rapid expansion of Rally Connect endpoints reflects an innovative approach to managing delivery specifications while still allowing customization to meet individual customers requirements.

SDVI will also demonstrate new Rally Application Service integrations. Each brings a specialized capability into the Rally platform, delivering a more complete and efficient media supply chain without requiring operators to work across disconnected systems. They include: ad break detection using Vionlabs with the Accurate.Video Validate Ad Detection mode; speech detection and translation with ElevenLabs AI tools; language identification and audio track layout via enhanced integration with Emotion Systems; subtitle modification with Accurate.Video Subtitle integrated into Rally Access; and workorder management via enhanced EIKON TRAK integration.

SDVI will also offer attendees a first look at new innovations planned for the Rally platform. These next-generation enhancements represent a major step forward in how media supply chains are constructed and managed, and will give operations teams new levels of control, simplicity, and intelligence.

See SDVI at 2026 NAB Show booth W1553.

More information is available on the company’s website.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—SDVI, a cloud-native media supply chain platform provider, has tapped Simon Eldridge as chief operating officer, a new post overseeing all functions except for finance and accounting.

Eldridge, one of the company’s three co-founders, had been chief product officer and will continue to report to chairman and CEO Larry Kaplan. Succeeding Eldridge in the chief product officer role is Chris Brähler, formerly vice president of product.

“Simon has been an invaluable leader for the company since day one, and I am delighted to elevate his role to chief operating officer,” Kaplan said. “In this new role, he will focus on driving operational execution across all our key functions, including engineering, sales, marketing and customer success.”

With his promotion, Brähler will continue to drive SDVI’s product strategy and execution, the company said. He will continue to own the product road map and will work closely with customers and the company’s solutions team to define new product requirements, SDVI said.

“As I move into my new role, I’m excited to be able to promote Chris into the chief product officer position,” Eldridge said. “I’ve worked extremely closely with Chris for several years to make the Rally platform into the market leader it is today. I couldn’t imagine anyone more capable and deserving of taking the reins on this important position for the company.”

More information about SDVI and its Rally media supply chain management platform is available at the company’s website.

At the IBC2025, SDVI has announced that it will demonstrate how its Rally media supply chain management platform is giving media operations teams the ability to meet the demands for high-volume content processing and escalating deliveries.

The company reported that its support for new automated deliveries to more endpoints brings efficiency, accuracy, and speed for content deliveries to such platforms as Amazon Prime Video, Dish, Hulu, Pluto, Tubi, YouTubeTV, and more.

In addition to showcasing the continuous innovations added to the Rally platform over the past few months, SDVI will also highlight new technical integrations with third-party products adjacent to customers’ core media supply chains. These integrations dramatically improve operational agility and efficiency while also providing increased visibility into status and cost information for work that is being done by outsource service providers, SDVI explained.

“Once again, SDVI will highlight multiple enhancements that deliver meaningful gains in productivity and content processing efficiency,” Geoff Stedman, CMO, SDVI. “We continually look for ways to make media operations more responsive to the business needs of the larger organization, and the new enhancements to the Rally platform bring even more agility and efficiency to their work. Building on what we announced at NAB Show this year, we will also be highlighting the integrations with other technology providers including powerful functionality delivered by our Rally Application Services partners. From editing directly on S3 storage to managing external localization orders or local on-premises storage, the capabilities provided by our partners ensure that Rally users can leverage a full toolbox in optimizing their media workflows.”

One highlight for SDVI at IBC2025 will be new Rally Connect functionality. Rally Connect is a powerful extension to the Rally Platform that expands the orchestration, automation, and resource provisioning for the media supply chain to include deliveries to dozens of popular distribution services such as Amazon Prime Video, Dish, Hulu, Pluto, Tubi, YouTube TV, and many others.

SDVI noted that the list of endpoints has grown rapidly since NAB, and will continue to grow at a fast pace, thanks to an innovative approach for managing the “recipes” for each endpoint while still allowing the customization needed by some customers for their deliveries. At IBC, SDVI will be showing the power of Rally Connect for automated content deliveries.

Building on an already extensive ecosystem of technology and application partners, SDVI will also be demonstrating new functionality based on integrations with technology from Media-Anywhere for editing, EIKON Group for external job management, and Spectra Logic for on-premises storage management. These integrations further optimize media supply chains for SDVI customers by bringing capabilities into the Rally platform that previously existed only separately, thereby increasing visibility and management of these activities, the company reported.

In addition, SDVI will be showing new operator interfaces for its Rally Insight and Rally Connect products.

Rally Insight is a data visualization tool for analyzing massive volumes of supply chain data. Recent updates to Rally Insight include adding new visualizations and operator control to the data being presented, particularly for job costs and duration.

Rally Connect is a template-driven module within Rally that automates the packaging and delivery of content to distribution partners. The latest update to Rally Connect provides a new operational user interface that tracks delivery status for both content packages and metadata updates, giving operators a fast way to see which deliveries and updates have been successful and which might need attention, SDVI reported.

More information is available at www.sdvi.com.

The latest spotlight in TMT Insights’ “A Day in the Life” series, highlighting the skills needed for success in Media & Entertainment (M&E), focuses on Brian Pelletier, Vice President of Technical Solutions at SDVI, a cloud-based media supply chain management company.

Our conversation covers Brian's far-reaching M&E experience, SDVI's approach to customer projects, the industry's shift towards cloud-based workflows and supply chain reinvention, and the advice Brian would give his younger self.

Talk a bit about your current role and what SDVI brings to each customer engagement.

I lead SDVI’s Solutions Team, which includes technical account managers, solutions architects, and customer support engineers, helping customers define and implement their supply chain goals from both technological and operational standpoints. We examine what they want to achieve through technology, and then we ask: What do their operators need to make the system functional, so that the customer’s entire business benefits?

What sparked your drive to go into M&E, and what continues to fuel your passion?

What else is there for a lifelong media guy to do? I’ve been in the industry for nearly 35 years, in one way or another. I was a kid who grew up listening to the radio and watching MTV. In college, I got a job in master control, working overnight on Friday and Saturday, before I was even old enough to go out for a beer. I started taking on production jobs: master control, directing news, and production manager duties. I did just about every job at the local television level, including graphics, editing, and set design.

Eventually, I moved into regional technical direction for sports, which helped me understand how systems interconnect and led me to engineering and pre-sales roles. I worked on early server and automation systems, think tape-to-server transitions, which led to work as a solutions architect during the “channel in a box” era, working closely with graphics automation and later systems engineering teams. So, it’s safe to say I’ve done a bit of everything.

Many projects in the M&E industry now involve multiple partners and collaborators. How does SDVI approach these engagements? Do you start with a common baseline and customize from there?

Yes, there’s always a baseline approach. For example, every supply chain begins with getting content into the system before it can be modified or processed. That’s a foundational technology layer that’s common across engagements. From there, and I say this a lot, but it’s true: The most important thing we do is listen to how customers describe their pain points and challenges. We then help design a system that not only supports them technologically but also wins the hearts and minds of operations teams. We never want to implement tech just for the sake of having tech. It must be a real solution that moves their business forward, whether they’re shifting to the cloud or optimizing an existing cloud-based supply chain.

SDVI is a long-time partner of TMT Insights. Has SDVI’s collaboration with TMT Insights led to new product integrations, such as combining Rally with Polaris for media supply chain management?

The close partnership between SDVI and TMT has been crucial in delivering integrated solutions to customers. Although each product is agnostic, our two companies and their respective offerings complement each other well, and, similarly, Rally and Polaris are synergistic in the way that they operate. Polaris serves as a single pane of glass that sits atop your existing supply chain, handling order management, demand signaling, systemic gating logic and operational dashboards, while Rally is the supply chain orchestrator, managing all content processing, application services and infrastructure. Working in tandem, the two systems minimize friction between back-end automation and front-end operations.

Not only do our two systems work together in tandem, but our teams also work closely together to ensure customer success. We have tremendous respect for the deep technical expertise that TMT Insights has assembled. They know Rally very well, and they understand the concepts of Rally-managed media supply chains. We share a common vision to bring agility and efficiency to media operations, and the combination of what my team and the TMT team brings to projects makes that vision a reality for our customers.

Cloud-based platforms look significantly different today than it was a few years ago. How has SDVI Rally kept pace with industry trends and changing customer expectations?

Early on, many companies approached the cloud with a “lift and shift” mindset, simply replacing hardware with cloud-based equivalents. Now, customers want to reinvent their supply chains with smarter, more agile operations that can respond to changing business needs. The cloud isn’t just infrastructure anymore. It’s a platform for innovation. Rally has evolved with these changes and today, it truly enables elastic scaling of compute services and the integration of third-party tools.

Can you elaborate on the specific soft skills and mindset shifts that you believe are most important for success in the evolving media and entertainment industry?

Technical broadcast expertise will always be critical, but development skills and listening are the keys for translating customer needs into real solutions. Their businesses are changing rapidly—whether it's marketing, sales, or content distribution, and their systems must keep up. Content is still king, but the speed and diversity of content delivery are accelerating.

