…Flexibility and scalability enable MediaCentral to be configured specifically for your needs. Integrating both Avid and third-party solutions, the MediaCentral platform brings together disparate technologies into a seamless workflow, accessible through a single user interface, with multiple game-changers for your production process:

• Deploy modules for Newsroom, Editorial, Production and Asset
• Management at the scale you need
• Access media, ingest clips, edit video and publish content from anywhere, to multiple platforms, in real time
• Navigate an easy-to-use, task-oriented user interface on your desktop, laptop, or mobile device
• Future-proof media production with a platform ready for 4K/UHD resolutions and cloud-enabled workflows
• Boost your efficiency with a new search engine and apps that speed up media browsing and searching

As the MediaCentral platform evolves, so do its capabilities and features. In our latest release MediaCentral 2018.6, Avid is delivering important new enhancements across the full array of workflow modules, apps, and services….read more

“Our next-generation MediaCentral production suite gives creative teams across news, sports, post production and live production the power to create and deliver more content to all their media outlets in less time than ever before,” said Dana Ruzicka, Chief Product Officer, Avid. “MediaCentral’s total deployment flexibility accommodates the unique ways that our customers want to set up and manage their operations and easily supports how their teams do their work.  The platform positions content creators for increased creativity, productivity, and agility as they evolve to take command of their next opportunity.”

MediaCentral | Editorial Management

While there have been a number of updates, we’re most excited by the arrival of MediaCentral | Editorial Management, a browser-based asset management system designed to make the organisation, viewing and addition of metadata to your media easier, without relying on an NLE, which we’ve been looking forward to since IBC.

Avid say: “For smaller post production and broadcast teams, this affordable media management solution enables unmatched collaborative power, with folder, project, bin, metadata, and media sharing capabilities from any web browser.”

While it’s not a complete asset management solution, Editorial Management is designed to make sure some organisation is possible at any fledgling facility, no matter how remote, temporary or understaffed it is….read more 

Avid’s long-planned shift in product strategy reached a major milestone this week with the release of a new, streamlined and fully web-accessible version of the company’s MediaCentral enterprise software suite for media production and management.

Implemented on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, the new MediaCentral platform opens up the options for broadcast and post-production facilities looking to modernize through cloud-based or virtualized deployments. It’s also a critical opportunity for Avid to develop its software-as-a-service business through cloud and AI technology.

Key to the offering is MediaCentral Cloud UX (above), a unified user interface that will allow searching, editing, collaborating on and publishing media from Windows and OS X computers running Chrome and Safari browsers, or from iOS and Android devices running Avid’s Cloud UX apps.

The MediaCentral platform includes separate modules for different types of collaborative workflow. The Editorial Management module allows smaller teams in post and broadcast access media via Avid Nexis storage and to share folders, projects, bins, media and metadata using any web browser via Avid’s new HyperBin architecture….read more

…. and On-Prem is Moving to the Cloud

Most original cloud encoding services were just that: encoding services that handled the last stage of media creation and deployment, plus encoding and packaging, but none of the antecedent workflows and none of the subsequent distribution roles. As cloud services push their encoding capabilities into the enterprise, traditional encoding vendors are porting the full functionality of their in-house workflow systems into the cloud. This allows customers to push more of their in-house workflows into the cloud.

A great example is Telestream Vantage. I spoke with Shawn Carnahan, CTO, who described how customers were accessing Telestream Vantage, the company’s flagship media processing program. Carnahan says that most customers still accessed Vantage bundled with traditional Lightspeed servers. However, an increasing number are also deploying software-only versions in their internal computing centers, usually into full virtual machines. He also notes that Telestream is supporting the need for scalability with usage-based pricing, though it’s closer to daily pricing than output minutes.

The most fascinating changes are occurring in the SaaS-based Telestream Cloud, however, where under the hood, a number of the traditional Vantage-based applications like IMF content creation and captioning are being ported into containers for web operation ….read more

It used to be so simple. Get breaking news on air first, and you beat the competition. But now, audiences expect to stay current on breaking news using apps or social media on their mobile devices, looking online using a computer, or watching TV. The race to break news first now demands instant distribution on a wide array of platforms, each with its own parameters and delivery standards. Developing a newsroom workflow that integrates messaging to each of these platforms is essential to win the breaking news race.

