“With hundreds of highlights and more than a thousand hours of coverage, we needed an efficient workflow to bring the Games to Olympic fans,” said Perkins Miller, SVP, Digital Media, NBC Sports and Olympics. “Signiant has been a critical partner in making this process fast and error-free.”

Read the entire Signiant/NBC Olympic press release.

Read the entire story, authored by Tom Ohanian and published on MediaPost.com

There was a great article this past week in Broadcasting & Cable about NBCU’s coverage of the 2010 Olympic games and how it will actually be generated by a significantly smaller staff and a leaner technical operation, a reflection of current economic realities, technology advances and NBCU’s growing expertise in pulling off these massive events. The article can be found here.

And of course here’s an excerpt which includes the role Signiant will once again play in the Olympics…NBCU will again use MediaGrid servers and ProCast IP technology for the Highlights Factory. A MediaGrid in Vancouver will connect to EVS XT[2] production servers to enable fast access to HD media. Edited content will be sent as 50 Mbps MPEG-2 files over AT&T fiber to a second MediaGrid system in New York, which will pump content to new-media delivery outlets under the direction of NBCU’s MICAH internal distribution system (a combination of Rhozet transcoding and Signiant file acceleration technology).

Drip…drip…Woooooooosh

That is the sound of your content leaking to the hands of pirates – costing the industry billions. Wolverine, Iron Manевтини мебели and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are just some of the movies reported to have been leaked. The same holds true for TV content – though some argue that when a pilot or season premiere leaks it falls into the promotion category…..

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.

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.

Watch part 3 of this interview on MacVideo.

Imagine turning the water faucet on and never being able to turn it off. Eventually, a few things tend to happen. You get wet. Your stuff gets wet. If you’re in an apartment and you live above people, the people below you get wet. Their stuff gets wet. You get the picture. To avoid drowning, the best way, of course, is to turn off that water, but, alas, you can’t. It just keeps coming.The ever-increasing amount of digital media content that continues to hurtle towards us is mind-numbing and there is simply no way that faucet is going to be turned off. Gone forever are the days that only a few talented people could create programming. Now, anyone with a digital camera, a laptop-based editing system, and a Web site (or, if you will, insert YouTube here) can post content (whether it’s a real story as opposed to a fanciful clip I leave to you), and, shazam, it’s available to anyone in the world. As a result…

…Read the rest by clicking here.

So why did they choose Signiant? Signiant’s ability to prioritize files, such as large virtual images, schedule file delivery, and send them in the correct order is one of the main reasons a worldwide leader in software, services, and solutions has chosen to work with us. Let the revolution begin!

Digital Nonlinear Editing (DNLE) systems have existed for more than 20 years as hardware/software alternatives to dedicated standalone silos. The progression of DNLEs is straightforward: first, DNLEs replaced dedicated tape-based editing systems in standalone configurations. Next, DNLEs assumed LAN-based sharing capabilities, enabling a limited number of editing stations to share content. Simultaneously, compressed picture quality (1989 at 250:1 software JPEG compression) improved and, ultimately, DNLEs were able to work in uncompressed video (and film) resolutions.

Flash forward to 2009. DNLEs exist in standalone and sharing configurations. The number of DNLEs that can be networked in a sharing environment can easily reach 100-200 and can perform real-time operations on X number of tracks. The more dedicated the DNLE is, and connected to DAS, Striped-DAS, High-Performance SAN, etc., the higher the number of tracks that can be played back in real-time (RT) without rendering. Typically…

…Read the rest by clicking here.

It’s an interesting interview/video, have a look.

In 1987 AVID technology began life as a company and in the years that followed the entire workflow for editing film was to be changed forever. A core team of people were involved in the development of the AVID, from the initial idea by Bill Warner, to the technical creation of a system which still rules Hollywood today. Tom Ohanian was part of the AVID founding team, those who brought the Media Composer, the Film Composer and Avid Multicamera Systems into being.

Most of us are thrilled with time shifting or choice, while overlooking some of the things that these guys really value – Closed Captioning. Well, adding CC to video, especially streaming media with a somewhat unknown audience size – can be expensive and labor intensive. Why would you “over invest” in an asset by manually adding in CC if you don’t know who will be watching it – much less if someone that needs CC or SAP?

Putting the legal and regulatory issues aside, any business person probably would agree that the investment is dubious at best. However, how do you expect to become the first option in viewing if you are not as feature rich as the old technology.

In short – cost effective process automation needs to be implemented to deliver content in many flavors – this includes the ‘3 screens’ (today’s focus) as well as for people that like to ‘hear’ it in various ways. Robert and Jamie did some good detective work to find Signiant.

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!

Tom and Ashish also discuss SIPP, Signiant’s newly launched product integration program and the benefits it provides to partners such as Interra Systems who have recently joined.

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.

***We recommend clicking on “download” so you can view the video more clearly.***