News waits for no one. Nothing should get in the way of delivering the information – either to the team putting it together or to the audience hungry for the story. But when the cloud is involved, does the news workflow need to adapt, and if so, how? First you need to get the media into the cloud, then, crucially, you must get it back out again to your on-premise studio facility quickly with no obstacles. In news, any delay is simply a no-no. Speed is critical every step of the way.
Avid has been developing cloud-hosted workflows and working with high profile customers such as Disney, and Paramount Global, who have embraced the cloud’s potential and flexibility for certain aspects of their creative process. These workflows are centered around post production, so what is happening in the world of news?
A recent webinar hosted by Avid’s Craig Wilson featuring Senior Director of Product Management Régis André highlights the latest developments and how Avid is meeting customer needs using the cloud for news.
In the webinar, André shares the work Avid has already done to develop a cloud-hosted news and production system, capable of supporting up to 100 users and creating content for distribution to online and digital platforms. The system features Avid’s industry-leading MediaCentral | Production Management (formerly Interplay) and MediaCentral | Newsroom Management (formerly iNEWS) with Avid NEXIS storage running in the Microsoft Azure cloud.
THE ROLE OF WEB-BASED TOOLS
Web-based tools are key to the workflow with MediaCentral | Cloud UX delivering tremendous capability to many different roles within a news organization. For example, journalists can write their stories in the Rundown app, producers have the Browse app to view material and edit timelines, researchers can access the advanced capabilities of the Search app to find what they need ultra-fast.
But MediaCentral | Cloud UX is not limited to those roles only. Ingest operators can now use the new MediaCentral | Acquire app to control web-based IP stream ingest devices to easily manage multiple streams of incoming video, getting it directly into the hands of editorial teams within seconds. They can then produce the high-quality content their audiences crave.
This workflow was demonstrated in the webinar, and Régis André follows up, “It is a huge advantage to be able to manage ingest channels like this from anywhere. You do not have to be in the office to do this, so this kind of workflow provides customers with a lot of flexibility.”
MediaCentral | Cloud UX also features great story-centric workflows, with the MediaCentral | Collaborate app at its heart, for story planning, project tracking, and content sharing, enabling workflows from the assignment desk all the way through to distribution.
MediaCentral fully integrates with Avid’s Media Composer craft editor and with Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop to bring a truly collaborative approach to life for any news or media production.
These applications can run in the Azure cloud environment, with staff on-premises connecting via PC over IP (PCoIP) technologies.
HYBRID WORKFLOWS
In the webinar, Wilson also highlighted new capabilities coming to Avid’s cloud offering including sending an item edited in the cloud to an on-premises studio playout server, so-called hybrid working, which is central to the next phase of Avid’s cloud strategy for news.
While customers transition their workflows to the cloud, it is clear that studio-based facilities will be here for many years to come. Existing investments in studio infrastructure need to be amortized over time, so many are now looking for ways to take advantage of what the cloud can provide, while maximizing the efficiency of their operation.
André adds, “Collaboration means many different things. Many of our users are saying they want to maximize the use of people working in the field right now but connecting them back to their base. We are doing a lot of work in many areas but, of course, it is critical to provide these types of hybrid workflows, too.”
Find out more about the solutions highlighted in the webinar.
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