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IBC 2019: EditShare Launches Academy Education Offering; Sony Breaks Out New Hardware

Several members of the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) — including EditShare, NAGRA, Sony, Prime Focus Technologies, Technicolor and Avid — made the most of the first official day of the 2019 IBC show in Amsterdam, announcing partnerships, new programs, and new hardware.

EditShare

EditShare, which specializes in collaboration, security, and storage solutions for media creation and management, announced the launch of its EditShare Academy program, a series of instructor-led and e-learning authorized training and certification programs that are geared toward keeping media professionals up-to-date on the latest EditShare tools and workflows.

The Academy is comprised of EditShare Associate, EditShare Engineer and EditShare Sales Professional learning tracks targeted toward sales engineers, IT managers and video professionals

“As the media landscape shifts beyond the traditional production and post-production practices and demand for video professionals expands into new markets, our customers and sales channel partners require training and certification programs that can equip them to navigate the new technical waters and distinguish themselves from the pack,” said Stuart McGeechan, VP of customer success for EditShare. “EditShare Academy is an important foundation for customer and partner enablement and success, which are top priority at EditShare. It is a tremendous learning platform that the community can leverage to gain new professional skills and enhance their talents across media workflow design, installation and operational maintenance.

“Courses combined with certification will help advance careers in creative and or sales tracks, and for business owners, help their company thrive whether they are a post facility, corporation with a media department or a sales partner providing the wider community guidance and support.”

EditShare Academy training and certification courses cover everything from technical operations and workflow for EditShare’s EFS high-performance shared storage solutions; to Flow media asset management (MAM); to QScan automated quality control (AQC) and Helmut.

For more information, visit editshare.com/academy.

Sony

Sony came out big to kick off IBC, unveiling new products, solutions and services, including updated IP Live offerings, two IP extension adapters (HDCE-TX30 and HDCE-RX30), a new flagship FX9 E-mount camera, geared toward documentary shooting, and an E-mount Cinema lens (FE C 16-35mm T3.1 G).

Sony also showed off its PXW-Z750, an XDCAM shoulder camcorder, additional models to the DWX series digital wireless microphone system, and its new 6Kx3K Crystal LED display system.

“We are always listening to our customer’s voice, pushing to deliver innovation that allows them to realize their full artistic intention,” said Neal Manowitz, deputy president for Imaging Products and Solutions Americas at Sony Electronics. “With the new FX9, we are striking an attractive balance between agility and creative performance. We’ve combined the cinematic appeal of full-frame with advanced professional filmmaking capabilities in a package that’s extremely portable and backed by the extraordinary versatility of Sony E-mount.”

Sony also announced a new Intelligent Media Services suite of services and micro-services, intended to support media companies interested in transforming their traditional supply chains, by unlocking more value from content for deeper audience engagement.

Sony shared that it has developed advanced IP live production solutions and delivered more than 60 IP live studios and OB trucks to customers around the world (including Euro Media Group, NEP Australia, DPG Media and SIC Portugal), and unveiled two new remote-control panels (MKS-R4020 and MKS-E1620) that pair with Live Element Orchestrator software.

A new option board for the Sony HDCU-5500 Camera Control Units (CCU) (the HKCU-REC55); a 19-inch 3U full rack size CCU compatible with most current HDC camera systems (HDCU-5000); and a new artificial Intelligence-based video analytics solution (REA-C1000) were also given the spotlight.

“At Sony, everything we do is driven by our customers and our desire to help them realize their creative vision in the most efficient and streamlined way. Our aim is to provide them with real return on investment and help them make the most of their ideas through our products, services and solutions,” said Theresa Alesso, pro division president of Sony Electronics.

For more information visit pro.sony/ibc.

Prime Focus Technologies

Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), the tech arm of Prime Focus, used IBC to show off updates to its flagship product, the CLEAR Media ERP, offering media and entertainment enterprises improved collaboration, greater security, and an enhanced user experience.

“At PFT, we’re always looking for new ways to deliver an exceptional user experience to our customers. In order to help users perform end-to-end content operations with greater efficiency, we’ve reimagined CLEAR’s package ingest capabilities and bolstered its powerful Work Order Management functionality with new features,” said Amer Saleem, VP of product management for PFT. “In addition, we’ve introduced an all-new Apple TV application that modernizes the screening room experience, as well as a next-generation media player which delivers both incredible performance and ironclad security. The new enhancements will also enable our Services customers to increase efficiencies and scale operations like never before.”