How does SDVI's team approach continuous learning and stay up to date with the latest industry trends and technologies beyond just the training provided by cloud vendors?

The SDVI team takes courses on new cloud providers and stays up to date with changes in AWS, GCP, and other platforms, leveraging the facilities each provider offers. We also have regular conversations and meetings with our partners: What’s new in your product? How can we better leverage those tools to stay current with industry trends?

Our customers drive us in that direction, too. When there's a new solution in a space we might not have heard of, our customers often bring it to our attention. We spend a lot of time listening to what they have to say. Staying current is essential for understanding and implementing new technologies.

If you could talk to 2015 Brian, what advice would you give your younger self?

Focus less on specific technologies and more on understanding broader industry trends. You can’t be an expert in everything, but what’s most important is grasping how all the pieces fit together.

No single person can do everything the job entails, so surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. I didn’t fully appreciate that before building our incredible team, that everyone brings something unique to the table.

I’d also tell myself to get comfortable with ambiguity and change. This industry is moving faster than ever. Business models, tools, and technologies come and go, but serving the customer remains constant.

####

TMT Insights is a professional services and software development company delivering leading capabilities in the digital supply chain, including media content management, cloud technology, and SaaS/D2C experiences to global media companies. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills within the media & entertainment, digital & cloud technology space, our team offers industry leading services such as strategy and CXO advisory, product ideation & innovation, cloud transformation, process re-engineering and development to our partners. As early adopters of new technologies, we embrace the power of collaboration and work with our partners to combine our guidance with action to further drive efficiency, value, and scale to their communities. www.tmtinsights.com

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—SDVI has signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate cloud-based media supply chain innovation, the company said today.

“We have been part of the AWS Partner Network since the beginning of the company, and with the SCA we are elevating our relationship to a new level,” said Lawrence Kaplan, president and chief executive officer for SDVI. “We look forward to both technical and commercial collaboration that will enable us to grow our product offering and market adoption significantly with AWS.”

Together, the companies aim to deliver solutions that simplify content supply chain deployment and operations, making media operations more agile and efficient for companies of all sizes, it said.

SDVI will leverage AWS services to automate and accelerate the exchange of content through the AWS cloud, making it easier and faster for media companies to move content between suppliers and distributors, it said.

The collaboration will also lead to the expansion of SDVI’s addressable market and the availability of its supply chain tools for any media company through AWS Marketplace. SDVI will work with AWS to integrate AWS GenAI tools into its core platform, providing next-generation capabilities for their joint customers, it said.

“SDVI and AWS share a commitment to being customer-centric, and we are excited about this collaboration as a mechanism to bring even more media supply chain innovation to our joint customers,” said Chris Blandy, global leader of strategy and business development for media and entertainment at AWS.

“This collaboration agreement builds on an already strong relationship between our organizations, and I look forward to executing on the plans that SDVI has laid out for its expanded offerings.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—SDVI has announced that it has integrated its Rally media supply chain management platform with the Spectra Vail multi-cloud data management solution.

The integration enables Rally users to manage content and files in cloud storage, in one or multiple on-premises storage systems, or in both.

“Our integration with Spectra Vail enables entirely new workflows and extends the ability of the Rally platform to access and manage content residing in on-premises storage,” said Andy Brinck, vice president of strategic alliances for SDVI. “Having a fully S3-compatible storage connector for on-premises storage available in Rally is a real game changer for workflows that depend on access to archive content.”

In announcing the integration, SDVI noted that many media organizations maintain large on-premises storage footprints with tens to thousands of hours of valuable content. As they look to monetize this content via cloud-based media supply chains, they need a way to access their on-premises storage to source content for supply chains managed by Rally and its network of application services.

The integration of Rally with Vail ensures that Rally can source content from Vail-managed on-premises or cloud storage, process that content based on supply chain parameters, and store the resulting output content in either standard S3 cloud storage or back to on-premises storage, the two companies reported.

Spectra Vail has helped numerous M&E organizations link their on-premises storage with their growing cloud storage, as users increasingly seek to integrate on-premises storage into their cloud workflows. Coupled with the SDVI Rally media supply chain management platform, the Spectra Vail solution enables customers to extend their content storage into the cloud even while having the option to maintain on-premises storage for original masters. The integration also provides a migration path from on-premises storage to cloud storage and/or repatriate over time — whether that’s slow migration of a full legacy archive or selective migration of content as needed to satisfy new content deals.

“As our customers look to take advantage of cloud processing for their media supply chains, we can see the clear need to integrate cloud workflows with on-premises storage,” said Hossein ZiaShakeri, senior vice president of business development and strategic alliances for Spectra Logic. “Supply chains managed by SDVI Rally need to be able to access content stored on on-premises storage and process it in the cloud with the resulting derivative asset being stored either in cloud storage or back to on-premises storage.”

Further information about SDVI and the company’s Rally media supply chain management platform is available at www.sdvi.com.

Missed any of our recent product news? Here is TV Tech's weekly wrap-up of new products, services and deployments we published in our newsletter between August 19 to August 23. The stories are listed from the newest on Friday August 23, day by day back to our stories from Monday August 19.

Dish Business Launches News Evolve M2 Set Top Box for Hotels

Evolve M2 allows hoteliers, senior living facilities and others to update internal systems and tailor settings and apps available to guests on each property.

Nugen Audio to Celebrate 20th Anniversary at IBC 2024

From the outset, Nugen Audio has been fully focused on providing solutions to real-life problems and will be highlighting new solutions during the show.

PilotDesk and LG Ad Solutions Ink New Long-Term Ad Tech Deal

As part of the agreement, YieldPilot will optimize and streamline ad inventory with automated yield optimization for publishers.

Three Reasons Why Brazil’s TV 3.0 Decision Matters Here

What does the accomplishment mean to U.S. broadcasters grappling with the myriad of challenges the voluntary transition to 3.0 has created?

Multiple Trends Driving Dynamic KVM Market for M&E

With the industry’s move to IP, lower latency, more flexibility in the offing.

Revolutionizing Broadcast Production Models With Dante

Access to Dante in the cloud allows broadcasters to rethink how they approach audio production.

Evertz to Focus on Software Defined Video Networking at IBC 2024

Company’s SDVN solution targets media companies moving to IP or expanding all-IP infrastructures using SMPTE ST 2110 and NMOS.

Yospace To Showcase Dynamic Ad Insertion Developments At IBC 2024

The company’s technology powered delivery of 10 billion ads on four continents this summer.

SDVI to Feature Latest Rally Access Workstation Developments at IBC 2024

Rally enables anywhere, anytime access to hosted edit workstations and content in the cloud.

Actus Digital To Highlight Compliance, Monitoring Product Developments At IBC 2024

The company will showcase its technology and mark its 20th anniversary at the show.

Sony Electronics Unveils 4K Handheld Professional Camcorders with AI-Based Tools

The camcorders offer AI-based subject recognition autofocus, tracking, and auto framing.

RCN Colombia Leverages Zixi To Streamline Content Distribution To U.S. Affiliates

The Latin American broadcaster is using Zixi’s IP solution portfolio in place of satellite.

NAB Studio Deploys Unytalk Live Interactive Webcast Solution

The studio is using the solution to produce and broadcast interactive content.

You Can Now Smell Your TV Programs for Just $180

Elevated Perceptions has launched “MovieScent,” an AI-powered device that the company says releases real-time scents based on events and environments within movies, TV shows, televised sporting events and streams.

Chyron To Feature Latest Enhancements for PRIME, PAINT and LIVE At IBC 2024

The company will show a new Chyron PRIME playout workflow that simplifies operation.

Mo-Sys To Feature MoViewer Multi-Camera Virtual Production Preview Solution At IBC 2024

MoViewer eliminates the need for per-camera render nodes.

SAN FRANCISCO—SDVI will demonstrate how its Rally media supply chain management platform enables media companies to optimize the productivity of their media operations across both automated and manual tasks for a wide range of use cases during IBC 2024, Sept. 13-16, at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center.

Rally helps media organizations achieve business agility, accelerate operational efficiency and gain new intelligence about their media operations at every step of the supply chain—from content receipt to delivery, the company said.

Whether moving broadcast playout to the cloud, spinning up new FAST channels, satisfying the needs of a digital D2C service, fulfilling new licensing deals or consolidating disparate operations into a cohesive core, SDVI enables organizations to meet the challenges of a dynamic and changing business, the company said.

At IBC, the it will showcase the recently introduced Rally Access Workstation, a new way to use Adobe Premiere Pro in the cloud as part of a fully managed, end-to-end, cloud-based media supply chain, it said.

The workstation enables anywhere, anytime access to hosted edit workstations and content in the cloud, dynamically managing associated infrastructure deployment so that media organizations can scale their edit capacity easily and cost-effectively within an automated media supply chain, it said.

SDVI will demonstrate how Rally Access Workstation can be used to make manual edits in the context of an automated media supply chain without user tools and without the content ever leaving the cloud, it said.

