Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/44580
Create Once, Deliver Often is a huge growth part of our business," he notes. "Using our Web-based asset manage- ment system, we take clients' assets, convert them to a digital format for archiving and give them a way to manage those assets from anywhere. We're also focused on auto- mated transcoding and delivery using tools such as Vantage and Rhozet, which allow for customized workflow solutions. Our approach is to provide various file delivery formats on-the-fly as companies ask for them. Once the desired transcodes are defined from the master we can automate the process to various deliverables." Crawford delivers some reality TV shows and PBS programming to Hulu, YouTube and iTunes. Its Great Museums series for American Public Television from Echo Pictures has been delivered to Hulu and iTunes for the last four years. "Everyone has different requirements for slates and commercial blacks," says Heidt. "Hulu recently changed its requirements for how commercial blacks are put in." The need to accommodate such changes Deluxe's Gray Ainsworth: "More and more deliverables have been added in every stage of [a produc- tion's] life," starting on set for many projects. networks began taking files," says Heidt. "We're delivering a CBS show we're working on now on the tape stock we have, but the network told us that they accept three or four different formats for file-based delivery. "The fact that we finish most of our pro- gramming at 24p gives us a universal produc- tion format that makes it a lot easier to get to 1080i or 720p — something that's helpful with files as well as tape." Crawford's roster of national, regional and local commercials are almost always delivered as files today, Heidt reports, even for traffick- ing systems such as DG, SpotGenie and Extreme Reach. "Few, if any, are on tape any- more. And we store all of our masters as files: We archive every spot or show as a file instead of on HDCAM SR or D-5." Archiving formats vary depending on the post platform. Most editorial is performed on Avid systems and finished shows or spots are archived as QuickTimes within the Avid codec, typically DNxHD 175x, 10-bit 1080/24p. Content finished on Apple's Final Cut Pro is usually archived as ProRes 422 (HQ) files. "Traditionally, you store masters to give you the easiest way to get back out to another format once the deliverables have been decided," Heidt explains. Transcoding is performed with Final Cut Studio's Compressor, Telestream Vantage and FlipFactory, and Har- monic Rhozet. "Archiving and storage of file-based media 26 Post • October 2011 to the final master has merged editorial and transcoding, in some cases. "One of our encoders also runs a Final Cut system so she can change blacks and slates in a QuickTime storage master with an editing program," Heidt reports. "If we could edit out blacks within the transcoding process, we'd do it, but those tools don't exist right now." He believes that file-format stan- dardization is nowhere in sight, so Crawford is "building a workflow to deliver any deliverable clients need to make." TECHNICOLOR Burbank-based Technicolor (www. technicolor.com) prides itself on being "agile and flexible" enough to react to constant changes in deliver- able requirements, says VP of distribution services Jed Harmsen. "Intra-market specifica- tions are changing day to day, and every so often there's a new avenue or app that con- tent owners want to get to. You have to be able to traverse these paths with as much agility as possible." Technicolor's own MediAffinity product is Sorenson Squeeze, the "one-to-many management and work- flow automation tool that takes assets from post, or that we've received from a post house, to the client's order for deliverables," says Harmsen. "MediAffinity automatically takes the source content and pushes it out to transcoding and transformation engines to create the deliverables." Pre-existing or custom workflow templates outline delivery specs and the method by which to achieve them. "An order will come in, www.postmagazine.com MediAffinity will pull the source asset, trans- form it as needed, package it with the required metadata and push it to Apple, for example, then confirm its receipt and report back to the customer," he explains. "MediAffinity is designed for agilty: If there's a new player in the market or a customer wants to deliver in some new way, we don't have to develop a new workflow. We just have to add a new output spec and delivery destination to the existing workflow template." Deliverables encompass a wide breadth of platforms with feature films burned to DVD, versions produced for foreign-language subti- tling and dubbing, and trailers pushed to Rot- ten Tomatoes and the social networks; TV programming needs HD and SD variants for Hulu and other VOD services. Customer to customer, "the end points are numerous as are the methods by which to push the assets," Harmsen says. "It becomes quite a complex network to manage." Technicolor leverages its Technical Production Network, "the pipe that interconnects all our locations," to move assets among its offices worldwide. Harmsen reports that the major studios and some servicing entities are spearheading an effort to standardize a mezzanine file for- mat. Currently, all mezzanine file formats "have pros and cons," he says. Some Technicolor clients give the company "a lot of latitude" to The Memphis Grizzlies rely on AmberFin iCR. select a mezzanine file format that's "as effi- cient and high quality as possible for their given project. We're doing a lot in ProRes 422 (HQ) and ProRes Quad Four (4444), but customers also really like to use an open source like JPEG 2000, a royalty-free codec. Others [follow] a file format from their work- flows, like Cineform. "While we champion the effort to try to standardize the mezzanine file format, we don't want to dictate how customers have to work," Harmsen says. FOTOKEM At Burbank's FotoKem (www.fotokem. com), senior VP Rand Gladden notes that while "most everyone has accepted the fact that file-