Keith Koby
NEW YORK—In Demand is a leading distributor of transactional movies, sports and events to video providers in North America. Every year we deliver a large volume of programming from more than 200 content suppliers to major cable operators and telcos. Our in-house post-production team is also responsible for creating promotional content, including commercials, customized “barkers” and promos, along with original content and celebrity interviews. Altogether this amounts to more than 10,000 content items that are used to help multisystem operators promote their pay-per-view and video-on-demand offerings.
With so much video content flowing through our facility, having an efficient workflow to manage it all is a necessity, and we rely on equipment from AJA to make this happen. From video conversions to scaling, syncing, recording and more, AJA tools have simplified our workflow. We use AJA FS1 and FS2 universal converter/frame synchronizers, along with an assortment of mini-converters, T-TAPs, Ki Pros, Ki Pro Racks, KONA 3G video cards and IoXTs on a daily basis.
On each and every project, our in-house post production team strives to deliver the most professional, highest-quality content to our clients. This is where AJA’s FS2 comes into play. This unit allows us to seamlessly process live video and upconvert, downconvert or scale as needed.
PACKS A LOT OF POWER IN A SMALL PACKAGE
The FS2 frame synchronizer and format converter has two completely independent channels that support virtually any type of input or output. It can be configured as two separate frame synchronizers/ converters, or the channels can be combined in a variety of ways. And all of this power is contained within a single, compact 1RU form factor. Each of the FS2 video channels support analog component or composite video, 3G/HD/SD-SDI, Dual- Link and HDMI I/O, as well as optical fiber I/O signal options. Both channels are fully equipped with still store, keyer, and video proc amp/color corrector functionalities.
NO NEED FOR MULTIPLE ‘BOXES’
As the FS2 supports virtually all broadcast video formats in a single converter box, the unit makes it easy for us to match up disparate video and audio systems, and we’ve found that it’s ideally suited for broadcast facilities, production trucks and other multiformat production environments.
Whether we’re creating promos destined for “barker” channels to advertise VOD and PPV programming or for on-demand movies, we’re supplied with footage that arrives in a variety of standard- and high-definition formats. We edit the content together, and then downconvert it to 4:3 aspect ratio SD footage with the FS2. Then it’s squeezed into a cable guide preview window.
Once these operations are complete, we then scale the content with the FS2, which does the job perfectly without any interlace artifacts or other abnormalities.
In addition to using our AJA equipment for creating promotional content, it also sees a lot of use in our movie processing pipeline for capturing, converting and real-time monitoring and quality control of this content.
Keith Koby is senior director of technology and operations/post production at In Demand. He may be contactedatkkoby@indemand.com.
For additional information, contact AJA at 530-274-2048 or visit www.aja.com.