The company will also showcase the multiple tools available within the Rally platform for media transformation, audio manipulation, captions and subtitling, AI-based metadata augmentation, QC and file validation as well as integration with localization service providers, it said.

Making more than 60 applications available through Rally, the Rally Application Services ecosystem gives users a large array of tools to use in their supply chains without expensive upfront software or user licensing, time-consuming procurement processes, complex system integration and difficult security evaluations, it said.

See SDVI at IBC 2024 at Stand 5.G55.

More information is available on the company’s website.

SDVI will demonstrate how its Rally media supply chain management platform enables media companies to optimize media operation productivity at the 2024 NAB Show.

Designed to support every step of their supply chains from content receipt to delivery, Rally helps media organizations achieve business agility, accelerate operational efficiency and gain new intelligence about their media operations, the company said.

Whether organizations are moving broadcast playout to the cloud, spinning up new FAST channels, satisfying the needs of a digital D2C service, fulfilling new licensing deals or simply consolidating disparate operations into a cohesive core, SDVI enables them to meet the challenges of a dynamic and changing business, it said.

SDVI will highlight its recently introduced Rally Access Workstation, a new way to use Adobe Premiere Pro in the cloud as part of a fully managed end-to-end, cloud-based media supply chain. 

The new workstation enables anywhere, anytime access to hosted edit workstations and content in the cloud. It can dynamically manage associated infrastructure deployment, allowing media organizations to scale their edit capacity within an automated media supply chain. SDVI will show how manual edits can be made within the context of an automated media supply chain without user tools and the content leaving the cloud, it said.

The company also will demonstrate the media applications available via the Rally platform, including multiple tools for media transformation, audio manipulation, captions and subtitling, AI-based metadata augmentation, QC and file validation and integration with localization service providers. More than 60 applications are available through Rally, and SDVI adds more every month. The Rally Application Services ecosystem gives users a large array of tools to use in their supply chains without the expense of software or user licensing, it said.

SDVI will showcase many of the almost 150 new features released since the last NAB Show for its Rally media supply chain platform. Among them are media asset metadata capabilities, such as asset hierarchies with support for MovieLabs 2030 Vision and its Ontology for Media Creation; a new version of Rally Access for metadata-guided QC and edit work, job scheduling enhancements to manage concurrency and pacing and user interface enhancements, the company said.

See SDVI at NAB Show Booth W2313.

More information is available on the company’s website.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—Cloud-based media supply chain solutions provider SDVI has  introduced Rally Access Workstation, a fully managed solution for editing in the cloud with Adobe Premiere Pro. 

This new addition to the company's Rally media supply chain management platform enables anywhere, anytime access to hosted edit workstations and content in the cloud, dynamically managing associated infrastructure deployment so that media organizations can scale their edit capacity easily and cost-effectively within an automated media supply chain.

"Manual edits are an essential part of media supply chains, and now they are moving to the cloud — like everything else in the supply chain — in a fully managed way," said Chris Brähler, vice president of product at SDVI. "Only with Rally Access Workstation can users automatically spin up a licensed Adobe workstation, fill the bin, make edits on the timeline, and hit submit, and the supply chain carries on. It's a fully managed engagement that integrates human tasks and automated jobs, supported by automatic infrastructure provisioning. By moving manual activity into the cloud, Rally Access Workstation represents the next step in fully migrating supply chains."

Available now to all Rally users, Rally Access Workstation makes it possible to run an instance of Adobe Premiere Pro on a cloud-based virtual workstation with all content (high-resolution and/or proxy) preloaded in the bin, as well as markers on the timeline corresponding to workorder items that need attention, as identified by automated processing upstream in the supply chain. Because content stays in the cloud, users avoid latencies and egress costs commonly associated with on-premises edit workstations, SDVI reported. 

By implementing Adobe Premiere Pro workstations in the cloud with Rally Access Workstation, Rally users reduce the burden of maintaining and scheduling physical edit suites. Rather than manage numerous costly machines on premises or in remote-work environments, Rally users can quickly connect authorized editors to high-end edit software and the content they need, on their preferred device, via a web browser and internet connection. With Rally Access Workstation, users can instantly scale up access to address peaks in demand or to free up space in on-premises edit bays for other, more creative work, and scale down just as quickly when those resources are no longer needed.

"Rally Access Workstation is a significant development for the platform — and for the industry — because it enables tight integration of Adobe Premiere Pro into the media supply chain without incurring data movement in or out of the cloud," added Brähler. "While Rally users could already utilize Premiere Pro locally in their supply chain, this new capability expands access to our industry-leading editing software and makes utilization as simple as starting a work order."

Further information about SDVI and the company's Rally media supply chain platform is available at www.sdvi.com. 

For many companies in media & entertainment, sustainability is more than a word: It’s a mission for these manufacturers who are taking serious steps to become more sustainable and environmentally responsible in their business practices. Here are some views of how the industry is doing in attaining sustainability, from some of the people making it happen.

The Big Picture
The drive towards sustainability in television touches upon two key areas: The production and distribution of TV content via broadcasting, streaming, and other delivery systems. The other is the various consumer devices that access and display this content.

Let’s start with TV content production and distribution. Thanks to framework organizations such as WeAreAlbert, (an environmental organization aiming to encourage the television and film production industry to reduce waste and its carbon footprint), or consultancies like Mrs. GreenFilm, the industry is seeing more productions taking steps to promote and impose sustainable practices on set, according to François Polarczyk, sustainability director for Accedo. 

“Connecting directly to the grid, hiring local crew to avoid travel, and promoting the ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ loop in costumes and set buildings are the top criteria to me,” he said.

Polarczyk points to the Responsible Media Forum (RBF) as one of the leading organizations promoting sustainability in media, with members such as the BBC, Bauer Media Group, NBCUniversal, Sky, Virgin Media, and Warner Brothers Universal backing its efforts. The RBF’s sustainability initiatives include DIMPACT (an online tool for calculating the carbon emissions of digital content’s downstream value chain) and media sustainability conferences such as “Mirrors or Movers.”

“The streaming industry is responsible for 3–4% of global CO2 emissions,” he said. “DIMPACT is looking at providing a methodology to assess and reduce energy consumption of the media chain.”

“There are more and more initiatives that have started and aim to shine a light on being more responsible with the resources our planet offers,” agreed Chris Brähler, vice president of product for SDVI. “For example, the DPP [Digital Production Partnership] has been leading the way with their ‘Committed to Sustainability’ campaign, while other bodies like the NAB Show recently introduced sustainability-focused awards to increase visibility.”

V-Nova is a member of the Greening of Streaming group and the chair of its compression working group, which is working with Low Energy Sustainable Streaming (LESS) Accord recommendations to help streaming services reduce end-to-end energy consumption. 

In order to become more sustainable, the streaming industry should first focus on ways to reduce the utilization of existing systems, said Sam Orton-Jay, V-Nova’s vice president of product. 

“One possibility is rolling out better encoding technologies to reduce transcoding power requirements and the amount of data we deliver, to enable some reduction in required storage and delivery infrastructure over time” he said. “Secondly, a major part of the discussions so far on the LESS Accord has been the idea of a ‘Good enough’ quality of service that considers energy usage rather than simply prioritizing quality at all costs. Try to evaluate if you are delivering higher resolutions to certain devices than they really need. Finally, start asking key sustainability questions both of internal teams and external vendors alike. It is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal at this stage.”

From the Consumer Side
As for consumer products such as Smart TVs and other devices, and their impact on the environment as new models are purchased and older models that end up in landfills? 

“Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of their purchasing decisions, and so are many manufacturers who are choosing to offer more sustainable goods, build out ESG (environment, social, and governance) strategies and report on their environmental efforts,” replied Patty Minichiello, global brand experience manager for TMT Insights. 

As well, “consumer brands are making strides in reducing packaging and plastics in their product and some offer buyback programs for old tech, such as Apple,“ SDVI’s Brähler added. “But a lot more can and has to be done in this area, with different countries looking at legislation to force behavior.”  

It's not just television production and distribution that needs to become more sustainable, but the influence that this industry exerts on society as a whole. 

For instance, “advertising and monetization from a wider perspective needs to be taken into account,” Polarczyk observed. “It is not only producing and delivering advertising that has a huge impact in terms of carbon emissions; the content of advertising also needs to be taken into account. For example, seeing an advert for New Zealand tourism if you’re based in London will have another impact, compared to seeing promotions around local farms to visit.”

Individual Efforts
Each of these companies have publicly committed themselves to pursuing sustainable business practices in the TV industry. Such sustainability commitments are prominently posted on their respective websites, and typically spelled out in very clear detail.

Case in point: “At Accedo, we recently launched our ‘Sustainable Marketplace’ to help vendors build their video applications leveraging sustainable vendors and products,” said Polarczyk. “It enables video service providers to make buying decisions based not only on product features, but also on sustainable KPIs (key performance indicators) to cover carbon emissions reduction, audience influence, and community impact. 

“We also released a new study, which looked at the energy usage of various streaming devices and a number of popular streaming applications. It uncovered some key areas of actions and guidelines to reduce energy usage of video devices.”

