VSN actively collaborates, along with the principal manufacturers of the sector, in defining the new FIMS specification. The project is an AMWA-EBU joint initiative for the development of a technology framework that enables greater interoperability of systems and components.
VSN keeps its steady commitment in favor of a greater standardization and interoperability of tapeless workflows for TV broadcasters. As a recently appointed member of the committee of General Members of the AMWA (Advanced Media Workflow Association), the Spanish company has joined the FIMS project’s work team (Framework for Interoperable Media Services). Other manufacturers like Sony, Avid, IBM, Harris, Harmonic, BBC or Quantel also participate in the same team.
FIMS is a joint initiative of the AMWA and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for the development of a technology platform that enables greater interoperability of systems and components. As the market moves away from traditional video technologies to embrace IT-based technologies, the design and management of production systems becomes a challenge for most TV broadcasters. Due to the lack of standard interfaces among the different components and systems, integrators must devote increasing resources and efforts in the development of customized adapters to integrate the technologies from different manufacturers. This, in turn, brings about scalability and maintenance issues, and the replacement or update of some component demands new adaptation expenses.
The future FIMS specification has been designed from scratch in order to provide greater interoperability and standardization to production, post-production, distribution and media archive applications. It promotes the implementation of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), and takes into consideration large file (TB+) management, frame accuracy and time-consuming tasks (like transcoding).
For a project like this to be successful, a work team consisting of manufactures (AMWA) and users (EBU) had to be created. Manufacturers are interested in reducing the costs and risks related to scarce integration. Users, on the other hand, are interested in getting faster integration times, with lesser costs and risks. The adoption of standard interfaces at the entrepreneurial level, as the SOA is promoting, will enable to achieve these goals.
With this project, VSN reinforces its mission to contribute to the industry by establishing the foundations and standards for broadcast workflows in the near future.It is one of the most active companies in the development of software applications for television based on these new trends, and collaborates very actively in all international fora on standardization. All the new modules that the company is currently developing under the Spider umbrella project work in web service environments orchestrated by a workflow manager, and can easily interoperate with other FIMS-compatible solutions from other manufacturers, thereby reducing the times and overall costs of the project.
