|
Customer Stories
YLE, FINLAND
Yleisradio Oy (YLE), Finland's national public
service broadcasting company, has completed implementation of an
enterprise-wide unified asset management and workflow system to improve the
internal management and accessibility of its vast amount of video content. With
4 television channels, 6 radio channels, over twenty local radio services and
archived video material dating back to 1958, the system was an ambitious
undertaking.
YLE's
new system is known internally as METRO (Media management for Television Radio
and Online services) - an apt name for a system that transports content at high
speed between a network of internal and remote workstations. YLE production
sites in Helsinki and Tampere, and 15 regional bureaus are included in the
METRO environment.
The
METRO system is built around a Media Archive MAM system from Blue Order
Solutions. In order to make the content easily accessible to YLE's 3,000+
operators, Blue Order partnered with Marquis Broadcast, developer of media
integration tools, to install Media Archive integrated with Marquis' Medway
media integration and file conversion software. As part of the project, YLE has
purchased an enterprise-wide licence for Medway.
The
primary role of Medway within the overall project is to enable seamless
integration between the METRO archive/storage locations managed by Media
Archive and YLE's Avid ISIS Interplay and editing systems. Integration between
the systems makes use of the Medway/Avid Interplay web services API. Key to the
successful of the project is Medway's unique approach to metadata management.
Medway avoids bottlenecks in file-based workflows by overcoming
incompatibility problems that occur when media moves between systems that use
different file formats and different operating architectures. The integration
of Medway with Media Archive has enabled YLE to build a collaborative and
flexible workflow by allowing 'best of breed' broadcasting and post-production
applications to be encompassed into the METRO environment.
When
moving media from METRO archive/storage locations into Avid Interplay,
operators select sequences from the Media Archive browse facility. An EDL is
generated and passed to Medway which transfers the selected media from METRO's
storage to Avid Interplay along with the relevant metadata. All metadata from
METRO is available in Interplay correctly formatted and ready for use.
When
media is moved from the Avid systems into METRO, metadata generated in the Avid
systems is moved back into METRO. Medway's powerful Genealogy Metadata Tracking
feature tracks the parentage of the clips used in the edit. Marquis worked
closely with YLE to ensure the scheme for handling metadata during the METRO to
Avid transfers were correctly specified, mapped and integrated.
Ingesting is undertaken centrally. A browse proxy is created via
transcoding followed by shot detection and key frame extraction. Medway logs
all metadata and genealogy information attached to the media during ingest and
sends it to a central database for further use.
METRO
has brought YLE a range of efficiency and cost savings benefits through the
provision of enterprise-wide process and workflow automation. This includes the
ability to transfer content between programme planning, scheduling, ingest
production, archive and delivery. YLE have also been able to establish
efficient rights management workflows by using media genealogy tracking
throughout the production process. Less time is now spent rekeying metadata.
However, by providing easier and more flexible access to content and better use
of operators' time, the main benefit of the METRO system is quite simply an
overall improvement in programme quality.
To
view other recent Marquis projects click here |