The latest enhancements to CLEAR include smart alerts for Work Order Management (better enabling users to manage assets, tasks and workflow orchestration on one system); the ability for users to manage large-scale manual or automated ingestions for complex media asset packages; and a host of cloud-enabled media services, including subtitling, QC, compliance, distribution and cataloguing, helping users more easily onboard services vendors and freelancers, create and manage work orders, and track all operations via dashboards and customized reporting.

PFT also showed off a new HTML5 player for CLEAR, which offers content creators a well-rendered and fast viewing experience on any browser and any device. Additionally, new patent-pending technology from PFT burns a watermark of the logged-in user’s email address into the video on-the-go. Combined with forensic watermarking, the service facilitates swift detection and tracking of misuse.

Avid

Avid used the opening day of IBC to share that its Media Composer video editing software offering will now be able to deliver native support for Apple’s ProRes RAW camera codec, and will support ProRes playback and encoding on Windows.

Apple will also provide 64-bit decoders for DNxHR and DNxHD codecs within the Pro Video Formats package, which is available from Apple as a free download. The integrations will allow content creators and post companies to natively create high-quality ProRes content regardless of their operating system, Avid said.

Media Composer for macOS and Windows will also add native support for ProRes RAW, which applies ProRes compression to raw data from a camera sensor.

“This collaboration democratizes content creation by removing the boundaries posed by different operating systems and opens the door to a greater number of higher-quality delivery formats,” said Rob D’Amico, director of product marketing for Avid. “Adding support for ProRes for Windows, native ProRes RAW and DNx Codecs is yet another way Media Composer deals with advancements in technology so editors can stay focused on creative storytelling.”

For more information visit avid.com/media-composer.

NAGRA

Content protection and multiscreen television solutions specialist NAGRA announced yet another partnership around IBC, sharing that Montecable in Uruguay will use NAGRA’s cloud-based Conax GO Live solution, in order to enable advanced features, including support for Android TV and VOD.

This marks the first deployment of Conax GO Live, NAGRA’s turnkey OTT solution, in the Americas.

“Our initial launch of the Conax GO Live solution was very successful with our subscribers and the time was right to introduce new features and leverage new technologies to make that happen quickly and efficiently,” said Federico Carballal, sales and marketing director at Montecable. “Deploying the cloud-instance of Conax GO Live was the next logical step as it allows us to add the new functionalities that consumers today demand, increase device reach and ultimately deliver the best viewing experience to our subscribers.”

Tom Wirth, SVP of the Americas for NAGRA, added: “We are excited to extend our work with Montecable and enable them to deploy Conax GO Live with a new cloud-based back-end with VOD support in partnership with BOLD MSS. With live TV streaming and VOD growing worldwide, this product addresses the needs of operators looking to introduce a secure, easy-to-deploy solution to their customers while at the same time helping them remain competitive with the delivery of new and advanced services.”

The deployment of Conax GO Live — which runs on Amazon Web Services — will allow Montecable to stream live TV with full EPG, start-up and catch-over functionality, to a range of devices, guaranteeing deployment time in less than 30 days.

For more information visit dtv.nagra.com/ibc-show-2019.

Technicolor

Technicolor began IBC by announcing a new partnership with hoppr, to extend targeted advertising to Android TV-based platforms. The partnership promises to open new revenue opportunities for network service providers, with hoppr’s technology integrated into Technicolor’s Android TV hardware, eliminating barriers between NSPs and rapid deployment.

“hoppr has been very successful in bringing targeted advertising to Android mobile devices. The team brings an important new value proposition to Technicolor’s HERO Partner program and the NSP community, extending a proven revenue generating platform to the Android TV space,” said Brian Jentz, senior director of product management for Technicolor. “Our joint NSP customers will have complete control over what type of information is provided via hoppr’s targeted advertising solution. NSPs can be assured that the information being delivered to subscribers is more relevant, but most importantly they can use the integrated solution from Technicolor and hoppr to protect the privacy of every individual user. In the process NSPs have an opportunity to improve customer engagement.”

Jentz said the partnership marries targeted advertising with the ability to directly engage subscribers, and requires no long-term commitment on the part of NSPs, who can experiment with “what works best for their customer engagement strategies.”

“Starting a trial with a small part of an NSPs customer base is easy to set up,” he said. “This will not interrupt — or disrupt — how users watch TV today. They will not be served additional ads while they are watching the content they love.”