Reelzchannel Implements Atempo Digital Archive

Atempo, Inc. announced that REELZCHANNEL, a multiplatform network devoted to delivering entertaining and informative programming that is all about movies, has implemented Atempo Digital Archive (ADA) to manage the active archival of its vast library of digital assets, including raw footage and completed programs.

ADA simplifies and automates the data archive and retrieval process, regardless of where the asset resides. The efficiencies gained by a streamlined workflow and a fast access to their digital library to repurpose clips have enabled REELZCHANNEL to double the amount of original programming produced each week.

As a producer of daily original programming that reaches over 50 million U.S. cable and satellite subscribers, REELZCHANNEL continuously generates, edits and shares high-volume digital content. Both completed programs and raw footage frequently re-enter production workflows as content is adapted for various delivery channels such as the internet or their new iPad application and reused in new programming. This process was a common problem with their previous systems which included a proprietary solution that became a bottleneck that lengthened production cycles. When the network relocated operations from Los Angeles to a new facility in New Mexico, it took the opportunity to completely rebuild its digital library with Final Cut Server as the central asset management and Atempo Digital Archive as the archive system.

"We realized an immediate return on our Atempo investment," said Roger Eman, CTO and Senior Vice President of Broadcast Operations and Technology at REELZCHANNEL. "With self-service access and more streamlined operations, we require only one-third of the support staff for our digital library than before. Quite simply, we would not have been able to realize our new organizational model and production efficiencies without the combined Atempo and Final Cut Server solutions."

REELZCHANNEL evaluated and selected ADA based on its full integration with Final Cut Server, its simplicity and usability, and the performance and flexible workflows that make it optimized for data-intensive media and entertainment environments. ADA’s proven integration with Final Cut Server, allows the network’s editors and producers to use the Final Cut interface to easily access the archive directly and restore assets on-demand. This intuitiveness is essential to improving production workflows, as users can search and retrieve content without assistance from IT. Where once users may have had to wait 24 hours for a file to be retrieved by library staff, self-service retrievals using ADA are nearly instantaneous. In addition, ADA also offers an end-user client interface that provides an alternate method to access and restore assets archived with Final Cut Server.

"In the past, simply locating and downloading the files we needed to review could have taken several meetings and an entire week," said Eman, describing a project where they needed to compare details of a current production with the previous five shows. "Now with Atempo Digital Archive, we’re able to get these questions answered in minutes."

Atempo Digital Archive’s open architecture was another critical selling point for REELZCHANNEL, which previously relied on a proprietary solution. ADA writes files in the open .TAR or .PAX format on tape. TAR is a true archival format independent of Atempo or any specific vendor.

It enables the restoration of assets outside the archive or asset management systems. In addition, ADA offers the scalable performance required for REELZCHANNEL’s expanding digital archive, which is expected to double again after the network transitions to a high-definition format later this year.

"The growing standardization of HD and the advent of new media formats like 3D means that media and entertainment organizations must be prepared to manage and scale their systems to the increased storage demands that the new content generates," said Marylise Tauzia, Director of Product Management & Marketing at Atempo. "Having implemented Atempo Digital Archive, when REELZCHANNEL begins to produce and deliver HD content, it will be ready to efficiently and cost-effectively manage the explosive growth in data volume that this format entails."

For customers in media and entertainment, Atempo Digital Archive goes beyond preservation and hierarchical storage management (HSM), to actively participate in the day-to-day workflow. Today, more organizations require creative assets to be retained at different stages in its lifecycle. Raw data, edited files and final projects need to be protected, as any version may need to be leveraged for future projects. ADA’s transparency to end-users and critical integration with widely-used creative applications allows those individuals to easily archive at various steps in the content creation process and pull information into and out of the archives as needed. This enables users to transfer media assets stored in Final Cut Server and other applications into a wide number of long-term storage devices by simply using the native application interface.

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