ATEME is another company that has taken a proactive approach. In 2021 it launched its  Green Delivery solution, an integrated end-to-end tool designed to allow OTT and DTH operators to reduce their video delivery carbon footprint. Green Delivery brings together carbon-efficient components to reduce hardware requirements, bandwidth usage and energy consumption. 

(Read: NAB Show Launches Excellence in Sustainability Awards)

SDVI’s sustainability efforts are largely centered around saving power, which means better utilization of the infrastructure used for content processing, according to Brähler.

“This can firstly be done by using the public cloud, as sharing compute and storage resources inherently means using less energy,” he said. “If I don’t process something on that machine, someone else is, and it‘s not just sitting there idle but still using energy. If I then optimize my supply chain and eliminate duplicate work and more efficiently use the resources at hand, I save even more energy. Lastly, choose a vendor that uses data centers and cloud providers that invest in green energy, so that even when I use less energy because even after I optimize my operations, the little energy I do use is created carbon free.”

V-Nova’s commitment to sustainability is inherent in their MPEG 5, Part 2 LCEVC (Low-Complexity Enhancement Video Coding) streaming solution, which the company says enhances the performance of existing codecs to reduce energy consumption during transcoding by up to 70%, while augmenting compression efficiency by up to 40%.

“It’s encouraging to hear how much the sustainability of video workflows is now on the agenda for our customers,” said Orton-Jay. “Even if not immediately so, they certainly engage when we bring up the significant savings that can be made in the energy consumption of their systems thanks to optimizations in their video compression technology. The fact that it often goes hand in hand with cost reduction tends to help too.”

This “doing more with less” approach is also being pursued by Zixi. ”We’re making our software cost-effective with 14x less CPU than other solutions in the market, 10x port efficiency, and virtual machine efficiency—requiring 50% less computing power,” said Gordon Brooks, CEO of Zixi. “All of these innovations combined save customers money, making our solutions highly sustainable and attractive in procurement.”

“In order to make meaningful progress towards sustainability, technology buyers need to make it mandatory, rather than a plus or an option—it needs to be a qualification of the procurement process,” he added. “And then, as a supplier it’s on us to do everything possible to be as sustainable as cost-effective to make it as attractive as possible.” l

LOS ANGELES and SUNNYVALE, Calif.—SDVI and TMT Insights have announced that the international anime brand and streaming service Crunchyroll has deployed the SDVI Rally media supply chain management platform along with TMT Insights Polaris operational management platform. 

The combination of the Rally platform with Polaris provided Crunchyroll with a powerful solution for orchestrating its content ingest, subtitling, dubbing, and packaging for delivery on the company's popular anime OTT services, the companies said. 

The deployment occurred as Crunchyroll is working to re-engineer and optimize its cloud-based enterprise technology stack supporting OTT streaming experiences. 

"Crunchyroll is a great example of a customer that will derive tremendous benefits in terms of workflow efficiency and content capacity from the migration of their media supply chain to the cloud," commented Simon Adler, senior vice president of North American sales, SDVI. "The combination of Rally with Polaris ensures that their operators have an easy-to-use system that can scale to meet ever-growing content throughput requirements."

"It was immediately clear that to achieve Crunchyroll's goals, SDVI's Rally was best positioned to be central to that architecture leveraging its expansive marketplace and workflow capabilities united with Polaris' intuitive UX front-end," remarked Andy Shenkler, CEO of TMT Insights. "This fully cloud-native media supply chain will increase their ability to enhance and grow their global offerings."

At the core of its content distribution architecture, the Rally and Polaris platforms streamline Crunchyroll's ability to scale the infrastructure efficiently and gain operational visibility required to ensure delivery of high-quality premium content experiences for the anime community. Collectively, the Rally and Polaris deployments deliver significant organizational benefits including more efficient content library storage, streamlined workflow orchestration, increased collaboration among editorial teams, reduced production costs, and decreased delivery and order fulfillment times, the companies reported. 

Further information about SDVI and the company's Rally media supply chain platform is available at www.sdvi.com. More information about TMT Insights and the company's Polaris order management system is available at www.tmtinsights.com. 

TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2023 NAB Show?

GEOFF STEDMAN: I think we’re going to see some interesting new technologies that can help media companies accelerate the content versioning process to make content more relevant to different audiences and markets around the world. From subbing and dubbing, to captioning, to editing for different cultural standards, I expect to see new uses of intelligent automation and AI/ML techniques to assist human operators in a way that increases productivity and helps them meet the growing demand for customized versions of content. The integration of automated processes with manual workorders for content versioning and localization will improve efficiency and increase the speed and capacity of these media supply chains.

TVT: What will be your most important product news?

STEDMAN: As a SaaS platform, we release new software updates to the Rally platform every two weeks, meaning that our customers have access to a continuous stream of new features. Rolled up over time, these new capabilities extend the applicability of the platform to every step of the complete media supply chain, from content receipt through content processing and packaging to content distribution. Many of our recent developments on the Rally platform address the unique demands of studio content delivery, as major studios look to benefit from the agility and efficiency of Rally-optimized supply chains to transform content for 4K, HDR and IMF packaging. And, as in broadcast supply chains, integrating editing processes with automated processing enables creative professionals to gain productivity by using time-based metadata and a new Rally capability to spin up Adobe edit sessions in the cloud or new application services such as Colorfront and Cinecert. Finally, we are just about to release a new asset hierarchy capability in Rally, enabling users to use asset relationships to manage their content and metadata, including support for the Movielabs 2030 Vision and its Ontology for Media Creation.

TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?

STEDMAN: The SDVI Rally media supply chain platform is the only solution that optimizes every step of the supply chain from content receipt through content delivery. Rally uses intelligent automation and cloud-native resource management to provision the applications and infrastructure needed for each task, collecting metadata along the way to guide further optimization and downstream activities.

Rally also manages the manual workorders that are needed to complete many QC, compliance and versioning tasks by using time-based metadata harvested from upstream automated processing to point operators to specific points in a media file that need their attention, thereby making their work more efficient and increasing their productivity. Metadata and job information from every step in a supply chain is collected and normalized, enabling operators to gain unprecedented visibility into their media operations through our Rally Insight data visualization and dashboard service 

TVT: NAB is celebrating its centennial this year. How many NAB Shows have you been to and do you have any particular standout memories of past shows?

STEDMAN: The 2023 NAB Show will be my 20th show, so I guess I’m also celebrating a milestone of sorts. I have lots of great memories from this show over the years, and one that will always standout to me is when (at a prior company) we hosted a press event in the Fashion Show Mall and the opening line delivered by our CEO was, “Attention Shoppers…” with our blue lights flashing on the front of our product.

SAN FRANCISCO—It’s a technology that continues to prove its worth and defy its detractors, boasting of speed and touting reliability as a high-capacity storage vault, a means of disaster recovery and a way to share content. 

And now, as archiving in the cloud continues to mature, the technology continues to win over large broadcasters and small production houses alike. It has proven to be secure, the capacity to handle massive amounts of data, and support for collaboration between geographic locales separated by continents. 

The next steps: Driving long-term value, improving search functions, meeting the needs of different types of customers and addressing thorny issues like cost of egress and long-term adaptability.

Not Just a Simple Migration
“People have become much more comfortable with the reliability, security and affordability of the cloud for content archives,” said Geoff Stedman, chief marketing officer of SDVI. “But what people are also realizing is that simply lifting and shifting an archive to the cloud is not [always] the right approach.”

While the explosion of SVOD, AVOD and FAST channels offers new opportunities to monetize content, that scenario only works if the content can be found, accessed and transported through a media supply chain and then prepared for a distribution partner, Stedman said. “[Migration to a cloud archive] presents an opportunity to standardize and normalize content file formats, clean up and enrich metadata and create an archive of golden masters that can be monetized across many different distribution outlets.”

In addition, it’s not just important how you migrate your content into the cloud, but rather if you have visibility into cloud—and the ability easily retrieve it. 

“An organization’s cloud environment can be a bit nebulous,” said Brett Beers, vice president of technology for TMT Insights, a professional services and software development company. “I predict there will need to be more of a focus on investing in productivity and operational tools that will widen the net in terms of the user type that can both interact and manage cloud technology.” 

Plus, customers moving their archives to the cloud are not just looking to migrate a tape library; they are looking to derive more long-term value from their assets by applying meaningful metadata during the ingest process, said Evan Statton, senior principal architect of M&E for Amazon Web Services. 

“When cloud archiving first came on the scene, simply moving massive amounts of content to and across clouds was the clear challenge,” said Jon Finegold, chief marketing officer for Signiant. “The tools provided by those early cloud systems simply weren’t cut out for massive media archives.”

Today’s software can now effectively move petabytes of content into and out of cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure and Wasabi.

Migration Trends 
Across the content creation marketplace, there is new, significant interest for companies of varying sizes to consider migration to the cloud. For some, a lift-and-shift approach might be the right step, particularly for an organization new to the technology. For others, designing a digital supply chain from scratch is a more valuable approach. 

