CDSA

NAB 2017: MediaSilo Celebrates Wiredrive Merger; VDMS Pulls Down Awards

LAS VEGAS — Toward the end of the 2017 NAB Show, Kai Pradel, CEO and founder Of MediaSilo, may have been as tired as everyone else, but he sure didn’t look it. A hugely successful merger and several major announcements will help keep your energy up.

“The merger with Wiredrive has allowed us to pool resources and solve problems as one big group,” he said. “Instead of two separate engineering departments, we now have 30 of them together on the same page. And customers have responded well.”

At the show, MediaSilo debuted a new secure screening platform, Screeners, a turnkey solution that offers branded screening rooms for pre-release content, geared toward making things easier for both the content owners and the reporters and award judges who need access to the content.

Viewers only see content they’ve been granted access to, with each asset protected by MediaSilo’s SafeStream on-demand watermarking tech. The new offering includes an Apple TV app, and Screeners also features a password-less login feature. The solution also includes an analytics feature, letting owners know who watched what.

MediaSilo and Wiredrive also unveiled a new dailies solution, along with across-the-board Adobe integration, allowing users to import, edit, and collaborate with other users, without leaving the authoring environment.

Also at the NAB Show:

Media Science International

Just ahead of the NAB Show, watermarking and digital delivery firm Media Science International (MSI’s) shared that it was partnering with media workflow management company Hybrik to help manage its StudioCDN digital watermarking and piracy protection solution.

“Hybrik’s cloud transcoding system allows us to rapidly respond to large customer requirements,” said MSI CEO Graham Oakes said in a statement. “The features, performance, and cost-effectiveness of Hybrik made this an easy choice.”

StudioCDN is currently used by several of the world’s largest content companies to allow for early access to content by journalists and partners, but done so securely, with each piece of content individually watermarked and tracked during delivery and playback. StudioCDN currently delivers more than 2 million watermarked assets every month.

“The secure management and delivery of early-access assets is a critical piece of the content production workflow,” said David Trescot, CEO of Hybrik. “We are excited to be working with MSI to accelerate their encoding process in the cloud.”

Hybrik’s large-scale transcoding platform is based on Amazon’s AWS cloud platform.

Verizon Digital Media Services

Verizon Digital Media Services (VDMS) came into NAB Show with the newly launched Verizon Media Xperience (MX) Studio, a content intelligence system geared toward optimizing the OTT workflow, while boosting performance and revenue, along with offering cost insights.

VDMS walked out of the NAB Show with multiple awards for MX, including a Best in Show from TV Technology, and an IABM award.

“We’re cashing in,” a VDMS spokesman said. “This is the largest booth we’ve ever had, and this was the right place to show how we can simplify the attempt to go over-the-top.”

vdmsnab MX Studio is cloud-based, and is geared toward automating and simplifying the online video production and distribution pipeline for everyone from broadcasters to OTT providers to online video distributors.

“Development of the Verizon Media Xperience Studio began after extensive conversations with leading TV Everywhere and OTT providers, who are often lacking the data to determine if a piece of content they produced or licensed is making money,” said Ralf Jacob, president for VDMS.

“This lack of visibility is often a symptom of multiple supply chain providers being loosely stitched together, where data is difficult to standardize and aggregate. The Verizon Media Xperience Studio was built to overcome all of these challenges. Now, launching and operating a successful OTT service will never be this simple and straightforward.”

Also at the show, VDMS announced integration of Dolby 7.1 audio into VDMS’s Uplynk Video Streaming service, with compatibility for Roku4, PlayStation, Xbox, Windows 10 OS, and devices using Apple iOS, tvOS and MacOS.

“Consumers around the world now expect the highest quality entertainment on all their devices,” said Mathias Bendull, VP of multi-screen services audio for Dolby. “We are pleased to work with Verizon Digital Media Services, a proven leader in the digital media space, to integrate Dolby Audio into its end-to-end OTT streaming video platform to support the next generation of immersive entertainment experiences that delight these audiences wherever they may go.”