German Broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk Moves Foreign Studios to EditShare

EditShare, LLC, in shared storage and media management solutions, announced that ARD German public news broadcaster, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), has implemented its XStream EFS shared storage and Flow media asset management (MAM) for its foreign studios in Tokyo, Stockholm, Singapore and Beijing media infrastructure.

The EditShare-driven workflow, which was designed and deployed by EditShare business partner MoovIT GmbH, features advanced automation and integration with the HelmutFX Enterprise Service Bus solution (ESB) and Adobe Premiere Pro CC, simplifying asset tracking and migration from acquisition to archive. MoovIT, an expert in broadcast workflows, developed HelmutFX specifically for NDR.

“NDR required a platform that would automate many repetitive tasks and in turn support a much faster turnaround on media packages as well as better integration with its Adobe Premiere CC editors,” comments David Merzenich, MoovIT. “We leveraged the Flow API to integrate HelmutFX ESB with EditShare solutions. This allowed us to deeply automate everything from importing clips and adding metadata to triggering projects right within Adobe Premiere Pro CC. NDR journalists never have to leave the Premiere Pro interface. HelmutFX handles the administrative tasks while, behind the scenes, Flow automatically manages transcoding, project setup, file synchronization and even media space creation on the EditShare shared storage platform, giving journalists the benefits of media asset management and shared storage right from their editing application.“

The automated workflow eliminates repetitive manual tasks and with them, mistakes such as copying files to wrong media spaces or using non-standard metadata indexing. The MoovIT developers leveraged the EditShare Flow API to create extensions that control metadata templates, file ingest and manage the AME render server.

Howard Twine, director of software strategy, EditShare, adds: “The Flow API is very easy to work with; the level of integration and automation our partners can achieve with applications such as Adobe Premiere and HelmutFX is extensive. At NDR specifically, MoovIT has been able to automate content movement exactly the way NDR wants it from the time it is ingested onto the server until it reaches the NDR archive and back into production. Taking it a step further, MoovIT leveraged the Flow API to custom automate the movement of media to the point that the NDR journalists power up Adobe Premiere and have their projects already created in the right media spaces and tagged accordingly. They just focus on creating the story itself, with EditShare Flow and XStream EFS working in concert with HelmutFX.“

Thanks to a near-identical workflow and advanced automation across studios, employees can move flexibly between sites without having to acclimate or train on a new system setup.

Mr. Bruder, head of NDR Foreign Studios production, comments: “We have fulfilled the requirements for a standardised system at our overseas studios, with reliable tools and programs. As a result, small units with limited numbers of staff can deliver perfect-quality reports using an end-to-end workflow that is tailored to our needs – with easy-to-manage processes.“

The NDR workflow will be demonstrated on the EditShare stand at IBC2017.