“Regardless of the path you pick, the first step is visibility,” said Beers. “What do you have, and then the next step is action: what am I going to do with it?”

TMT Insights faced such a scenario when working with a post house in Burbank, Calif., that was moving from a fully on-premise operation to a 100% cloud-native digital supply chain. “For this engagement, they were able to decrease the time to market and enable rapid innovation by not having the challenges that come with having reliance or integration [with] their legacy systems,” Beers said.

The next challenge: How to help customers easily find and access content archived in the cloud. Several companies, including Signiant, have solutions that automatically index assets and create preview files so customers can perform simple searches across their archives—whether those be on-prem or cloud—without having to move the assets. “Archives need to be actionable,” Finegold said about the company’s Media Engine software. “Accessing them must be quick, easy and cost-effective. When asked for a clip, users need to be able to search, preview and send those assets anywhere, fast.”

TMT Insights also sees increased demand for this type of functionality. The company’s Polaris operational management platform allows users to manage their end-to-end cloud-based media supply chains via a file manager module within Polaris. That module enables enhanced visibility and gives users controls to manage their ingest and prequalification workflows. By providing users access to the cloud in a purposeful way, one of TMT Insight’s clients was able to increase their on-time delivery from an average of 65 percent to 99 percent, Beers said.

Mining Your Value
Another key trend in the cloud movement: Ensuring customers derive additional long-term value from their assets by applying meaningful metadata during ingest. AWS helped Formula One (F1) achieve this using the AWS Media2Cloud solution when it migrated more than 4 petabytes of archived video content to Amazon S3 and now uses artificial intelligence/machine learning services to reduce the time it takes to catalog content. 

“Additionally, we’ve learned from our customers that ‘one size does not fit all’ for archive retrieval patterns,” Statton said, referring to the Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class and Flexible Retrieval storage class, which are designed to help customers fine-tune retrieval performance based on the needs of archive usage.

The cloud is proving attractive to organizations of all sizes. Giving small creative groups the ability to easily access the cloud was the impetus behind a new release from Quantum that integrates a media asset management module and shared storage software. The goal was to remove the complexity that can often hamper a smaller creative group when it comes to configuring separate devices and setting up separate production workflows.

Quantum’s H4000 Essential provides a standard set of features—automatic context indexing, shared storage—but doesn’t require specialized IT skills to support. That was the case for the creative agency Switch, which works on multiple projects simultaneously via the StorNext collaborative shared storage system and the Quantum cloud-based analytics software. 

The benefit: A small creative company can quickly deploy production-ready shared storage in the cloud, allowing for collaborative, remote video editing in the cloud.

SDVI is seeing this as well, as companies of all sizes realize they can become more efficient and agile when they take advantage of cloud technologies, Stedman said. “Moving their archives and media processing to the cloud, even at a relatively smaller scale, frees them up to focus on their core creative business because they no longer have to spend time procuring, deploying and managing on-premise infrastructure.” 

AWS is seeing demand from all types of customers, from TV stations to larger broadcasters looking to migrate hundreds of linear channels to AWS. The company was recently awarded an Engineering Excellence Award from the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) for its “Color in the Cloud” cloud-based remote service that enables customers of all sizes to perform high-fidelity color grading in
the cloud.

Egress Costs
Challenges remain, however. While the cloud has proven its mettle at handling shared content with speed and reliability, there are instances where a cloud gateway linked to a high-capacity storage infrastructure may be a better fit. As veteran media and entertainment tech companies have long known, storage on LTO data tape can be lower in cost per terabyte than primary disk storage.

And in some instances, the best archiving solution is a combination of the old and the new. Software from companies like XenData can be used to create a hybrid archive that links together on-premise storage with the cloud so that file-based applications can write to and read from cloud storage. Using a XenData S3 Server interface with a XenData LTO archive creates a private cloud storage solution allows an organization to keep the attractive aspects of LTO storage onsite. In this scenario, files can be remotely downloaded free of any egress charges.

And that’s another lingering issue for archiving in the cloud to address: The cost
of egress. 

Though the industry is moving in that direction, workflows requiring heavy visual effects and editing work are still not fully realized within the cloud to run at scale. So files sometimes must be pulled down and worked on outside of the cloud, with a heavy price tag to boot.

Understanding those types of cloud economics continues to be a key challenge for customers when it comes to archiving in the cloud. “Customers are capturing so much more content and want to preserve all of it,” Finegold said. “But for how long? How much content will be retrieved? When will it impact things like egress costs? These and other questions make predicting costs a real challenge.”

Others say the cost of egress is generally not an issue for content companies moving their archives to the cloud since content deals can be struck between content owners and cloud-based streaming services that are fulfilled without content ever leaving the cloud—with a majority of local, on-premise editing accomplished using proxy files that are a fraction the size of the original master in the cloud. 

The most important priorities in an archiving system will be familiar to anyone navigating the modern content creation space: Agility. Adaptability. Visibility. Ideally, as Beers from TMT Insights put it, “Our goal is to make the shift to the cloud less intimidating, to show clients the way and give them the tools they need to navigate that path themselves.” 

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—SDVI has hired Mark Harahan as vice president of sales for North America and promoted current sales vice president Simon Adler to senior vice president of sales for North America. The company said Adler and Harahan will lead the its customer outreach in the U.S. and Canada, and helping new customers optimize their media supply chains in the cloud.

In a press statement, SDVI CEO Larry Kaplan said, "With the continued growth of our North American business, it's the perfect time to expand our sales leadership structure. Simon has cultivated deep relationships with our customers and partners and is a trusted sales leader. Mark brings with him a wealth of relevant experience, industry relationships and market knowledge that will enable SDVI to continue its growth path with existing customers and new accounts."

Harahan has more than 25 years of sales experience in the media and entertainment industry. He has held strategic sales roles with Grass Valley, Miranda Technologies and Sony Electronics.

On joining the company, Harahan said, "SDVI originated the concept of cloud-native supply chains for the M&E industry, and they've built an impressive leadership position by enabling media companies to achieve new levels of operational efficiency, react faster to market changes, and have better visibility into resource utilization. I look forward to working with new and existing SDVI customers to help them take full advantage of the benefits of an SDVI-powered, cloud-based media supply chain."

Adler has been with SDVI since 2017, and has played an instrumental role in expanding the roster of SDVI customers, including work with A+E Networks, Comcast, FotoKem, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures.

WASHINGTON—So many things have changed in the television industry in the last couple of decades, and the pace of change only seems to accelerate. What seemed highly unlikely five years ago becomes commonplace today, and producing content in the cloud is one of those things.

The acceptance of at least some new techniques and processes can be attributed to COVID-19, which overnight forced us to get things done without actually being in the same place. And “getting things done without actually being in the same place” could be the dictionary definition of cloud production.

If your only concession to COVID is to do an occasional Zoom meeting, you may get the impression that video in the cloud is convenient but nothing special. However, with production in the cloud, you can get the quality you want to get.

“It is no longer accurate to assume that a cloud-based production is of lesser quality,” said Martin Jolicoeur, director of product management for Grass Valley. “One of the things we have learned from being forced to work remotely is that cloud technology is capable of handling top-tier live events.”

Keep An Open Mind
Jolicoeur said that keeping an open mind—and an open system—is the way to build a successful cloud production strategy.

“The global pandemic forced us to adopt new ways of working,” he said. “This has expanded our range of possibilities: SDI, IP and cloud all have applications for which they are best suited, both in terms of production capability and cost. We need to master the entire range of production options so that we aren’t locked into a single model. By being open, we can ensure that we are applying the best business and operational model for every production that we do.”

Like so many things where the internet is concerned, what you can do in the cloud is mostly limited by your imagination. You could use production talent from anywhere there is an excellent, stable connection—which brings up the subject of what the concerns can be for creating a production workflow in the cloud.

“The cloud offers unique opportunities for production workflows, but it also adds some new challenges that need to be considered,” Chris Brähler, vice president of product at SDVI. “Connectivity and latencies are certainly factors that play a bigger role in a cloud-based environment than when everything is available ‘next-door’ on premise.”

Relearn Some Techniques
Those of us who grew up in the industry and learned our roles by actually handling physical equipment and cables need to relearn some techniques and processes that we thought were the basics of production workflow.

“Ensuring that the entire organization understands the strategy and the benefits that will accrue to them is probably the most important factor in determining success,” said Grass Valley’s Jolicoeur.

Getting your head around how assembling a production in the cloud is key to making it work for your organization. A look into one company’s product—SDVI’s Rally—is one example of cloud production workflow.

Rally can automate content verification and metadata enhancement processing, which can assist an operator in the production supply chain. This can include steps as typical as creating proxies or daily renders. Rally Access, available as a plugin for Adobe Premiere and accessible via browser using a cloud-services provider such as Accurate.Video, can be used to both edit content, and also to review and approve edits and sequences. 

Sometimes it seems like you need a “spirit guide” to appreciate how cloud production can benefit your creative and distribution processes. If you step back and think about it, the benefits make sense.

“Designing a unifying workflow is key to getting your content accurately and securely distributed to all stages of production,” said Colin McDonald, product manager for cine products at Teradek.

