WNET.ORG, parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21, America's flagship PBS television stations, has selected the Enterprise Edition software platform from Dalet to revamp its program production infrastructure and implement a new foundation that will better support and serve its various well-known productions and PBS members stations across the United States.
The Dalet Enterprise Edition software suite will improve the broadcaster’s production infrastructure, making digital program content more accessible internally and to PBS affiliates across the country. It also provides WNET.ORG with a media asset management-based (MAM) production workflow in which program content is ingested, cataloged and centrally stored in a media-rich content repository. Natively integrated Dalet production tools let staff assemble and redistribute program content in a streamlined workflow.
Dan Goldman, senior director, finance, WNET.ORG, said the flexibility of the MAM platform would allow the stations to do more with its content. Producers and production assistants will be able to view and select material right from their desktops, as opposed to having to obtain a VHS/DVD dub, or sit in an edit bay. Divisions within the stations, like the Interactive, Broadband and Education Groups, will also be able to directly repackage show content and send it to schools and other users around the world.
The new program production workflow features Dalet’s centralized ingest technology, providing the transfer of Panasonic P2 media, cost-effective baseband video recording on Dalet DeckLink HD ingest servers, as well as integration with WNET.ORG's existing Omneon Spectrum. Final Cut Pro and Avid Nitris and Media Composer nonlinear editors, which were previously used as ingest devices, will be freed up and available for program editing.
Existing third-party production systems such as nonlinear editing and tiered storage systems will be fully integrated into the workflow through Dalet, maintaining metadata continuity across systems and subsystems. The underlying Dalet workflow engine automates conversions and content storage protocols including near and long-term archiving.
The new program production workflow, with its improved content and metadata management, will also help WNET.ORG realize the important goal of more pragmatic access to its valuable long-term archives. Dalet's flexible metadata configuration will map to WNET.ORG's existing PBCore metadata schema, ensuring seamless transition for future metadata capture and proper migration of existing content.
