Categories
Digital Media Technology

Improving Creative Workflows through Broadcast Systems Integration

Live shows. On-location news crews covering a big story. Live broadcasts of sporting events with millions of viewers globally. Large creative teams on location and in studios. Video coming in from multiple cameras at every angle. Impactful graphics and special effects. This is the world of broadcast media production, where viewers and advertisers demand the highest quality. Broadcast systems integration is essential in this environment to ensure your production team operates efficiently.

Modern consumer demand stretches broadcast production teams to the limits, and efficiency and seamless collaboration are necessary for producing high-quality video content rapidly and getting it out to viewers. In broadcast media production, agile workflows are not a luxury; they are crucial to getting the job done well.

Streamlined Asset Management for Broadcasting Teams

Streamlined asset management is the key to bringing it all together for broadcast teams. It is not uncommon for live productions to have production crews on location. At the same time, postproduction team members are offsite in the studios and at home, poised and ready to take uploaded content and quickly create videos prepared for immediate distribution. While a huge volume of assets is being assembled and ingested, the teams must also get their hands on the rich archive of assets. All MAMs will have basic features like metadata management, search and retrieve, and version control.

The broadcast team relies on the media asset management (MAM) system. Media Asset Management systems ensure that assets are easy to find and retrieve but do more than manage content. The right media asset management system will streamline workflows and allow broadcast teams to break through the challenges of this sector to create impactful content on short timelines. Broadcast teams need an asset management system that is agile and includes workflow orchestration tools as well. Optimized workflows that provide immediate access to assets enable faster sharing of media files with all creative team members. These efficiencies impact the finished video and expedite related content creation like highlight reels, interviews, and news clips. A MAM that can handle the demand of broadcast media will include:

  • Powerful metadata enrichment features to allow easy search and retrieval automated by AI and machine learning.
  • Robust security to manage user access to the media files and to protect against cyberattacks as well as unauthorized access and use.
  • Broadcast systems integration is essential. Your production team will be most efficient and creative when your MAM seamlessly integrates with their video editing software and other tools.
  • Built-in review, approval, and collaboration tools.
  • Hybrid system capabilities. Because broadcast studios often have significant on-premises investments, a hybrid solution that brings cloud-based media asset management while leveraging on-prem assets, equipment, and team members can be an effective solution. This capability gives broadcast production companies the power to harness the power of their on-prem investments while ensuring access for remote creatives, a growing segment of the production industry’s talent pool.
  • Automation is a game-changer, allowing creatives to do more in less time while ensuring consistency through many time-consuming and repetitive processes, including ingesting, metadata enrichment, validation of files, to the final distribution of finished video content.
  • Because many broadcasters distribute through multiple channels at the same time, broadcasters need to have a MAM that will support distribution to various devices and platforms and work with the most prominent players in social media like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter, and the nonlinear platforms like video on demand and OTT.

With so many MAMs on the market, it’s challenging for companies to match the solution with their unique needs. One struggle that established broadcast media companies face when upgrading their MAM is how to bring it all together. When Kroenke Sports and Entertainment needed to modernize their MAM, they required a partner to understand the value of their legacy content and on-prem investments. Kroenke Sports owns several sports franchises and broadcasts collegiate and high school sports in their markets. CHESA worked with Kroenke to implement the IPV Curator MAM system. This system ensures consistency in content management and increased the efficiency of post-production. CHESA workflow engineers worked with the team to design effective proxy-based workflows and integrate them with other software and systems. Their media management system is robust to meet their current needs while also being designed to adapt to their future needs.

Contact Us Today

CHESA has supported broadcasters in identifying and deploying the solutions they need to produce and distribute high-quality content efficiently. CHESA has a passion for the nuances of media workflow integration. We take a holistic approach in recommending solutions that bring real value and benefits to your organization rather than selling technology for technology’s sake. Our team comes to the table with deep knowledge of the tools and vendors and is ready to address the demands and requirements of your environment and advance your business goals. Contact us today to find out more about how a Media Asset Management Platform can foster collaboration at your organization.

Categories
Digital Media

Broadcast Automation for Broadcasting and Production Teams

Broadcast media is content that is distributed to large audiences. Traditionally, “broadcast” was used to describe television and radio, but it now includes content distributed through the internet and streaming services. Broadcast automation can significantly impact broadcast productions with large teams and budgets but short production times or live broadcasting.

