Signiant’s Digital Media Galaxy

Signiant recently released version 8.2 of its Content Distribution Management software which was developed for B2B collaboration. Rick Clarkson, Senior Director of Product Management, delivered a webcast outlining the new functionality, if you missed it, you can view the recording, go to:  http://www.signiant.com/82-webcast-0. At the end, Rick answered questions from the audience. Here’s a sampling of what our customers asked…

Q: With the new Media Exchange and Media Publish Point [in this release], are you saying that I can send any size files to anyone similar to e-mail?

A: Correct, that’s what I am saying. Media Exchange is a great alternative to e-mail or FTP. Most people are familiar with the pros and cons of FTP, and certainly with e-mail you are going to be limited in the file sizes that you can move. For the folks on the webcast today, I am pretty sure no one is going to tell me that they are not moving large files – and it just can’t be supported with e-mail. So the answer to your question is yes.

Q: With the new Media Exchange integration and with the Central Management function, unlike FTP, do I have a complete log of all files being sent and received by users?

A: Yes, this is really important because recently had a lot of customer meetings at IBC and this is what they asked for. What’s great is you have all these neat features with Media Exchange and Media Publish Point and there is a lot of great work that has been done there for the user interface, but the real key thing that we’ve done here, is now you can upload Media Exchange into a workflow. So you could preset a workflow. For example, if I want to send a file to a location, but before I send it I wanted to transcode it, QC it, watermark it, and then send it. With Media Exchange, used in conjunction with our central manager, we can actually put this all together. So a non-technical user in the field can upload content to this “workflow special,” and when it uploads into the workflow, the manager would grab it, run it through the various processes, and then deliver it to the end user. The end user does not need to know all the details of how this process works, they just need to know to select the file off their desktop and move it up.

Q: Can Signiant send a file to multiple recipients, but with different meta data for each location?

A: Yes, and this is all part of the power of integrating our interface from Media Exchange with our Media Manager. Prior to 8.2, you had a pretty locked down Media Exchange start component. Now you can actually customize that start component and it will prompt you for a lot more information, it’s a much more powerful thing. This is a big takeaway that sometimes people miss. They see the big fancy end user interface functions within Media Exchange, but one thing, if you are using the Central Managers and Media Exchange, there’s a lot of power in connecting those things together.

Situation: Tony Lapolito takes the Logipi community behind the scenes of Signiant in this audio clip.

The Details: When most people think of supply chain, Tony Lapolito said, they tend to think of Henry Ford’s linear supply chain, but in today’s global business environment linear supply chains and some physical supply chains are becoming obsolete.

What it Means: Supply chains are no longer a one-way street. Today’s digital supply chains have to be bidirectional, they need to consider the metadata attached to the content, almost like an email paradigm, but with a payload attached to it.

“Linear Supply Chains Are So Henry Ford” from Dustin Mattison on Vimeo.

Signiant was recently honored for Engineering Excellence by Hollywood Post Alliance. The award recognizes significant developments for the post-production industry. The Hollywood Post Alliance (HPA) is the trade association serving the Southern California-based professional community of businesses and individuals who provide expertise, support, tools and the infrastructure for the creation and finishing of motion pictures, television, commercials, digital media and other dynamic media content.

The following happens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in the world of media – because today, all media and content move faster than real time. Time is of the essence.

Learn how you can collaboratively create, manage and distribute your content on a global basis. You’ll have a good laugh at this video too – yes, it’s a spoof on one of the most addictive and acclaimed dramas on television today, 24!

Our resident Scottsman, Gavin Tweedie, demonstrates the speed of Media Exchange in this video from Pizza Express. Here he sends a file via FTP and then the same file via Media Exchange and the time difference is markedly different. The background music provided by Pizza Express is pretty funny as well…

 

 Media Exchange: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As promised, here is part 2 of Tom Ohanian’s podcast (with slides) entitled: Managed File Transfers – Beyond WAN Optimization for Digital Media. If you missed the first part, just scroll down a bit and you’ll see it.

 

 Managed File Transfers - Part 2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This podcast is delivered by Signiant’s Chief Strategy Officer, Tom Ohanian, and is accompanied by a presentation for your reference. This is the first of a two-part podcast covering file acceleration considerations, deployment models, various file transfer protocols, and more. Please have a listen, this first part is less than 7 minutes long.

 

 TomO Podcast May 09: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Fresh off of NAB and talking with many, many people about Signiant and how they are using the product to save and make money – it’s clear to us that almost anyone that is managing digital files absolutely needs to use Signiant to make their operation more nimble and efficient.

