This year, we’ll have a ‘techno-workflow-confessional’ area on our stand, 7.D39. Probably the first ever at IBC. To clarify, it’s not intended to for those who committed sins in the 1970s whilst listening to Kraftwerk.
To set the context a bit further, IBC is somewhat like visiting the Ideal Home exhibition in London. You arrive and everything is amazing – 16K holographic tellies, 5G-enabled toilet-roll holders, artificially intelligent refrigerators and ovens that collude on what, when and how to cook your dinner.
Then you get home and of course reality isn’t quite like that. Most domestic things aren’t all new and are from differing eras. There’s no point in installing that new toilet-roll holder if you don’t have 5G. It is the same with the typical TV station, post house or studio.
Of course, we’ll be talking about the latest hybrid-cloud workflows and all our shiniest, new stuff at IBC. Yet sometimes the client conversations may drift in another direction: “Yes, that’s all lovely, we’ll have a deeper look after the show. However, can you help with this more immediate problem, please?”
Usually, the problem relates to integrating to – or migrating from – legacy infrastructure to new systems and enabling new ‘to be’ workflows. This has become an ever-increasing part of what we do. So, I’d like to start the confessions, having recently delivered the following:
Integrating a legacy MAM to new infrastructure
Avoided cost and complexity of a MAM replacement by integrating a huge, live and technically-obsolete MAM system to a contemporary production system for a leading service provider.
Made legacy content accessible
Extracted and reconstructed metadata from an Avid Interplay system, which was being decommissioned by a major studio. Enabling producers to still research vital legacy content for new productions.
Simplified production workflows
Delivered a complex cloud-based proxy-relinking workflow for a US network. Enabling producers to create promos more efficiently whist avoiding cloud egress costs and high online storage costs.
Accelerated utilisation of a new MAM
Accelerated production benefits of a new MAM for a big US network by integrating a complex legacy library to the new MAM.
So, if you have a tricky ‘to be’ workflow or integration challenge, please feel free to arrange a ‘techno-workflow-confessional’ meeting with us at IBC here. Please be reassured, we won’t tell anyone…