Broadcast teams may shoot raw footage using multi-cameras, especially for sports, news, and musical performance. The crew may be on location capturing video while the postproduction team is editing and adding sound and visual effects simultaneously from a studio or multiple remote environments. The finished video may be widely distributed over several channels to audiences worldwide.

At the same time, other broadcasters may be capturing videos of the same event, especially in the case of news and sports coverage. When competing crews cover the same event, your loyal viewer needs to know they are viewing your production. Brand consistency is the key to broadcast media loyalty because viewers can readily identify your company. With all the players in the mix, how do you ensure that your videos are readily identifiable as yours? It’s all about branding.

Managing and Controlling Brand Assets

Your viewer’s experience will be curated and predictable when everything is right. Minor deviations may seem like no big deal, but branding mostly engages consumers unconsciously. Brand elements work on associations that build trust. The consumer’s loyalty and trust may be affected when something breaks the .

For video, branding assets are more than just logos, fonts, and colors. Your brand defines the user’s experience when viewing content and in the video. That experience is multisensory. In addition to text styles, graphic elements, and color schemes, your brand also includes audio (music, voiceovers, sound effects), the visual layout of the screen, the chyron location and style, the colorization palette, transition animations, special effects, and much more.

The files that make up these branding elements are media assets. Brand guidelines tell your creatives how to use the assets to produce content that aligns with your brand, but retrieving the correct version of the assets can be time-consuming and error-prone. There is no time for errors or misplaced files in broadcast video production. The camera crew needs to be able to ingest and attach metadata quickly and have it readily accessible so multiple creatives can begin editing the content and preparing it for distribution.

The proper Media Asset Management (MAM) system will optimize broadcast production and postproduction and control branding assets. Your team will readily find current, approved versions of the assets.

Your MAM system is essential for managing assets in broadcast media. When looking for effective MAM solutions for broadcast, key features like artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to enrich the metadata further. Your MAM should support communication, collaboration, automation, and workflow orchestration. Because many broadcasters have vast media archives and often have sophisticated OnPrem investments, a hybrid cloud solution that connects location crews and remote or studio-based editors may be the best fit.

While brand guidelines are helpful, templating and prebuilding sequences can ensure brand consistency and reduce production time. Quickly getting the finished video true to the brand is critical for broadcast media production. That’s where broadcast automation can make a big difference.

Editing software can be integrated with templates to provide further control over branding consistency. For example, in Adobe Premier Pro and After Effects, Motion Graphic Templates allow editors to work more efficiently. These templates can include a wide range of assets, including raw footage, prebuilt sequences, graphics, music, sound effects, After Effects compositions, and other assets essential to branding. Teams can share these templates globally with all the editors on the team, so everyone has access to the most up-to-date assets. These templates can reduce versioning time by 84%.

Ensuring you are taking full advantage of your MAM’s features is essential. Sometimes you have a powerful MAM, like CatDV, but you only take advantage of a fraction of the system’s power. CatDV, with its powerful asset management functions, automation, workflow orchestration, and collaboration tools, is well suited for broadcast production. Bringing in solution experts can help you get more out of your existing MAM. That was the case with our client, New Psalmist Baptist Church. They were already experienced in the broadcast when they approached us to partner with them to take full advantage of CatDV MAM’s workflow automation.

Contact Us Today

CHESA has a passion for the nuances of media workflow integration. We have strong partnerships with the best-of-breed technology providers in the creative IT industry. We take a holistic approach in recommending solutions that bring real value and benefits to your organization rather than selling technology for technology’s sake. Our team comes to the table with deep knowledge of the tools and vendors and is ready to address the demands and requirements of your environment and advance your business goals. Contact us today to find out more about how a Digital Asset Management Platform can foster collaboration at your organization.

Categories
Digital Asset Management

Work Smarter with a Video Asset Management System

A video asset management system can help creative teams work smarter and gain efficiency. These systems can shorten the time to distribution without sacrificing quality. There is increasing pressure to deliver high-quality video on tight timelines across the industry—but success isn’t about working harder and grinding away at mundane tasks; it’s about working smarter.

Video editors can harness the power of video asset management systems to organize their assets and streamline their workflows. These systems address key pain points in the video production and postproduction process by providing a centralized location for all assets, ensuring they are readily available, and enabling collaboration with other team members. These systems often allow editors to automate repetitive tasks.

