New Media Channel - Workflow

INTRODUCTION

The Image Server 2000 (IS 2000) from 360 Systems provides one of the most effective marriages of the IT and Broadcast worlds. It provides a platform offering thee ability to ingest, edit and layout video whilst using industry standard network connectivity allows for the import and export of files WITHOUT impacting its video performance.

THE ARCHITECTURE

The outline diagram above describes a system, which is implicity itself, whilst maintaining the picture / sound quality and reliability expected of a mainstream broadcaster.

The IS 20000 has the advantage of being network ready and ble to accept files from the most popular PC or MAC applications whether stills, stills with key or animation's using simple ftp file transfers. The server is configured to provide 20 hours of storage on its internal RAID 5 disk array operating at a video data rate of 25 Mbps. The compact form factor of the IS 2000 allows for multiple channels to be housed in one unit, making the whole operation and system media management simple. Not only that the Ethernet uses standard size packets (MTU of 1500) and provides data transfer rates that competitors can only achieve using Jumbo packets, thus providing a lower cost network infrastructure.

All media, whether the ingested rush, the edit pieces or trimmed sections are held in the server as industry standard MXF files. However the IS 2000 can accept a very wide range of file formats and play them out back to back, in a single playlist, a very unique feature. Accepted file formats include: MXK, MPEG-2 (both I-Frame and LongGOP), DV and AVI.

There are many applications such as Anystream that will transcode the MXF or DV files to a format appropriate for distribution on other platforms and devices. For the Web, the most popular formats are Microsoft Windows Media, Real, Apple QuickTime and Adobe Flash. Content owners now often need to create multiple formats at different resolutions to serve the widest possible audience with varying platforms and connection speeds. Other distribution outlets for broadcast content now include mobile devices and cable VOID - both of which, again, require transcoding because they use different techniques such as multiple videos files or streams and MMSs, examples of which are 3G and DVB-H.