Telestream Expands File-based Workflow Capabilities with New Release of Vantage

Vantage v6.3 to feature new DPP assembly and transcoding capabilities, automated NLE templates, and enhanced transcoding formats

Telestream®, the leading provider of video transcoding and workflow solutions, today announced a new release for its Vantage platform, which provides a broad range of enterprise-class transcoding and file-based workflow automation software products. Available immediately through Telestream’s worldwide sales distribution network, the latest version of Vantage (v.6.3) brings new content production automation features, support for more transcoding formats to facilitate multiscreen delivery and new device interoperability capabilities.

"With the latest release of Vantage, we continue to enhance our automation capabilities to eliminate pain points in our customers' workflows,” said Paul Turner, VP of enterprise product managementat Telestream.“From templated output created via popular NLEs to auto assembling DPP compliant bundles, the new features in Vantage further reduce the need for manual intervention, allowing our customers to become more efficient and profitable."

Focusing on the growing needs of content owners seeking to develop multi-platform distribution architectures, the latest version of Vantage includes support for more transcoding formats across the Vantage Transcode product family. Full 4K support and HEVC encoding are now available in Vantage Transcode Multiscreen and Vantage Transcode IPTV VOD.In addition, XAVC decoding and ProRes 4444 encoding have been added to Vantage Transcode Pro.

Automated content production is now even easier with Telestream’s Post Producer application, which runs on the Vantage platform. With Vantage 6.3, editors can design production templates in Avid, Adobe and Final Cut Pro editing systems. Post Producer can then use those templates to mass-produce hundreds of customized outputs automatically. This facilitates the creation of templates and lets users visualize how a template will look prior to rendering.

With the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) initiative's October deadline quickly approaching, Vantage adds several new capabilities for assembling and encoding DPP AS-11 MXF files. The Vantage DPP Workflow Portal allows entry of DPP metadata and the creation of multi-part DPP packages from one or more media files. Post Producer automatically assembles the DPP timeline, including bars, tones, slates and correct multi-part spacing. The entire DPP solution is completely unified and includes full encoding, timeline rendering and metadata assembly without requiring editing personnel or XML programmers.

Vantage 6.3 also adds the ability to accept work orders from a standard spreadsheet, allowing hundreds of jobs to be submitted easily using a spreadsheet exported as a CSV.This simplifies submission for Vantage users who typically organize media metadata and instructions in a spreadsheet; these sheets can now be provided directly to Vantage.A single work order can contain instructions for hundreds of jobs, each with a different source file including instructions for content assembly and graphics application, transcoding parameters, delivery information, subtitle files, titles to be applied, FTP destination, and more.Work order structure is entirely customizable to allow complete control over process automation.This powerful new feature streamlines the automation of Vantage transcoding and Post Producer workflows, and is included in all products on the Vantage platform.

Vantage now includes a new proxy viewer for the Web Workflow Portal, improving frame accuracy and adding features such as title safe guides, captioning, and hot key control (JKL-style). This improves the usability of the Web Workflow Portal, and allows operators to be more efficient.

Vantage 6.3 brings additional new features to users. Improved dashboard metrics – including storage space remaining, CPU load, database size, and other metrics – provide a full picture of the hardware utilization across a Vantage Array.When using the reporting option, Vantage now allows historical reports showing usage levels across multiple machines and services. Reports can also be generated showing daily, hourly, or weekly usage and peak server capacity to ensure proper resource planning and improve turnaround. A new SQL deployment tool offers improved database support, allowing easier installation into SQL enterprise environments.

Vantage partner integrations have also been expanded with the addition of Nexidia QC integration which automates quality control for closed captions, languages, and video descriptions. The Nexidia QC integration enables Telestream Vantage users to utilize Nexidia QC’s full functionality anywhere in the Vantage workflow, ensuring media meets FCC regulations.

More information is available at www.telestream.net.