BASINGSTOKE, ENGLAND — The new iCR Transcode Farm Controller builds on AmberFin’s multi-node transcode environment. With the new iCR Transcode Farm Controller the transcode segment of the workflow is scalable, provides an appropriate level of redundancy to suit a specific application and enables a combination of high throughput and advanced system functionality.
The new iCR Transcode Farm Controller works by providing a single, redundant interface to the iCR Transcode capabilities. Jobs are sent to the iCR Controller and behind the scenes the system architecture is sized to achieve the levels of redundancy and throughput required by that particular application. By combining the Farm Controller with AmberFin’s Network Licensing Server, a larger scale model can be created with pools of transcode nodes that can dynamically float across the underlying server hardware and no longer require fixed node-to-server relationships.
AmberFin iCR’s Network License Server enables facilities to use the same technology in both a single standalone desktop PC running as the proof-of-concept, as well as in a network of 100 or more servers/blades/VMs. Each iCR node is installed from a single installer that contains the suite of iCR functionality. The license given to the node at run-time defines how that node will behave.
Another key feature of the Network License Server is its ability to ensure that a user’s full capacity is always online. For example, if one transcoder node encounters problems, the Farm Controller will seamlessly swap the required iCR operations to a back-up node and the Network License Server will ensure it is able to carry on. Job metadata is available to allow network administrators to gauge how many jobs were delayed based on the licensing options available within the group. This feedback gives key capacity information to administrators, allowing them to manage costs, throughput and capacity of the farm.
AmberFin iCR also introduced new tools for adding, checking and inserting a user’s custom metadata through configuration and without requiring costly code customization. The iCR metadata plug-in wizard allows users to configure the metadata they need for their organization in such a way that ingest and QC operators can automatically update and validate this information as part of a QC workflow. This metadata can then be used to control segmentation workflows, versioning workflows and can be used in simple wizards to perform the right process with the right media and right metadata at the right time.
The combination of the Transcode Farm Controller and Network License Server adds a third dimension in terms of enhanced network functionality. It provides floating software licenses for occasional functions, such as standards conversion, captioning, Dolby, audio processing and watermarking.
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