Broadcasters, production companies, ad agencies and various media
organisations are confronted with more and more content, which is created
faster and will keep on growing at a rapid rate. This touches on the necessity to
produce and edit content faster but also to re-use content that has been
archived, for instance multi-content platform operations and versioning.
CLEAR™ basic workflow
Users want to be able to search and find their content on a production storage
or archive, which usually contains hundreds of thousands of assets. They are
able to find content by easily filling in one or several keywords in a single search
screen, Google style, or a very specific, advanced search, by searching several
metadata fields. After finding the right content the user can directly start using it
for content preparation and processing, content management, content
production, multi-platform content delivery, rights management and
monetisation.
The content can be previewed and enriched by adding metadata (on collection,
item or even video frame level) in order to make it more easily locatable at a
later stage. The user is able to export the content to one or several locations,
such as a gallery or play-out. Users are able to annotate content frame
accurately and create hard cut editing timelines. These annotations and
timelines can be exported to various edit systems to continue the editing
process.
CLEAR™ is a service that offers a flexible deployment model in terms of a public,
private or hybrid cloud, is ready to deploy now, is scalable and customisable to
specific business needs, and is backed by an organisation with a global
infrastructure and huge experience in content preparation and processing.
CLEAR™ allows content owners to add new revenue streams, drive efficiencies,
reduce cost and exploit content by enabling them to migrate to file-based
workflows and capitalise effectively on multi-platform opportunities.
CLEAR™ user environment
The user interface is a HTML-5 webpage opened in a standard web browser, eg.
Safari, Chrome, Explorer or Firefox. There is no need for installing any client
applications on your workstation. The content is previewed by using a low
resolution proxy. The high resolution content is downloadable and will be used
by the system in the background for exporting it to pre-defined locations, as
mentioned in the paragraph above. It is also possible to transcode the high
resolution content to other file formats in the cloud or locally for repurposing the
content or delivering versions of the content for approval or distribution.
CLEAR™ metadata and automation
One essential aspect of finding content is metadata. Users often don’t want to
fill metadata in because it takes too much of their valuable time. Therefore we
should automatically exchange metadata “from and to’ different applications.
A good media asset management system should be able to start automatic
actions based on metadata, eg. moving content from and to different locations
or change specific user rights and permissions to content. Metadata enables you
to keep content divided between different departments and productions and
can keep track of content for rights management.
As it is automated it saves your organisation time and money as the amount of
manual actions will decrease. For instance, it is possible to automatically import
and ingest content from several locations, such as an FTP site. Your content and
metadata can be shared with your media asset management system directly.
CLEAR™ integration
CLEAR™ implements a content workflow management system with a media
backbone as a middleware application. CLEAR™ technology can be deployed in a
hybrid-cloud or totally cloud-based solution and will integrate to most clients’
existing architecture to avoid major custom development. This improves the
effectiveness and maintainability of solutions due to the fact that it consists of
generic instead of unique technology.
The technology is open to connecting via API to existing infrastructure that
contains an API or metadata to share information. This API is a programmable
interface, enabling communication with other technologies. These APIs are very
well documented and provide the possibility to add, renew, modify or change
application layers.
The CLEAR™ backbone is commonly configured as a layer either at the client’s
premises or in the cloud.
CLEAR™ controls the database and all movement of content to various storage
locations such as archives and production storages. It is also possible to
configure automated QC and integrate with existing QC systems.
The CLEAR™ backbone has an open API to be able to integrate third party
solutions. The applications running on top of the CLEAR™ backbone, such as
ingest, editing, news room and play-out, can be replaced, added or renewed
quite easily. The CLEAR™ backbone is capable of managing various standard IT
storages, such as tape libraries and disk storages, but also high performance
production storages for video editing.
Digitising an archive using CLEAR enables valuable content to be available online
24 hours a day, seven days a week, accessible to anyone, anywhere in the
world with the correct rights and privileges. CLEAR makes it easier for customers
to view its content, and quicker and more cost-effective to receive it, opening
the customer’s unique archive to be used, viewed, accessed and preserved for
generations to come.
