Dalet Media Life is to be the core production, MAM and integrated distribution system for TECNOLOGICO DE MONTERREY (TEC) Virtual University in Monterrey, Mexico.
The new, end-to-end system is used for production, cataloging, broadcast and Internet distribution of video lectures and conferences. Content is broadcast to more than 30 campuses. Dalet also manages the automated transcoding and posting of materials to the Internet delivery service, which has become an increasingly important part of the University system.
Dalet Media Life is built on the Dalet MAM platform, which manages all media files and their metadata across many different systems. Media Life includes many Dalet applications, which Virtual University uses for critical media management operations, such as ingest, logging, recording, prep editing, broadcast and archiving.
Dalet Media Life also provides many creative toolsets for content production. The MAM platform plays a key role in the delivery of content to both traditional broadcast outlets and to new media outlets. The MAM layer in Dalet Media Life handles media, metadata and all the media manipulations that are involved in the entire production and distribution chain.
In the Virtual University production center at Monterrey TEC, where many pre-recorded video packages and programs are produced, users ingest raw material from Sony XDCAM-EX cameras. The Dalet Xtend module facilitates the seamless exchange of content and metadata between Dalet and Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere NLEs. Directly from their NLE workstations, the craft editors have access to media (videos, EDLS, shot selections, etc.) and metadata that are stored in the Dalet content catalogue. Many pre-production tasks such as clip selection and storyboarding can be performed using Dalet’s quick clip editing tools and then automatically exported to the edit bays for more complex editing. The finished work can then be exported back to Dalet as a new title, or saved against a placeholder—all with the appropriate metadata entries.
Once the material is approved, the Dalet MAM engine expertly controls the metadata and media processes and automatically exports the packages that are converted to H.264 format for posting on the internal e-Learning portal, which is the main distribution platform for Virtual University. Genealogy metadata linking the editor’s material to the original sources can be preserved and the content is better referenced throughout, making searches of the content catalogue and archives more efficient; content is more readily accessible to everyone who needs it.
Additionally, four large classrooms at TEC are fully equipped as Dalet broadcast “studios” and often, all four studios are broadcasting simultaneously or recording sessions for on-demand video delivery. In each classroom, operators use a Dalet workstation to insert any pre-produced video and record the classes as a live show. Once the recording of the class finishes, and it is approved, Dalet automatically exports the video lecture to the e-Learning Portal services.
The classroom “TV studios” are connected to Harmonic Omneon MediaGrid production storage with 18 TB (700 hours in XDCAM 50 format); an Omneon video server plays out the media for lectures that are broadcast by satellite to different campuses throughout Latin America. In the background Dalet also triggers Rhozet transcoders to automatically convert the high resolution broadcasts to H.264 and MPEG formats that are used for website and proxy browsing on the archive. Dalet also integrates with XenData HSM system to control the HP tape library that has a capacity of 2400 hours in XDCAM 50 format.