In the spirit of Hollywood and the infamous Top Ten List, we’ve compiled a list of what we didn’t hear at NAB this year.

1) We are happy shipping tapes and hard drives. Shipping tapes and drives meets your business needs and is cost effective – even though on average it costs $200 and as much as $700 for each one shipped. Some organizations that we have encountered are shipping as many as 130,000 tapes per year … yes $26M worth of tape shipments per year. Well, I bet their shipping company and tape suppliers are giving them a great discount. Not to mention, $0.45 per month to store each tape OR the environmental impact of all of those tapes in a landfill. Trivia fact: 130,000 tapes stacked up are 4Xs as tall as the world’s tallest building.

If you are shipping tape – check out the Tape ROI Calculator: http://www.signiant.com/tape-roi-calculator/ – the tool can show you how much money you can save.

2) We are happy with FTP in our organization. FTP is pervasive in many organizations and easy to use – even though it requires installing software on client computers, it is prone to mid-transfer failures without restart capabilities, is slow, represents a security hole of vital data without any auditing capability and finally is unmanaged. No wonder so many people are selecting Signiant to replace their FTP solution.

For more on Signiant vs. FTP, check out: http://www.signiant.com/FTP-White-Paper/ for a comparison.

3) We are already getting the most out of our WAN Bandwidth. Companies are using their networks to move all sort of files over networks and improving efficiency dramatically. However, over longer distances (e.g. Seattle to LA) as much as 95% of the bandwidth you are buying is lost due to network inefficiencies – having a dramatic impact on the value you are getting from your WAN. You could be wasting $9000 per month per location in your organization and not even know it.

Check out the Bandwidth Calculator to see how much bandwidth you are wasting: http://www.signiant.com/bandwidth-calculator-0

4) We are happy with our satellite and terrestrial file delivery services. Yes satellite is available and is effective in reaching globally but it is very expensive … over $25/GB for a file transferred. Same with Terrestrial Services – around $25/GB plus the cost of the bandwidth. Compare this with the cost of about a $1/GB for sending files over your network and the public internet. We regularly see companies shipping 200GB packages – shipping using satellite or a terrestrial service would be $5,000 vs. just $200 worth of bandwidth on your own network.

5) We are happy with our manual processes. Everyone is probably already trained on the current processes – the trains run on time and when problems are encountered, people know what to do. However, everyone time someone touches a file or needs to manually take action – it costs money. Automating tasks and especially multi-sequences tasks can save a tremendous amount of money and people’s time. Have your people interact with the exceptions – not the processes that are operating flawlessly. As one of our partners told me, his directive is pretty clear, “make more money, and don’t make any more people”.

6) We don’t plan to monetize our content internationally, digitally or non-linearly. Many companies main business today is not syndication of content – digitally, internationally or VOD. In 2008, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said, “We can’t trade analog dollars for digital pennies”. Well – the world is changing and Mr. Zucker would be the first to tell you to jump on board. Companies like Apple and NBC have already created $B revenue streams from Digital Distribution. It is not too early to start and only Signiant can scale to meet your business needs.

7) We don’t need to collaborate with other people globally. Many organizations are self contained and only collaborate to produce content with people in their own building. However, increasingly worldwide collaboration for editing, dubbing, special effects or just review is the rule not the exception – even small marketing organizations need to collaborate with people all over the world. If you are producing content – chances are you either are or will need to exchange files on deadline with someone across town, across the country or on another continent.

We don’t need to get content in from the field, remote shoots or from users quickly, reliably and securely and our clients are happy to have us send them tapes. In some cases, content is produced, edited and packaged at a single site. There is no need to get the news in from where it is happening, there is no location shoot or content that a citizen journalist captured and wants to upload to you and you have no desire to deal with user generated content. However, more and more content that is captured remotely professionally or on a cell phone has great value and getting that content from that device can provide the jump on your competitor who is vying for the same content.

9) We have complete visibility to where our files are at all times and when they arrive at their destination. Some small manual operations where a single person is responsible for all file transfers – it is easy to know what files have arrived, what files are in transit and what files still need to be moved. But for almost any organization, where more than one person is involved in the creation, management or distribution of content – being able to track all of the files, the formats and their destinations quickly becomes a logistics nightmare. Oh, has anyone ever called and said the file never got there? Try proving a file has arrived without a signed digital signature.