The company’s Teradek Core is a control platform that allows productions to securely manage, distribute and collaborate with live camera feeds, instant proxy files for editorial, high-quality recordings for dailies, and low-latency HDR streams for post-production.

Using a hybrid cloud approach to media asset management is at the heart of Tedial’s introduction of its smartWork Media Integration Platform.

According to Julian Fernandez-Campon, Tedial CTO,  “a hybrid-cloud architecture offers broadcasters the ability to move operations in-line with business objectives quickly while maintaining current systems in operation ensuring a low-risk transition into the cloud. Customers retain full control of their critical workflows and operations while benefiting from the latest cutting-edge cloud features, technologies and infrastructures. 

“smartWork is based upon no-code architecture, follows Infrastructure as a Code (IaaC) and can be deployed on-premises, on any cloud or in a hybrid architecture seamlessly, allowing customers to integrate the more suitable systems for each deployment.”

Your Team Has the Skills
Just what sort of skills are needed to make all of this work? Look around at your team—it already has the skills.

“We worked with a group of top news and sports media companies to create cloud-native, microservice-based, media services,” said Paul Shen, CEO of TVU.

Shen said that one of these micro-applications is TVU Producer, a cloud-based live-production service. With its sync technology, the entire production team can all work from their home offices with their laptops and a normal home internet service. The application enables an audio engineer to have his own audio mixing panel and the video production engineer has his own live production panel. 

All production crews can communicate with each other in real time, as if they are working in the same physical space, and all the commands and instructions are executed precisely at the intended time without any misalignment introduced by network delay.

As well-formed as some of these scenarios sound, there is room to improve the processes and iron out the wrinkles.

“We are merely in the infancy of cloud-based production,” McDonald said. “Right now, content is being pushed to all levels of production without a direct form of feedback.  But soon, each of those departments and stakeholders will be able to push information back. This constant flow of information on a single platform will mean productions can work faster and with more accuracy.”

Increased Acceptance
Interestingly, the Covid crisis of the past two-plus years played a role in the increased acceptance of working on a real production using virtual tools.

“The biggest take-away has been that it works,” said SDVI’s Brähler. “Obstacles that were thought to be too big to overcome now had to be worked through, as there was no alternative.”

It looks like there is still a place for content creators to have their own facilities, even as the capabilities of “virtual” facilities are expanded and allow for greater flexibility.

“We believe completely in the cloud and IP’s ability to transform live production in a way that dramatically expands who and how video is produced and delivered,” said TVU’s Shen. “It’s what drives us to keep creating.”

The hesitancy from just a few years ago to shift to a cloud-based workflow has been replaced with urgency. The many improvements of a cloud production model became clear as COVID restrictions forced producers into a remote production model, Shen said. 

BURBANK, Calif.—Venera Technologies has partnered with SDVI integrating its Quasar cloud-native QC service with SDVI’s Rally cloud-based media supply chain management platform.

A cloud-native QC service, Quasar has passed AWS’s architecture and security guidelines. It provides dynamic scalability, high-level security and extensive QC capabilities, the company said.

The Quasar solution offers advanced features like QC of 4K/UHD content, IMF packages, HDR (Dolby Vision), Slate detection, Harding PSE validation and reference-based QC.

The SDVI Rally platform is a media supply chain solution that helps media companies take advantage of cloud-based processing for workflows from ingest through processing, packaging, distribution and archiving.

“The Rally platform was architected to enable operators to use the best tools for every step of their media supply chains,” said Andy Brinck, vice president of strategic alliances for SDVI. “With the addition of the cloud-native Quasar QC service, our customers have yet another world-class solution to utilize for ensuring the highest quality content processing and delivery.”

With seamless integration with the Rally platform, Quasar can enable media companies to ensure the quality of their cloud-based content and its adherence to specification for any delivery platform, the company said.

More information is available on the Venera Technologies and SDVI websites. 

OTTAWA—Tech companies in the media and entertainment (M&E) industry are making their business and production practices more sustainable by reducing their impact on the environment and contributions to climate change.

“The video industry is taking the ‘green initiative’ seriously,” said Thierry Fautier, vice president of strategy for Harmonic. “It has set a target and is now working toward achieving its goals. We have seen operators targeting zero carbon emission by 2040. There is also a new industry forum called ‘Greening of Streaming’ that is addressing greener video delivery.”

This last sustainability effort is particularly important, as “video traffic represented an estimated 84% of all consumer IP traffic in 2021 (up from 79% in 2016) according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index,” said Alain Nochimowski, CTO at the OTT/TV platform solutions company Viaccess-Orca. “Fortunately, the industry is starting to understand that it will need to take proactive steps toward being greener.”

Real Companies, Tangible Actions
Across the M&E industry, specific companies and organizations are taking tangible steps to make themselves and the industry as a whole more sustainable. They include video delivery provider Ateme, live video contribution tech provider Aviwest, SDVI and IBC, among many others.

Given the billions of daily viewers of streaming services, reducing its environmental impact is a gigantic task.

“The largest source of power consumption for video services is the device, followed by the network and then the data center,” Fautier said. “Some work has already been done on the device side with smart power management schemes deployed and regulations looking at limiting the display consumption. On the network side, the move to 5G is aimed at drastically reducing the watt-per-bit cost; reports show that cloud infrastructure is more power-efficient than a classical on-premises infrastructure approach.”

Harmonic is enhancing its video compression algorithms to reduce traffic levels on IP networks, thus cutting the amount of electricity needed to deliver video content.

“We are doing this  by using AI-based encoding techniques such as content-aware encoding [CAE], dynamic frame-rate encoding [DFE] and dynamic resolution encoding [DRE] to improve legacy codecs; also AVC mostly but also HEVC,” said Fautier.

The company is also promoting new, more efficient codecs such as AV1 and VVC, plus the LCEVC (low complexity enhancement video encoding) “intermediate solution” that combines legacy equipment and new approaches “to enable a significant savings in bandwidth and processing power,” he said.

Use of the cloud is critical to meeting such goals. “Harmonic is 100% committed to cloud,” added Fautier. The company is also asking OTT content providers to consider using power-efficient multicasting in place of unicasting, bearing in mind that doing so would reduce delivery flexibility for consumers.

One Stream for a Million Requests
Content delivery solutions provider Broadpeak says its multicast adaptive bitrate (MABR) distribution product is a practical way to address unicasting’s (one-to-one) high network usage.

“Without multicast ABR, if a million people are streaming the same content at the same time, there are one million active connections requiring ad-hoc capacity throughout the network and consuming power accordingly,” said Yann Begassat, Broadpeak’s business development manager. “With multicast ABR, there is only one stream to address the million requests, dramatically reducing capacity needs and energy consumption.”

SDVI’s Rally media supply chain management platform is helping users such as A&E Networks, Comcast, Discovery, Sky, ViacomCBS, and WarnerMedia manage their end-to-end video assets in a more efficient (and thus more sustainable) manner. 

“For our part, we have committed to a new sustainability program that makes all usage of the Rally media supply chain optimization platform, going back to the beginning of 2021, completely carbon neutral,” said Chris Brahler, SDVI’s vice president of product. “The program will also ensure that all SDVI customers benefit from permanent, ongoing carbon offsets for all Rally platform usage, including all third-party media applications used as part of a Rally-managed supply chain.”

 As of Jan. 1, 2022, SDVI is now reporting and offsetting the carbon footprint associated with providing the Rally platform service to its customers, including the operation of all third-party application services under Rally management.

As an affiliate of the French telecom giant Orange, Viaccess-Orca shares that company’s sustainability commitments in terms of carbon neutrality, tooling, and methodology, including achieving a net zero carbon footprint by 2040.

“We are also actively contributing to accelerating the move toward greener streaming in our product roadmap,” Nochimowski said. “The NESTED [New vidEo STandards for Enhanced Delivery] project that we recently announced in partnership with a number of other vendors is a significant public first step in the direction of setting the standard for energy efficient streaming.”

On the vehicle side, global broadcast production company NEP Group has switched its U.K. fleet of OB trucks from diesel fuel to GD+ HVO (hydrogenated vegetable oil). Supplied by Green Biofuels, GD+ HVO is an ultra-low emission alternative fuel that can replace diesel fuel without having to modify truck engines. It’s made from 100% waste organic matter such as used cooking oils, fats and other agricultural wastes. By switching to GD+ HVO, NEP hopes to drop its fleet’s greenhouse emissions by 95%.

This move to GD+ HVO is part of NEP UK’s Project Earth Sustainability Initiatives.

“In addition to moving to HD+ HVO, NEP is eliminating single-use plastics in all of our OB productions,” said Marie Ellis, NEP Groups’ head of marketing for the U.K. and Ireland. “We’re also providing our employees with branded reusable water bottles, using rechargeable lithium batteries in our RF audio equipment, boosting corporate recycling while reducing waste, cutting back on travel, and reducing our carbon footprint.’"

A spokesman for the NEP Group in the U.S. said that while it has not updated its fleet to run on alternative fuels, the company does anticipate some changes "in the future." 