The Avid MediaCentral platform is the industry’s most comprehensive workflow solution for media organizations. It’s an ecosystem that eliminates cumbersome workflow silos by providing integrated tools for a seamless, end-to-end solution. An important part of the end-to-end workflow is multiplatform content delivery. MediaCentral facilitates this process by automating background tasks, so you can focus on what’s most important: being first to deliver compelling content for viewing on websites, social media, mobile apps, and TV.

MediaCentral incorporates several unique features that empower your team to deliver content to more platforms, faster…..read more

Media management might seem like a boring topic. Which it is, until it isn’t. In the grand tradition of filmmaking — which is to say, giving a job with an incredibly high level of responsibility to one of the lowest paid positions on set (see: loader) — media management can be a great way to get on set, or at least near it if you’re starting out in the industry (even if that’s a “temporary offload location” set up inside an establishment whose name begin with “Star” and ends with “bucks”).

Part of the Media Manager’s job is to make backing up camera media a boring task, one characterized by a total and complete lack of drama and requiring little to no interaction from other members of the camera department or larger crew. Let’s take this opportunity to review what we see as an established set of practices for media offload, handling and backup on set.

When working on set as a Media Manager, or DIT — though we like to think of a DIT’s purview as encompassing a broader, more interesting range of tasks — one of the most important things, other than actually making the backups themselves, is having a system that you and the camera assistants agree on to distinguish media that is ready to be formatted in the camera from media that has camera original footage on it that may or may not have been backed up. Some people use colored camera or gaffer’s tape for this (for example, red tape applied to cards that have not been backed up and green tape for cards that are OK to format). Others put nothing on the cards themselves, since tape or residue can foul a camera’s media bay, and use colored bins on opposite sides of a cart or table for this (i.e. a red bin on the left-hand side and a green bin on the right side). It doesn’t matter what system you use, as long as everyone agrees and there is no confusion….read more

With up to 1TB capacity, the new GNARBOX 2.0 SSD allows you to backup and edit photos and videos anywhere. The project reached its $75,000 goal in just 39 minutes!

Designed to work with apps from Adobe Premiere to Lightroom or LumaFusion, the GNARBOX 2.0 SSD is a rugged backup device for content creators who prefer to travel without a laptop.

Showed for the first time at NAB 2018, the GNARBOX 2.0 SSD was presented as the most powerful portable workflow solution for photographers and videographers. It is, in fact, much more powerful than the first version, offering today’s professionals a small, portable backup device that is more than a backup device.

Back in 2015 I wrote here at ProVideo Coalition that “The world’s first mobile solution for viewing, backing-up, editing and sharing your HD footage from any GoPro HERO or DSLR camera without the need for a computer, made it on Kickstarter”. The article was about Gnarbox, presented as a mobile editing solution for GoPro and DSLRs.
…read more

The media and entertainment industry is experiencing a major disruption as consumer viewing habits shift to anytime access to content delivered on any device, anywhere.  Broadcasters need to create compelling content, streamline delivery, drive higher efficiency, and put the right technology in place to improve collaboration, access, and creativity to capitalize on this ever-changing paradigm.  Avid delivers those solutions, enabling cloud workflows to meet the challenges faced by broadcast sports, news, and live entertainment.

So, what’s next? A fundamental reimagining of how media organizations create, distribute, and monetize their content.  Avid will be highlighting Avid | On Demand in its cloud theater at NAB (in Booth SU801) every hour at the bottom of the hour, showing how users can fully realize the power of the cloud for production on demand. See how to enable the solutions and services you need using infrastructure from Microsoft Azure, spinning up when you need it and paying only for what you use.

In the Avid Cloud Platform Theater we’ll show you how our new cloud services and new cloud solutions extend the capabilities of the MediaCentral platform. New features empowering your team with greater capacity, access, automation, and collaboration, at appealing economics delivered on demand…read more

Your team is producing more content than ever…in some cases 1,000 times more media than you did just 10 years ago. Your media is your lifeblood, your most valuable asset, but what good is it if you can’t find the content you need, when you need it… let alone be able to repurpose it for multiple projects to be delivered across various platforms. Ultimately, you want to leverage your content as much as possible, perhaps even to tap into new revenue opportunities….

….In this tutorial video, you’ll see how MediaCentral makes it easy to search for and find the media you need, regardless of where on your network the media is located, while you’re working anywhere on any device. You’ll see how the power and flexibility of phonetic search helps you find specific content and metadata, quickly and easily. We’ll also show you how MediaCentral’s unique search options can be customized to your needs to keep your team more productive and improve overall workflow efficiency…..[continue reading]

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