10) We are happy with the method and speed we can delivery big media files around the world. Whether it is a 15MB Power Point File, 50 MB viral video, 500MB iTune file or 5GB Digital Daily – no one can make this claim. Moving big files over networks to meet business deadlines is a problem we all face – whether you are using email, ftp or any other application. If you are trying to move many large files to many locations – well the problems grows from a simple file movement problem to a logistics nightmare. A problem Signiant can help you with … just ask many of the companies that we are managing the movement and transformation of millions of files to hundreds of destinations.

Has anyone in your organization muttered any of the above? We didn’t think so.

Have  a look at this Network World video featuring Signiant’s Tony Lapolito. He explains how customers, including the NFL, are using Signiant’s Content Distribution Management software to manage the movement of their valuable content.

Listen in as executives from Five, SDI and Siemens discuss how Signiant has helped solve their digital media distribution challenges.

Well, another IBC has come and gone. This was the 18th IBC that I attended and in my opinion, it was one of the best for a number of reasons. Among them: the number of attendees was the highest yet (49,250); the level of interest and the quality of the questions and discussions was high and meaningful—these were people who had serious research, design, evaluation, and purchase initiatives and came to the show prepared. Writing briefly from a Signiant perspective, we were in the IPTV/Mobile zone and the amount of foot traffic was excellent as one would expect from these two areas that are now of major importance to the media and entertainment industry. We had a constant stream of individuals and companies looking for the ability to move content from, to, and throughout their ever-growing media ecosystem of partners. We demonstrated our new Version 8.0 software which received fantastic reviews from our current customers as well as from people who were new to Signiant, and were honored to be part of NBC Universal’s IBC-award winning MICAH product.

As is usually the case, I didn’t get too far from the Signiant booth until the last day of the show when I typically have to run around and see what new products there are and what companies are innovating. One of the most impressive was Maximum Throughput. The MaxEdit Server Edition and Web Edition are excellent products and truly represent innovation. I remember seeing these products at NAB and they have changed quite a bit since then. I saw web-based editorial (what I refer to as “editing on the wire”) and changes made on the flash-based web version resulting in an edited sequence which you can access on an i-Phone. Further, Max-T actually has a neat review and approval app that they’ve built, complete with grease-marker capability to highlight/annotate areas and that newly marked up version shows up back in the LAN version (because you are always manipulating the content metadata at the source) I urge you to check it out.

It was a GREAT IBC show for Signiant and hopefully for you if you attended!

I first attended IBC in 1991, when we at Avid were just introducing the PAL version of the Media Composer. The show has certainly changed through the years and in 2008 it is very apparent that IT-based implementations are increasingly being adopted and put into practice. Unlike the warming sun of last year, it is a typical overcast, rainy Amsterdam but that has not had any effect on the crowds. Booths are busy and there is energy to the crowd unlike at NAB.

HD is certainly forming a large component of what people are looking at, but hardware and software applications to support IPTV and Mobile initiatives are getting their fair share of increased floor presence and associated foot traffic.

The theme for this year’s IBC is “the world of content creation, management, and delivery” and I think particularly we are seeing more emphasis on, in order, delivery and management than ever before. Any content creator who has a volume of content is now seriously looking at how to manage and to keep track of that content—hence must look at both asset management and content management systems. And, files must be distributed to all the locations that require them—to affiliate stations, cable head ends, telcos, and the vast amount of business partners that are part of this ever morphing world of what we call the media and entertainment industry.

One of the clichés in this business is “NAB is hectic and IBC is much more tranquil”. I don’t find that to be the case at all. In 1991, the pace of IBC was very slow. Today, the pace is fast and people are coming to make evaluations and to make decisions!

Have a look at this testimonial video and learn why Signiant’s customers and partners selected its digital distribution software to solve their digital delivery challenges. The video includes clips from BT, NBC and Current TV.

You may recall Signiant’s cartoon that premiered at last year’s NAB…Digital Media Revolution…a hilarious spoof on a subject matter that’s increasingly growing in importance and affects your organization’s bottom line – digital media distribution management.

If you missed it, don’t fret. The sequel is on the way and it’s arguably better than the original. There’s a new challenge for our digital media protagonist Tom, you’ll have to come by the booth for a good laugh and to learn more about how Signiant can make you a hero too.

In addition to the cartoon debut, schedule a personal demonstration with Signiant’s management team to learn how Signiant is helping many of the world’s leading media and telco companies fulfill their digital media distribution needs.

Book your personal demo with Signiant at NAB
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Signiant will be exhibiting in booth SL13-213 of the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. For free admission to the show April 14-17, visit nabshow.com and enter VIP Pass Code: AE1094.

Both cartoons have been created by Hatchling Studios.

