NEW YORK — The Kraft Group has invested in Brevity, a startup that combines transcoding in the transport process. Brevity, which provided file transport between London and New York for NBC during the Olympics, recently closed a $7.7 million funding round. The Kraft Group, whose CEO and chairman owns the New England Patriots, the New England Revolution and Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass., invested an undisclosed sum in Brevity.
Brevity’s technology integrates web-based collaboration and workflow automation tools, and supports the management and distribution of digital media assets. The technology has been adopted by leading broadcasters, NBC Sports and CBS Sports, and successfully deployed in critical applications for broadcasts of major events, including the 2012 Olympic Games and the NFL Super Bowl. Brevity said it’s “currently expanding sales with many other leading broadcast, cable and content companies and expects to make sales announcements in the coming quarter.”
According to the vendor, Brevity V3 moves securely encrypted files over Internet, fiber, or data satellite up to 30 times “faster than otherwise possible, while preserving image quality and high resolution, with support for leading industry codecs and formats such as Avid DNxHD, EVS MXF, Final Cut Pro, Sony Cameras and others. Brevity has been tested successfully on uncompressed, high bit-rate video, 2k and 4k DPX files, as well as compressed HD and SD files.”
The platform uses two core algorithms, Data Warp, described as “bit-for-bit lossless,” and Image Warp, “an optimized algorithm for video that is visually lossless.” Brevity said that in a recent peak signal-to-noise-ratio test, Image Warp cored at or above 60 dB. Both Data Warp and Image Warp create “transport” mezzanine files that reduce storage requirements while supporting industry standard formats at ingest and at output, Brevity said. The Brevity solution also includes graphical processing units based video routers to provide teraflops of computing power to handle its powerful algorithms.
Brevity V3 is based on a paradigm that allows for approved users from one or more organizations to access project files virtualized across storage arrays, private, public, or hybrid clouds. When a file is ingested, a set of rules associated with the video sends it to multiple destinations automatically via accelerated transport, while simultaneously transcoding to the needed formats. The video files move with speed to all locations, arriving at the destination already in one or more requested formats based on pre-set profiles. Brevity V3 also has open web-services interfaces that enable integration and connections with a wide range of existing applications and tools.
Brevity’s main security measures consist of 256-bit AES encryption of the transport file during transmission and storage, and asset encryption keys transmitted using 4096-bit RSA encryption.
Brevity’s industry partners include Avid, with support for all Avid DNxHD formats and EVS, with support for the proprietary legacy EVS MXF format as well as the EVS MXF OP1a and QuickTime wrappers. Brevity also offers complete support for Apple ProRes including the much in demand ProRes-DNxHD conversions.
The Kraft Group’s other interests include paper/packaging manufacturing and forest products distribution, real estate development and a portfolio of private equity investments.
