CDSA

LAS VEGAS — Nearly 40 MESA member companies descended on the first in-person NAB Show since the start of the pandemic, bringing new solutions for content licensing, content protection, cloud services and more to a media and entertainment industry that won’t be slowed by COVID-19.

Here’s a brief look at what some of the companies brought to kick off the event:

Whip Media

With more than 250,000 titles in the Whip Media Exchange system to date, the company continues to refine the global licensing and research platform for film and TV content, with new data inputs, new ways to refine the dashboard, and news ways to search and compare titles.

To pull off what Whip Media has accomplished with Exchange, Sherry Brennan, EVP and GM of the service, credits, with a smile: “Gigantic computers and really smart people.”

“There’s so much information available around titles, it results in lots of flexibility in terms of sorting and comparing,” she said. “It’s pretty dynamic as a research tool, and let’s you do deals in ways you may not have considered before.”

Coming into NAB, Whip Media announced a slew of new partnerships, with Plint, Digit, Limecraft, and NexSpec providing Whip Media Exchange customers with localization, content delivery and workflow automation software services. They join existing partners Bitmax, Giant Interactive and OD Media, with the program offering content buyers and sellers access to a network of partners to support frictionless content distribution and accelerate deal making.

“As the amount of streaming content available has exploded and spread to more global markets, we’ve developed an ecosystem of leading partners that help facilitate the entire content licensing process as content distribution models rapidly evolve,” said Alisa Joseph, SVP of business development and strategy for Whip Media, when the partnerships were announced. “We’re thrilled to add Plint, Digit Limecraft and NexSpec to this growing roster of partners and provide our Exchange clients the ability to more efficiently distribute their content and grow their audiences worldwide in an integrated and frictionless manner.”

Synamedia

Some companies brought one or two new products to show off at NAB. Synamedia came armed with a dozen-plus.

Company CEO Paul Segre considers the new solutions from his company to be game-changers for video and service providers, with the launch of its complete Synamedia Go cloud video suite, including Go.Foundation, an entry-level service complimented by a suite of new packs, including Go.Monetize, Go.Personalize and Go.Recommend. Synamedia Go offers video service providers of all sizes most everything they need to rapidly launch a customizable streaming service.

The full suite of Synamedia Go provides an agile, flexible SaaS platform that balances functionality with speed-to-market for VOD and live streaming services. Its open design gives customers a choice of using pre-integrated third-party solutions from providers in the Synamedia Partner Network, featuring initial partners Dotscreen, To The New (TTN), Wiztivi (for UI); Cleeng, InPlayer, and Evergent (for monetization and identity); Gracenote, Teravolt, and Utelly (for metadata, recommendations and aggregation).

Nick Thexton, Synamedia CTO, said in a statement: “As we move into a new generation of streaming platforms, media businesses of all types need systems that are much more flexible. New viewing experiences have to be matched quickly to commercial objectives, consumer satisfaction and performance optimization.

“Building on our decades of experience designing video software solutions, Synamedia Go meets this need for flexibility and rapid implementation. It bridges the gap in the market between very basic systems, and – at the other extreme – highly customized solutions that can be very expensive to modify once live. Synamedia Go complements our broad OTT portfolio including Synamedia OTT ServiceGuard, VIVID Workflow as a Service, Synamedia Iris OTT addressable advertising, and Synamedia Clarissa business insights.”

Synamedia Go is platform and client software agnostic and can be fully integrated with Android TV, RDK, Apple TV, iOS, WebOS and Tizen applications.

On the CDN side, Synamedia’s new set of artificial intelligence-based (AI) traffic management features for its Edge CDN solution aim to transform the way video streams are delivered, enabling new consumption experiences by simplifying the process of onboarding new services.

Synamedia’s Edge CDN now features an AI module to predict the main CDN metrics in the next hour, and by predicting traffic load, Edge CDN can scale on-demand to address viewers’ video quality expectations as demand fluctuates.

Signiant

Files are getting larger, workflows are getting more complex, and just like it’s been doing for 20 years now, Signiant is stepping up to the challenge of moving large files across the internet.

Jon Finegold, chief marketing officer for Signiant, said the company is seeing nothing but positive tailwinds for its business at the NAB Show, with more than a million users of Signiant’s in intelligent file transfer software worldwide, covering 50,000-plus companies.

He pointed to early adoption of the company’s new Media Engine offering, which allows users to search, preview, and take action on media assets anywhere, across all Signiant-connected storage, on-premises and in the cloud.

“It’s intentionally lightweight, and the approach, we believe, is very disruptive,” he said.

The modern media management service is built into the Signiant Platform and allows Signiant’s SaaS customers to easily work with media assets across all their Signiant-connected storage, from anywhere in the world. Customers can perform federated searches across multiple content repositories and results are immediately actionable via the services available on the platform anchored by Signiant’s fast file transfer.

Media Engine launched just before NAB and is a cloud-native SaaS offering. “Our customers need to easily access their widely distributed content and Media Engine makes that functionality available to any-size business,” Rick Clarkson, Signiant’s chief product officer, said before NAB. “Media Engine is a nimble, lightweight service built on the Signiant Platform, which is already widely deployed across the media supply chain thanks to its foundation of fast file transfer. The platform’s unique architecture enables us to bring a variety of disruptive new services to market for our SaaS customers — Media Engine is the first of those.”

Sony Ci

Neal Manowitz, president and COO of Sony Electronics North America, sees the onslaught of virtual production tools and techniques as one of the biggest advantages for the entertainment industry in years. “Now, golden hour can last all day, around the world,” he said during Sony’s press event at NAB. “And it’s become crucial to give people [access to] tools in real-time.”

At NAB unveiled and showcased a broad range of products and services for broadcast, cinematic and live event content creation. Among the announcements was new enhancements to Sony’s Ci Media Cloud Services, its ecosystem of cloud-based applications built for organizations to collect, organize, collaborate, deliver, and archive media assets.

For post-production, Ci’s Workflow app provides functionality for a secure, automated VFX pull workflow by simply submitting an edit decision list (EDL) to Ci. Benefits of the app include increased speed and lower operational costs.

Ci’s improvements for collaboration include in-app commenting, clipping and live streams, which simplify the way creative teams review and collaborate on content and allows for quicker publishing to social media. Ci also integrates with Sony’s Hawk-Eye technology to receive live streams from sports venues, allowing officials to review, mark up and collaborate on decisions in nearly real-time, regardless of location. This workflow makes content readily available to licensees and rights holders.

Additional enhancements to Ci include a Ci mobile app on iOS and Android for viewing content and a tvOS app for screening content on Apple TV 4K, as well as six times faster live stream ingest and Japanese localization.

Camera-to-cloud capabilities enable more freedom and flexibility for efficient productions from the field or front lines. Sony’s next-generation camera-to-cloud solution, C3 Portal (C3P), offers cost-effective file operations by tightly integrating Sony acquisition devices and remote operations. C3P enables remote camera control, remote file access and secure, efficient transfer of files to Ci, or the destination of your choice. C3P’s new mobile app enhances the file transfer process. Flexible metadata workflows support custom and automated metadata tagging of camera clips, resulting in simplified search and identification for fast content retrieval.

“The last few years have redefined the world as well as our industry,” said Theresa Alesso, president of imaging products and solutions for the Americas at Sony Electronics. “Our customers have relied even more heavily on technology to help connect and collaborate remotely and in real-time, with the greatest degree of reality. At NAB Show, we’re looking forward to reconnecting with the industry, shining a spotlight on Sony’s transformation, sharing our latest technologies and highlighting trends including the cinematic look and virtual production, as we create the future together.”