We are pleased to be able to make available in a single file both the Signiant Cartoon and the demonstration of Signiant we showed at April’s NAB 2007 show.

There are two formats of the video available. One is formatted for the iPod. iTunes viewers should right click the playback window and select “original size” to more clearly see the demo portion of the video. The other file is formatted for Windows Media Player. The iPod-formatted file is approximately 19MB; the Windows Media file is approximately 62MB.

Whichever file you view, in just a few short minutes, you will see why Signiant is being greeted with such anticipation in the media and entertainment industry.

 

 Signiant Cartoon & Demo -- iPod format [14:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Signiant Cartoon & Demo -- for Windows Media [14:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We’re very pleased to post in podcast form our cartoon that premiered at NAB 2007. You can click on the links at the bottom of this post to play the cartoon. Our podcast subscribers will receive an iPod Video-formatted version in the RSS feed. Both the version here and in the podcast feed feature a very cool stereo soundtrack, enhanced with binaural effects. Be sure to listen in phones!

And, just for good measure the YouTube Flash version is embedded here, as well.

We hope you enjoy the cartoon!

 

 The Signiant Cartoon [3:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We are very pleased and excited to put this post on the blog. This is the first public showing of the trailer of our new cartoon, which we’ll be showing in its entirety at NAB 2007. If you aren’t attending NAB 2007, we’ll be posting the cartoon on our soon-to-be-updated website at www.signiant.com.

We hope you enjoy the cartoon as much as we did producing it.

 

 Signiant NAB 2007 cartoon trailer [0:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Continuing our titillating previews of the content we’ve developed to premier at NAB 2007, this post contains two different goodies. Just click on the icons and/or links at the bottom of this post to play the audio and video files.

First is an iPod-ready eight second shot from the cartoon revealing the design of the much-anticipated (well, at least by us caffeine addicts) Signiant Digital Media Rush energy drink. Even if these libations aren’t…ahem…your cup of tea, you should stop by NAB 2007 booth SU9027 just to see what happens to the staff when it’s all we have to drink for four days.

Next, we offer a :30 spot that we’ll be playing on the monorail and which we hope will repeat in your mind ad infinitum while you are in Las Vegas.

 

 Signiant Digital Media Rush energy drink [0:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Signiant NAB 2007 monorail spot [0:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Without spoiling the drama of the premier of Signiant’s animation for NAB 2007, we’d like to introduce you to the main character — or should I say characters — in the story.

We think this guy is like a lot of people in the media and entertainment industry struggling to manage file-based workflows. We hope you’ll stop by booth SU9027 to see how closely this maps to your experience. Just fill in this form and we’ll set up a private meeting for you at NAB 2007 to learn more about digital media distribution management for your company.

First, meet “Tom.” He’s the dude who has to deal with the explosion of digital media. As you can see, it’s taken a bit of a toll on him.

Here’s the dude we call “M-Tom .” Wait’ll you see the powerful things M-Tom does to manage the explosion of digital media and make life better for everyone in the company. Suave is only the beginning of what we think of M-Tom.

With apologies to those who prefer propeller-head metaphors, here’s “Aut-Tom.” Aut-Tom has nifty push buttons for ears because he’s the dude that automates all those workflows. Get it? Just “push the button.” (Check out Digital Media Galaxy podcast #7 to learn more about why I think Aut-Tom is the Tom-to-be.)

Green means go. And to “A-Tom,” it means accelerate content across the network in the most effective way possible. Watch out for this dude when you see the animation at NAB 2007…he could be flying by.

This is “S-Tom.” And, no, he’s not gonna give A-Tom a ticket. We’ve all got security on our minds when we use the ‘net. But A-Tom takes it to a level never before seen. This guy is like those super-secret government security people: he knows what it takes to make sure content is there and untampered with.

I hope you enjoyed meeting our Toms. Please stop by Signiant’s booth — SU9027 — at NAB 2007 to see the completed animation. You’re gonna laugh — you might even cry in empathy — and you’re sure to have a good time. We’re out to make your NAB visit as much fun as it is informative. Remember: if you want to see how the clever people who made this animation can help you solve some very nasty challenges in the digital media revolution, you gotta fill in this form.

Some of the attendees who participated in our webinar on February 27 asked for the PowerPoint presentation we delivered. I’ve attached the slides to this post. (I’ve made them into a PDF to save space.)

Also, here’s a link to a Flash-based reply of the webinar.

Thank you to everyone who attended today and watch this space for news of our next webinar, which we are planning for sometime in March, 2007.

 Signiant webinar presentation 2-27-2007: Download