Blue Order at NAB 2009

Blue Order, a leading Media Asset Management (MAM) vendor, will be demonstrating their tapeless workflow solution, spanning from ingest to distribution, at NAB 2009. The core element of the exhibit will be Blue Order’s Media Archive 3.3, a powerful MAM solution which can easily be configured and scaled to suit the needs of evolving Media organisations.

Media Archive makes access to content quick and easy, automates workflows and enables content users to reuse, repurpose and resell their content more efficiently. Media Archive allows for integrated and consistent workflows throughout the production process chain, transforming production silos into a fully integrated enterprise wide production platform.

Media Archive delivers on the promise of Enterprise Media Asset Management: Content made available – anytime, anywhere, in any format. At NAB 2009, Blue Order will unveil new additions to Media Archive, already recognized as one of the leading enterprise-scale MAM systems in broadcasting.

New intelligent infrastructure products

ASP-ready
Media Archive enables Application Service Providers (ASP) to offer computer-based services to their customers over a network. Its open architecture and the extensive amount of interfaces to 3rd party systems support ASP providers in offering a solution tailored to the needs of their clients, while significantly reducing their total cost of ownership. Media Archive’s software architecture supports multi-tenancy. Based on one single Media Archive platform ASP providers can host and manage the content of multiple clients in parallel while at the same time ensuring that each client’s hosted content remains completely secure from other clients on the system. Furthermore Media Archive’s web based user interfaces allow easy adaptation to the specific corporate design of the ASP or the end customer. As the core element of an ASP solution Media Archive is already in use at e.g. Astra Platform Services (APS) and Plazamedia (both Germany).

CataLogger
Media Archive’s established Cataloging Client has been revised. The new CataLogger now combines the unique and proven ability to create an unlimited number of metadata layers along the timeline with more usage efficiency and ease. It now supports a variety of shortcuts and function keys and further drag&drop functionality has been added to enable faster and more efficient editing. The Browse Video frame can be scaled to full screen size for better recognition of image details. The available views are presented in tabs thoroughly facilitating the navigation and the data entry. Metadata can easily be copied between media objects and metadata pages for accelerated annotation.

Browse editor
Media Archive now offers its own Browse Editor. The new Media Archive Edit PRO is an editing application for journalists and producers allowing the basic editing on existing office PCs. The new Media Archive Edit PRO works on proxy video files and comes with comprehensive video and audio features such as transitions, support for multiple tracks and voice-over. Media Archive supports sending projects to Final Cut Pro and Avid editing systems. As journalists and producers can do the major editing by themselves media organizations can benefit from less time and money spent in high performance edit bays.

Integrations on display at the show
At NAB 2009, Blue Order will present the integration with best-of-breed industry solutions such as Sony XDCAM, AmberFin iCR, Omneon MediaDeck, Apple Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer.

Workflows
Enhancing the comprehensive list of standard workflows, Blue Order will show new workflows at NAB 2009, such as

Standards & Practices - Whenever broadcasters acquire content for delivery to one or more distribution channels, they have to ensure that the content adheres to all standards and practices (S&P) that apply for the specific distribution channel. In order to achieve S&P compliance, the entire content has to be reviewed, any part that requires editing has to be marked and enhanced with a proposition of actions to be taken. The resulting compliant version can then be distributed to the desired channel. Media Archive, initially dedicated to support workflows for News, Programming, or Sports, can now support Media Distribution Centers by helping them to efficiently handle compliance workflows as well as other related workflows such as closed captioning, dubbing, and promo creation in different languages and for a variety of distribution channels

Genealogy – Media Archive has the ability to track a media object’s history throughout the production process. Media Archive’s Content Genealogy allows you to reference to or copy all metadata, global and timecode based, including rights information from the source assets to the newly generated asset.

MXF Support - Media Archive’s powerful workflow capabilities are enhanced by MXF functionality. Media Archive can wrap video and audio files into MXF Wrappers and unwrap them from MXF wrappers (MXF wrapper standard formats: OP Atom, OP1a, b, c, OP2a, b, c, OP3a, b); supporting special MXF wrappers such as SONY eVTR, SONY XDCAM (DV, HD and Proxy), Panasonic P2, AVID Atom, and DCP (Digital Cinema Package); reading and writing metadata within MXF Wrapper files; and partially restoring (partial delivery) upon time codes from MXF files.

Reporting for more efficient operations
Blue Order introduces a reporting framework enabling the generation of specific management reports. The reporting tool creates graphical reports and allows the export of reports to Microsoft Excel. Administrators can run reports to monitor the performance of Media Archive across the entire workflow. The gained monitoring information can be used for a media organization’s mid- and long-term planning and to identify improvement potential. Report data can be shared among peers, modified, printed or included into other documents

Furthermore Blue Order has worked on improving the user experience with Media Archive. All Web GUIs can now be customized per customer or even per user, providing them with a GUI made-to-measure for their daily work. The standard Media Archive version also comes with a set of predefined skins that can easily be changed in the Web GUI while working with the system.
Media Archive’s Web Retrieval has been enhanced now featuring Hits Highlighting of the search term for comfortable viewing of hits, avoiding time-consuming search through text.

With “Did You Mean” Media Archive now offers phonetic based autosuggestion, i.e. a spell check like functionality, in case a previous full text search resulted in no or only very few hits. This feature is similar to the Google search.

Blue Order is a global provider of turnkey Media Asset Management (MAM) solutions. Media and entertainment companies, corporations and public institutions use Blue Order products to collect, index, catalog, retrieve and distribute audio-visual and multi-format content. Blue Order’s ‘Media Archive®’ provides a comprehensive MAM framework to support new digital content services, optimize workflows and increase efficiencies along the content value chain.

Blue Order is headquartered in Germany with subsidiaries in the UK and US. The company has been deploying its products since 1995 for a broad range of customer applications, with a special emphasis on broadcast, library and media production applications. Blue Order has well-established partnerships with technology providers and system integrators to ensure industry-specific solutions and professional services. References encompass many well-known companies, including Al Jazeera, Astra Platform Services, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Caracol TV, ESPN Brazil, NBC Olympics, Plazamedia, ProSiebenSat.1, RTM, TNS, VMMa, YLE and ZDF.

Blue Order Solutions AG
Europaallee 10
67657 Kaiserslautern
Germany

Press contact:
Christina Seemann
press@blue-order.com

This release was published on openPR.