Much More to Do
Despite the many actions the above companies are taking to become more sustainable, all of them believe that there’s much more that can be done.

“One solution would be establishing a broadly accepted common standard for measuring and reporting on emissions,” Brahler said. “If every organization were to move in that direction, we could understand just how serious that situation is at the moment and what we’ll need to do collectively to move toward net zero as an industry.”

“While carbon offsets are one option for mitigating impact, reducing emissions in the first place should be our focus,” he added. “You don’t have to offset what you don’t create. If every organization along the media supply chain were to take responsibility for their part in the content life cycle, rather than push the carbon bill downstream, it might be a more equitable way to solve the problem and, at some point, maintain carbon neutrality from end to end.”

To motivate media companies to become more sustainable sooner, “regulators have to step up—similar to what’s been done before in the broadband industry—by incentivizing operators to deploy green networks,” said Fautier. “We need to look at the end-to-end power dissipation, not at local optimization. If encoding a video using two times more CPU will reduce the traffic by 20%, the overall power savings for millions of unicast sessions is no brainer.”

Two things are certain. First, the media companies are taking real action to address climate change by moving to more sustainable products and practices. Second, the clock is ticking on dealing with climate change now, to reduce its impact in years to come.

“The stakes are too high not to take action,” Brahler told TV Tech. “If we miss this opportunity, there is no real way back.” 

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—SDVI will feature its latest media supply chain optimization developments, including net-zero emissions, and new additions to its Rally platform at the NAB Show, April 23-27, in Las Vegas.

Making its first public showing will be Rally Insight, a data analytics and visualization service, introduced in fall 2021. Rally Insight offers interactive charts and dashboards to bring supply chain data to life. Rally Insight helps supply chain operators quickly identify issues in their supply chains, find areas in need of improvement and better grasp how their infrastructure is being used, SDVI said.

SDVI also will highlight its partner ecosystem at the convention. A total of 50 application services will be available on demand via the Rally media supply chain platform. Fourteen new partners have joined the platform since the beginning of the year, it said.

The company also will spotlight its Net-Zero supply chain efforts, a part of its sustainability program. The program offsets emissions from the operation of the Rally platform and the emissions of third-party application services running on the platform to achieve carbon neutrality, it said.

See SDVI at NAB Show booth W4711.

More information is available on the company’s website. 

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—Cloud-native media supply chain platform provider SDVI has unveiled a new sustainability program that makes all use of its Rally platform dating back to the beginning of 2021 carbon neutral.

The program also ensures SDVI customers benefit from permanent, ongoing carbon offsets for all Rally platform use, including third-party media applications used as part of Rally-managed supply chain, the company said.

“Our responsibility to the environment and to our customers is to ensure that we are operating every aspect of our business in a sustainable and accountable manner,” said Larry Kaplan, president and CEO of SDVI. 

“Our sustainability program has been designed to ensure that the emissions associated with running our business, as well as the emissions associated with the supply chains that our customers are managing with the Rally platform, are fully offset," he said. "Our sustainability commitment ensures that every one of our customers can build and operate all of their media supply chains knowing that the associated carbon impact is being mitigated for them.” 

Program goals and benchmarks include:

• Effective Jan. 1, SDVI began reporting and offsetting the carbon footprint associated with providing the Rally platform service to its customers going forward, including the operation of all third-party application services under Rally management.
• SDVI will begin providing regular reporting of carbon emissions associated with operating the Rally platform to each customer, along with evidence of the SDVI-sponsored carbon offsets.
• As soon as practical and no later than Dec. 31, 2022, SDVI will calculate, report and offset the carbon footprint associated with the company’s Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions as defined by the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard.

“In addition to the comprehensive program we are implementing now, we are also going to offset the carbon impact associated with all Rally platform usage by our customers in 2021,” said Kaplan.

SDVI also has joined the DPP Committed to Sustainability program and has completed the necessary steps to achieve the DPP Committed to Sustainability mark, the company said.

The SDVI Rally media supply chain platform enables media companies to optimize the infrastructure deployment and resource use associated with running dynamic, responsive media supply chains in the cloud, it said.

More information about the SDVI Sustainability Program and the SDVI Rally platform are available online.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—Cloud-native media supply chain provider SDVI and professional services and software development firm TMT Insights today announced a new deployment partnership for SDVI’s Rally media supply chain platform.

Leveraging TMT Insight’s professional services expertise, the companies aim to accelerate integration and deployment of Rally and to help customers optimize their implementation of the platform, SDVI said.

"Our relationship with TMT Insights ensures that customers who need design and deployment assistance when modernizing their media supply chains can work with a trusted partner, validated by SDVI," said Andy Brinck, vice president of alliances for SDVI. "TMT's expertise with our Rally platform, and the company's ability to provide the kind of services that our customers need will accelerate the design, deployment and optimization of their cloud-based supply chains."

TMT Insights offers strategy and CXO advisory, cloud transformation, process and workflow re-engineering and development services to clients. The company has invested in building the skills needed to design, develop, sell and deploy Rally solutions, it said.

Among the first fruits of the partnership are Anuvu and Funimation Global Group, which have migrated work to the Rally platform, it said.

"As the global leader in anime, Funimation needs deep insight into our fandom, and the technology and data we use, maintain and employ is critical to our success," said Rahul Purini, COO of Funimation Global Group. "With TMT's expertise and the capabilities of the Rally platform, we have a partner who understands our business and can help us achieve our fan-first growth."

The SDVI Rally media supply chain platform deploys all of the applications and infrastructure required to create a dynamic, responsive media supply chain in the cloud. It frees users from traditional infrastructure constraints and empowers business leaders to make smart business decisions quickly and accelerate time to revenue, it said.

More information is available on the TMT Insights and SDVI websites. 

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—SDVI has appointed Geoff Stedman as the company’s chief marketing officer. In this new role, Stedman will lead strategic initiatives to sharpen the company’s positioning, expand customer reach and drive increased demand for the SDVI Rally cloud-native media supply chain platform. Stedman will join the executive leadership team under Lawrence Kaplan, president and CEO.

In a press statement about the appointment, Kaplan said of Stedman, “His experience in helping high-growth startups successfully translate proven product and customer successes into broader market adoption will be critical to helping SDVI achieve its long-term goals, and I’m excited to welcome him to the team.”

Stedman has more than 25 years of experience in bringing transformative technologies to market and finding ways to connect customer needs with the best solutions to address those needs. Stedman has led numerous marketing teams for both large multinational corporations and small startups, including marketing leadership positions at Omneon, Harmonic, Tintri, Quantum and Kaleidescape. Most recently, Stedman served as a strategist for AWS Elemental, promoting cloud-based workflows for content preparation and delivery to content owners and distributors.

Stedman said he’s looking forward to helping “more customers understand how SDVI can enable their move to the cloud and helping the company tell its fantastic story.”

LAS VEGAS—The 2020 NAB Show will be a chance for SDVI to spotlight the latest updates to its SDVI Rally platform, a could-native media supply chain system.

With SDVI’s Rally Gateway technology, the company plans to demonstrate the integration of Accurate Video. This new technology provides comprehensive browse and edit capabilities within a browser interface. Users can navigate time-based metadata and select multiple audio and caption tracks for preview, play or review as they perform review and approval, QC, compliance and simple edit operations.

Rally’s media supply chain management platform has also added enhanced visualization of the supply chain for better visibility into current state, history and diagnostics while also improving usability, says SDVI. 

SDVI will also share some recent good news that they received. First, SDVI was certified by AICPA for SOC-2 compliance, meeting its standards for SaaS companies’ data security policies and procedures, with expectations that it will receive SOC-2 Type 2 certification in August 2020. In addition, SDVI received a 2019 Technology and Engineering Emmy Award—shared with Discovery, Fox NE&O, Amazon Web Services and Evertz—for its work on public, cloud-based media supply chain for content ingest, management and delivery.

SDVI will reside at booth SU11707 during the 2020 NAB Show, running from April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

For more information, visit www.sdvi.com. 

OTTAWA—In 2015, Discovery’s process of producing programming was overdue for a fundamental overhaul. The company was relying on a mix of tape-based workflows and physical media delivery that was anything but standardized across the enterprise–and it was causing problems.

For instance, although Discovery’s U.S. facility had standardized on receiving content using LFTS-formatted LTO data cartridges (Linear Tape File System/Linear Tape-Open), other Discovery regional facilities were using their own file delivery systems. Discovery’s various facilities even differed on whether content suppliers had to provide the network with broadcast-ready or master-quality video files; the latter being formatted in whatever frame rate the content producer had selected.

This lack of standardization was costing Discovery time and money. This is why the network selected software from SDVI, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based provider of content management software to standardize its content acquisition and creation workflow over IP. The company’s Rally next-gen, cloud-based media supply chain platform gives Discovery’s many content providers a central point to submit their content, in line with the network’s file standards. Having made this happen, SDVI’s Rally now gives Discovery a fast, effective, end-to-end solution to serving out content to cable, satellite, and the web, as well as a way to spin new program streams and even channels.