But getting more done in less time isn’t the only goal. The right system will also support high-quality creative work. Certain types of stress hurt creativity and the ability to initiate action. A video production project’s sheer volume of assets is a form of mental clutter that can stall progress and push editors out of the creative zone. The relationship between stress and creativity is an interesting one. Challenge stressors fuel innovation, while hindrance stressors thwart creativity. Poor organization and ineffective workflows are a form of operational “red tape” that forces editors to spend excess time searching and retrieving assets and to focus on seemingly repetitive tasks. Other hindrance stressors include a lack of clarity about roles. The right video asset management system not only brings efficiency to the management of assets but also eliminates hindrance stressors to ensure that editors remain in the creative zone.

How can Video Editors Optimize their Time?

There’s a lot that video editors can do to optimize their time. Here are ten practices to increase your productivity and enhance your creativity.

  1. Manage assets well. Staying organized ensures editors can access approved assets and are ready to work unimpeded. Video asset management systems and carefully designed and practical workflows cut through the chaos and help creators jump into their work.
  2. Ensure that your technology is properly configured. Correctly setting up the video management system is essential. The last thing that video editors want to do is spend lots of time troubleshooting technology. When properly configured, your video asset management software can help editors optimize their workflows, but poorly integrated solutions can cause delays.
  3. Ensure that everyone who touches assets throughout the process knows how to get the most out of your media asset management solution. It’s the key to ensuring everyone has access to the assets they need, and it is a big win for all team members.
  4. Editors should know their editing style and their strengths. Professional self-awareness helps editors optimize their time.
  5. Another way video editors can optimize their time is to increase their proficiency with their video editing software. The software that is available on the market is compelling. Most creatives only take advantage of a fraction of the power of their tools, many times leaning on manual and time-consuming processes. The pressure to be efficient can make editors feel like they don’t have time to invest in mastering the advanced features of their video editing software. For instance, keyboard shortcuts have a dramatic impact on productivity. Learning the software’s advanced features offers a fantastic ROI, allowing editors to work more efficiently.
  6. Adopt effective project management practices. Project management streamlines video production operations. Define roles, responsibilities, and timelines. Keep other team members informed of delays and obstacles to optimize their time.
  7. Effective communication and collaboration are essential. Use your MAM’s embedded review, approval, and commenting functions to ensure the crucial information is linked to the assets and in-process files rather than in a separate, disjointed system like email or messaging.
  8. Use automation. Simplify the nonessential so that editors can focus on the creative aspect of their work. Nothing puts creativity to a screeching halt, like being overwhelmed by numerous repetitive tasks. A good media asset management system will automate these tasks. This efficiency clears the mental space and will position editors for their most creative work.
  9. Integrate. One system rarely meets all your needs. Integration is a powerful way to design a system for efficiency and creativity. Connecting tools like your media asset management solution directly to your editing software through panel extensions allows for greater efficiency.
  10. Don’t wing it. Working with professionals who can advise your team on the best solutions and workflows gives a great return on investment. When editors are free to edit, they do their absolute best work.

Contact Us Today

CHESA partners with best-of-breed technology providers in the creative IT industry. We continually evaluate and test our solutions offerings, with CHESA engineers and Solutions Architects validating every technology we place into real-world integrations. No one system fits everyone. We take a comprehensive approach and recommend the best fit for each client’s situation.

CHESA has a passion for the nuances of media workflow integration. We take a holistic approach in recommending solutions that bring real value and benefits to your organization rather than selling technology for technology’s sake. Our team comes to the table ready to address the demands and requirements of your environment and advance your business goals. Contact us today to find out more about how your editors can optimize their time with powerful workflows and effective asset management.

#65 Automation in an Adobe Workflow with David Merzenich of MoovIt

On this episode of The Workflow Show, Jason and Ben chat with David Merzenich of MoovIt, a German-based systems integrator and the first Adobe Video Solution Partner in the program. David Merzenich discusses Helmut, a suite of workflow orchestration tools designed from the ground up, to bring consistency and flexibility to any Adobe post-production environment. Ben and Jason ask about the development, goals, and benefits of using Helmut within the Adobe ecosystem and discuss certain challenges of an Adobe-centric workflow. Listen in for some workflow therapy!