ISELIN, N.J.—Asia TV USA is a media distributor that delivers the content of India’s Zee TV network and its U.S.-based Z Living health and entertainment network worldwide. Z Living produces such popular shows as “Good Food America,” “A Model Guru,” and “The Lisa Oz Show.”
Since our global operations span both coasts of the U.S., and include Mumbai, London, and Singapore, a cloud-based workflow is the only way we can make it all work. We use the Aframe cloud video collaboration platform as our central library archive and to facilitate ad sales and syndication.
Asia TV USA uses Aframe to manage content across global locations.NO MORE SNEAKERNET
When I joined the company three years ago, we had just brought in Aframe; before that we were shipping everything around on drives or tapes. Being an Indian-based company, we work with colleagues in Delhi, Mumbai and Noida, and getting drives in and out of customs is a nightmare. With Aframe, we’ve eliminated all of that and realized huge savings in shipping costs. Most importantly, we no longer wait for hard drives and tapes to reach their destinations or worry about the media being damaged or corrupted. We store our entire library on Aframe so if clients want something in its original format we just send a link and the delivery is done. Aframe also stores our audio stems, scripts, and other items that are part of a syndication package.
Our Aframe seats are spread evenly worldwide and are used to accomplish many different tasks. In Los Angeles, our creative team uses Aframe to preview shows and look for clips to use in promos. In New York, the sales team uses it to receive ads from clients, review and approve them, then forward me the links to the finals to send off for broadcast. Overseas, our syndication teams use Aframe to download lower resolution clips to iPads to take them into client meetings. Uploads can happen from any location, and we particularly like giving ad content creators ftp “upload-only” access, which doesn’t take up any of our user seats.
Our house standard format is XDCAM 50 MXF but we work with many other standards because third-party productions may deliver material from ProRes to MP4 and everything in between. What’s great about Aframe is that it just handles them all, ingesting and also automatically transcoding to a proxy that sales executives can view to confirm content, then send to me to transcode locally for whatever broadcast spec is needed.
GLOBAL WORKFLOW
Right now Aframe is facilitating our expansion to Z Living offshoots in Latin American countries as well as in Russia and in Dubai, U.A.E. The content will be a combination of some programming originally in Hindi and some originally in English. We’re making NTSC and PAL versions of our entire library in unmixed format so we can overdub in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic and Russian. The first step happens in Mumbai, where they create the unmixed content and upload to Aframe. Our Miami team will then translate it and upload the new voiceover to Aframe for our team in New Jersey to pull down, comp in the Avids, then upload show masters back to Aframe for broadcast. It’s truly a global workflow.
Michael Tuttle is the manager for broadcast operations for Asia TV USA, which includes Zee TV US operations and Z Living. Michael can be reached atmike.tuttle@asiatvusa.comor by phone at 845-474-0037.
For more information, visitwww.aframe.comor call 978-799-9440.
