Connections

LAS VEGAS — More than 50 MESA members exhibited during NAB. Here’s what a few of them had to share at the show.

Prime Focus Technologies

For NAB, Prime Focus Technologies brought new modules for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, CLEAR, which provides streamers, studios, and broadcasters AI-led technology and media services powered by the cloud.

First up is CLEAR Localize, a cloud-based process automation platform that simplifies the localisation process, something the industry has been clamouring for, according to Ramki Sankaranarayanan, founder and CEO of PFT.

Managing multiple projects with multiple vendors for multiple services in multiple languages in multiple time zones … CLEAR Localize streamlines communication with vendors while offering transparency into progress updates and estimated delivery dates.

Its interface connects localisation vendors and freelancers worldwide to manage orders, languages, and media for localisation operations, and promises easy onboarding of new vendors with frame-accurate subtitle and audio reviews.

PFT pointed to a study showing localisation project managers averaging two hours a day or more on administrative tasks, and this module aims to give that time back.

Next is CLEAR Clip, a platform for automated editing and accelerated content creation for social media monetisation, with easy insights into content archives, allowing for the repurposing of existing footage to create videos for social media. Clip users can generate AI-curated clips from existing content catalogs and stock footage, and export content to Premier Pro. The goal here is to cut down on the hours associated with clip editing. “It’s not just marketing, it’s an actual monetisation engine,” Sankaranarayanan said. “The underlying AI does the magic for users, who can push directly onto social media channels.

OOONA

OOONA booth visitors were treated to demos of the company’s professional management and production tools for media localisation, covering every voiceover, subtitling, captioning, and dubbing need out there.

Prominently on display was OOONA SynCheck, a new tool that automates the quality assurance process of subtitle assets against videos, simplifying the technical checks against video sources (known as the “three-point” or “five-point” check).

Now making sure the right file in the right language is being delivered and aired with the right, corresponding video, becomes an automatic process, removing the manual doubts that come with QC around delivering different assets in different formats to different platforms.

“The OOONA SynCheck tool is designed to automatically check subtitle files against videos with corresponding file names when dropped in a folder or manually paired, and then to flag errors,” Alex Yoffe, OOONA Toolkit product manager said when the tool was unveiled. “We’ve had many clients ask for such a tool as this is a very common use case for language service providers and broadcasters alike. We’ve built a tool that can be customised as always, for example to the number of points that need to be checked for a file to pass QC, so it can be tailored to the requirements of any client.

Using machine translation and speech recognition technologies, the tool checks that the right language is being used in sync with the video, and produces a match score. A score below a given threshold will mark the file as failed tag it with an error flag. OOONA’s Create Tool can then be used to fix the errors.

“Quality assurance is a critical aspect of the media industry – it is a natural area of focus for us,” adds Wayne Garb, OOONA co-founder and CEO. “We are committed to providing our customers with innovative solutions that enable them to streamline their operations. SynCheck does just that.”

Digital Bedrock

Being included in a feature story in the NAB Show Daily magazine means you know what you’re talking about. Such was the case for Linda Tadic, founder and CEO of digital preservation and archiving specialist Digital Bedrock.

The article focused on sustainability efforts in the industry, and Tadic is better suited than most to weigh in on the topic. “What we’re discovering is more and more organisations are concerned about their vast oceans of data and storing it in the cloud isn’t sustainable long term,” she said. “Sustainability is our foundation and with archival storage, they know they’re taken care of.

“All this e-waste shows the cloud has a heavy weight.”

Tadic touched on her company’s recent deal with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) with Digital Bedrock handling the preservation of historical public radio and TV programs from producers and stations across the nation. A grant from the Mellon Foundation will support digitisation of up to 150,000 items, doubling the current size of the AAPB collection, generating roughly four petabytes of data that Digital Bedrock will store and maintain before they are ingested by the Library of Congress.

“Our operations are secure because we aren’t connected to the internet,” Tadic said. “That allows them to put their trust in us.”

Shift Media

A new MediaSilo workflow integration panel in Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve application, available later this quarter. A plug-in for the file-transfer offering MASV. A plug-in from Telestream that allows for access of MediaSilo within the ContentAgent software. And an integration with collaboration offering Louper.io, that allows assets from MediaSilo to be played on a web page, allowing for instant feedback.

That’s just the new partnerships and integrations. There was the addition of 1080p video for Screeners.com and the announcement of an upcoming, upgraded user interface.

There was the launch of a global partner programme coming into the show. There was a steady stream of visitors to the booth.

Yeah, Shift Media was busy at NAB.

“We announced a lot of integrations, and we’re always looking for new ones,” said Michael Kammes, senior director of innovation for Shift.

The new Shift Media Partner Program was developed to offer multiple levels of collaboration for the company’s partners and customers, with elite and pro reseller levels, and a referral partner program. Elite comprises partners who sell and build Shift Media products into customer workflows and directly provide Level 1 support services, while the pro level is for those who sell and build Shift Media products into customer workflows, but delegate end-user support to Shift.

“MediaSilo’s SaaS platform offers a powerful, easy-to-use solution that streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration, review & approval, and ensures secure delivery across all devices and platforms,” said Mike Cavanagh, CEO of Key Code Media. “Together, we are poised to revolutionise the industry and drive innovation for our customers.”

For more information on the Shift Media Partner Program, contact [email protected].

Wasabi

More than a dozen worldwide data centre locations, more than 75,000 total customers, more than 15,000 channel partners and resellers, and more than 6,000 free trials being asked for every single day.

Wasabi hot cloud storage, meet world. World, Wasabi.

“We’re an increasingly integrated solution in so many areas, a broad selection of tools,” said Whit Jackson, VP of media and entertainment for Wasabi. “Since the start of the year we’ve seen real interest from major producers, and people who had been all-in with another cloud provider are peeling that back.

“We take the unexpected expense out of cloud storage.”

Wasabi has teamed up with cloud-native media asset management platform Imagen to help companies discover more value from video libraries and provide premium experiences in the sports content arena. And a recent partnership with IBM Cloud is seeing the two power data insights across hybrid cloud environments, with the Boston Red Sox the first to take advantage, leveraging Wasabi storage across its hybrid cloud infrastructure while tasking IBM Cloud Satellite to house player video data, analytics, surveillance data, IoT, and more, across Fenway Park. And this is the second year the Australian Open is looking to Wasabi for archive storage assistance.

There’s wider adoption of Wasabi Account Control Manager (WACM), a hosted platform that allows clients to centrally manage Wasabi cloud storage accounts in a multi-tiered environment. There’s Stanford University’s IT department acting as a managed service provider for all the school’s departments, using Wasabi. There’s the Las Vegas Golden Knights tapping the power of Wasabi. There are more worldwide data centre locations coming this year from Wasabi.

On second thought, the world doesn’t need an introduction to Wasabi. The two already know each other very well.