Enhanced Curator Media Asset Management From IPV

At NAB, UK-based media asset management and technology specialist IPV Limited, demonstrates the latest advances in its Curator Media Asset Management (MAM) system.

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Responding to seismic changes in broadcast content access systems, the company will demonstrate how relevant accurate metadata materially impacts the retrieval rate for valuable assets leading to greater opportunities for their monetisation. Showcasing the latest enhancements to Curator, the firm will demonstrate how automated and manually added metadata underpins the next generation of archive management systems.

Curator is an intelligent archive management environment where media assets are migrated through storage tiers dependant on their age, temporal relevance and priority. The system’s in-built intelligence ensures that assets reside on the most appropriate storage media from on premise systems to the cloud. Aligned with this intelligent storage is predictive retrieval, which provides a number of facilities to different scenarios: in a dynamic news-based environment, Curator allows easy re-use of media assets thereby increasing their value in these fast turnaround workflows. Retrospectively, Curator enables the easy re-use/re-purposing of media assets on the web and within other programmes or advertising campaigns.

“If you can’t find a media asset when you need it, then effectively you don’t own it,” stated Nigel Booth, EVP, business development, IPV. “With the latest enhancements to Curator, we empower users across an organisation to find and retrieve content wherever they are and from within multiple storage platforms quickly and intuitively.“

Responds to broadcast market drivers
Curator is a configurable network of services designed to manage media workflows. It can store video and audio data, images, project sequence timelines and scratchpads. In addition, the company has developed a number of configurable interfaces to the system, including third-party platforms such as Adobe Premier Pro CC which will be announced at NAB.

Also at NAB, the firm will showcase how Curator responds to industry trends such as the drive towards IP-based operations and the emergence of Ultra High Definition (UHD) broadcasts.

Curator is the product of an eight-year development initiative at the company: it has been configured as a collaborative software-only product running on standard IT servers. IP-based operation has been a cornerstone of its proposition throughout its development, so at NAB, the firm will demonstrate how this MAM system is strategically positioned to help broadcasters and facilities that are looking to migrate to IP-based operations.

4K support will be another focus for the firm at NAB. Curator’s codecs are format agnostic, so 4K support is straightforward for this system. At NAB, it will demonstrate the sophistication of its 4K proposition, as well as revealing its strategic UHD roadmap to 4K, 8K and beyond.

About Curator
It is a real-time Media Asset Management solution which makes it easy for users to achieve collaborative workflows in a fast paced, live production environment. Curator assures immediate access to all incoming media and archive content on a standard IT infrastructure. Modular, scalable and affordable, Curator provides unprecedented video and audio handling at the desktop, and incorporates company’s proven SpectreView technology.

System features include:

• Frame-accurate, timecode-aware at all times

• Enables to access and use proxy media during ingest

• Populates production proxy media library from both SDI and file-based media

• Includes multi-user annotation and logging, rough-cut editing and archive

• Multi-track audio with language tagging for identifying tracks in standard players

• Dynamic stream adaption on a pre-client basis ensures efficient server-to-client network usage

• Sub-clip and book-marking with descriptive metadata

• Automated or user defined storyboarding utilising embedded scene change matrix

• Timecode and extraction with optional overlay

• Simple and advanced (boolean and facet) search

• Full integration with leading platforms including FCP, Avid, Adobe Premiere Pro and the IPV Process Engine

The company works at the forefront of media and entertainment and its software is used globally by blue chip companies to streamline digital media production processes; enabling teams around the world to collaborate on creative works to Inform, educate and entertain.

Clients including A & E Networks, CNN, Endemol reality TV productions, NASA, Sony Pictures, The Oscars, Turner Digital Sports and U.S. retail giant Home Depot.

The firm’s solutions are used for acquisition through to catalogue, archive and edit of rich content for live highlights through to library footage; exploiting camera originals, archive materials and metadata to produce compelling content across all digital platforms.