[Read: ‘Deadliest Catch’ Lands In The Cloud]

Discovery is just one example of a traditional broadcaster/media company that has adopted what the industry refers to as a “next-gen media supply chain” to speed up and rationalize its content creation workflow. Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG) is another: They are using Imagine Communications’ Versio platform, EPIC MV, SelenioFlex File, and Nexio Motion to provision SBG’s KidsClick children’s programming block to SBG TV stations. Meanwhile, Disney/ABC is using Verizon Digital Media Solutions’ evolved delivery platform and Broadcast/OTT Solution to prepare all of their content for online distribution; with sufficient flexibility to allow ABC affiliates to insert viewer-targeted local advertising quickly and easily.

THE NEXT-GEN ADVANTAGE

In a traditional media supply chain, content is either created or received—or both—at a broadcaster/media company, and then packaged using production hardware and software that is dedicated to the company’s existing playout channel(s) on their physical premises. If a new playout stream needs to be added or a new channel spun up, an entirely new physical production workflow needs to provisioned; machines, personnel and floor space are included.

In a next-gen media supply chain, all of this functionality is provisioned using software and commodity computer hardware; just add servers and stir. Move it into the cloud, and a third-party provider like Imagine, SDVI, or Verizon can handle all of the details. All the broadcaster/media company has to do is to interact with the software (which can be stored in the cloud or loaded onto their own on-premises servers) to format their content as they see fit, and then play it out to a linear delivery system (broadcast./cable/satellite), or serve it directly to the viewer via OTT online.

LAUNCHING NEW CHANNELS QUICKLY

With access to a next-gen media supply chain, broadcasters/media companies can spin new channels up and down as quickly as opportunities dictate.

In the case of SBG’s KidsClick and Imagine Communications, making this happen required some initial customization to serve the varying needs of SBG’s many local stations. But once this work was done, “it was really just an exercise of pointing at the cloud, requesting the required resources, and validating that they’re available and match your requirements,” said Brick Eksten, Imagine’s CTO of Playout & Networking. “We do this for this particular customer three times a day.”

Being able to spin up new channels virtually in the cloud is obviously far more economical than building an entirely new physical plant to produce and distribute them. But the savings can go even further. For instance, at Verizon Digital Media Services, “we only charge you based on the number of viewed content hours,” said Jason Friedlander, the company’s senior director of Product Marketing. “This approach enables our customers to experiment with new strategies and test what works in the market; if no one is watching, you don’t pay.”

SOLVING DISCOVERY’S PROBLEMS

At Discovery, SDVI’s Rally platform is a key part of the company’s global, scalable, and automated media supply chain. “Over the past three years we’ve worked to rebuild our supply chain, transitioning from physical media and fixed assets to a flexible, cloud-based model,” said Josh Derby, vice president, technology development & strategy at Discovery.

According to Derby, moving to a next-gen media supply chain has provided three key benefits to Discovery.

First, “the inherent scalability of Rally and of the public cloud has allowed us to improve the throughput of our supply chain,” he said. “This week we celebrated the upload of the 100,000th asset through our front-end supply chain, a milestone we hit within just two years of our launch. Earlier this year, that supply chain seamlessly absorbed over 20,000 additional assets in just four months as we quickly brought content from our new networks into the supply chain.”

Second, moving to a next-gen media supply chain has allowed Discovery to incorporate “a tremendous amount of automation into our workflows,” Derby said. “We are no longer reliant on having our logistics staff shepherd content through the supply chain. In our Rally supply chain, the assets find their own path through the workflow based on the system’s ability to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate the asset metadata and the results of previous workflow steps.”

Thirdly, adopting a next-gen media supply chain has standardized content acquisition and handling across Discovery’s entire operation. “The new supply chain lets us have a truly global media factory,” said Derby. “Regardless of whether it’s an episode of ‘Deadliest Catch’ airing in the US or an episode of ‘House Hunters’ going to Poland, the content comes through the same supply chain. It’s checked against the correct standards, converted to the necessary file format, and delivered to its correct destination based on metadata from our business systems, allowing us to give each region the files it needs while maintaining a single global media pipeline.”

Next-gen media supply chains have the power to revolutionize content creation workflows, according to Lawrence Kaplan, president and CEO of SDVI. “The fact that they can speed up the rollout of new channels is just the beginning: Next-gen media supply chains can fundamentally improve the ways in which broadcasters and media companies prepare, playout, and distribute their content worldwide.”

LAS VEGAS—At the 2018 NAB Show, SDVI Corporation will demonstrate Rally Gateway and Rally Access, two new features of its Rally media supply chain management platform. As a cloud-based SaaS service, Rally streamlines quality control and optimizes content submission, while lowering costs.

Rally Gateway creates customer-branded content submission portals that serve as automated on-ramps into the media supply chain. The raw materials can come from internal or external content production partners.

With Rally Gateway, content producers submit their material to the supply chain through a secure web interface that automatically logs the arrival and initiates the supply chain and validates compliance with the distributor’s requirements.

Rally Access lets media supply chain managers view issues discovered during preparation and packaging on a familiar, timeline-based interface within Adobe Premiere. It marks segments for rapid evaluation and resolution using metadata that comes from Rally-supported tools, including quality control, compliance, compression and AI engines, like speech to text conversion and visual recognition.

Rally Access also makes it easier to locate segments that may still require manual verification and address them from within Adobe Premiere. Work orders are automatically created to track the progress of manual steps so operators can focus on completing tasks rather than documenting their work.

The 2018 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 9-12. SDVI Corporation will be in booth SU12813. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

Read up on all of TVT's NAB Show Sneak Peeks and other 2018 NAB Show news here.

SDVI’s Rally analyzes incoming files and checks them for compliance with Discovery’s delivery specifications.SILVER SPRING, MD.—Discovery Communications receives media assets from more than 600 production companies and distributors globally. Its new “On Ramp” project is designed to create a delivery platform for the company’s suppliers while simultaneously streamlining and unifying the processing of media assets within Discovery’s facilities around the world.

The system needed to carry robust metadata, provide automated file analysis and quality control, and transcode files for use in Discovery’s regional facilities while maintaining a single global standard for delivery. To do so, Discovery recently adopted an SDVI Rally media supply chain management system, running on the Amazon Web Services cloud.

OUT WITH THE OLD

Discovery’s previous content delivery chain relied on physical media. Suppliers shipped either LTO data cartridges or videotapes to Discovery’s regional facilities. The facilities analyzed the incoming deliveries, copying or capturing media and using different processes to evaluate the media before checking it into the local MAM.

The new process replaces physical media with file uploads and centralizes the analysis and communications processes in the supply chain. Producers and distributors can now log into the Discovery Producer’s Portal and initiate file upload of the final content, along with the metadata required.

Content is directly uploaded to AWS, where SDVI Rally begins automatically processing. Rally analyzes incoming files and checks them for compliance with Discovery’s delivery specifications. If files pass a basic analysis, then Rally uses a combination of file-based QC tools to further inspect them. Rally stores all of the analysis and QC results as part of each file’s metadata record, combining the information it learns from file analysis with metadata from Discovery’s business systems to determine the workflow for each file.

Workflows can involve any combination of proxy creation, rewrapping or transcode depending on the type of file and Discovery’s business requirements. SDVI Rally provisions third-party tools on-the-fly in the cloud to perform these operations. Rally can also trigger manual technical evaluation, alerting an operator that the content needs to be reviewed, using a high resolution proxy.

When content is finalized and approved, SDVI Rally publishes a message to notify the regional Discovery MAM systems that the content is ready. Each regional MAM can check-in all of the content and metadata created as part of the Rally cloud workflow into its local database.

FLEXIBILITY

SDVI Rally provided the flexible framework that Discovery needed to build their workflow. Rally’s ability to design workflow and deploy software in the cloud allowed Discovery to implement a system without the need for traditional on-premise hardware.

As a SaaS solution, SDVI Rally allowed Discovery to quickly establish core services and change workflow as the “On Ramp” design team refined the supply process. Rally also gave Discovery flexibility around the third-party tools used in each workflow, allowing the use of existing licensed products and augmenting permanent licenses with on-demand services to deal quickly with increasing demand on the supply chain.

Josh Derby has served as a technologist and operational manager at Discovery since 1999. He currently leads Discovery’s internal R&D team, Discovery Technology Development & Strategy. He can be contacted atjosh_derby@discovery.com.

For more information, please visitwww.sdvi.comor call 408-594-5184.

MENLO PARK, CALIF.—SDVI Corporation has announced that it has closed a strategic investment round with Fox Networks Group, Discovery Communications and Turner. As a result of the investment round, executives from Fox, Discovery and Turner will join the SDVI Board of Directors.

The technical, business and legal teams were led by, respectively, Fox Networks Group Executive Vice President and General Manager Richard Friedel, Discovery Communications’ Chief Technology Officer John Honeycutt, and Turner CTO Jeremy Legg.

SDVI is a media company with the goal of developing next generation media supply chain platforms. The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif.