At a pre-NAB press conference in Southern California, Marc Valentin, president of Thomson Broadcast & Media Solutions, said customers want to manage their content, not physical media assets like videocassettes, and were looking for an inexpensive way to do so.
To meet this demand, Thomson unveiled its new digital media asset Maximization (dMAX) initiative that leverages many of the Grass Valley Digital News Production (DNP) product families. It addresses the entire production process, from ingest to edit to playout. This includes the Grass Valley FeedClip Interactive Feed Capture System; M-Series iVDR; NewsBrowse Web-Based Browser/Editor; NewsEdit XT Nonlinear Editor; NewsEdit LT Laptop-Based Nonlinear Editor; NewsEdit SC Software-Based Nonlinear Editor; NewsQ Manual Playback System; NewsQ Pro Automated News Playback System; Network Attached Storage System (NAS); Open SAN Architecture; Profile XP Media Platform servers and new Profile 6G server family.
All of these products include a myriad of file and clip management features and the ability to locate and retrieve specific audio or video files from any PC desktop on a network. Thomson said it has deployed its file management technology at nearly 30 sites worldwide, including more than a dozen ABC and NBC O&O stations as well as CNBC and the World Wide Wrestling network. It will also show a new suite of software products (called Aurora) to automate the required processes and bring it all together in the months to come.
The dMAX initiative includes Thomson’s NetCentral remote monitoring and diagnostics software as well as it’s C2MD facility management services and a new OnCall service-level agreement that enables customers to contract with Thomson for the development and maintenance of end-to-end workflows. Both programs are designed to keep customers up and running in the event of equipment failure.
For more information, visit www.thomsongrassvalley.com/.
