Enabling Remote Working for Broadcast Workflows

The Reality of Remote Working

Remote working is now a reality, even for the Media & Entertainment industry. In the short term, we know that everyone able will continue to do their jobs from home. Longer-term, there is also a distinct possibility that more businesses will make remote working the norm for some people who would previously have worked in facilities. It is critically important to make it simple and straightforward for those working remotely to get access to their organization’s content so that they can work efficiently from any location. Here are a few ways Telestream is enabling remote working for broadcast workflows.

Managing Content using Object-Based Storage

Object-based storage stores related video, audio, and metadata files together as one object with a unique identifier. This approach provides a single namespace for content across any type of storage, both on-premise and in the cloud. Using object-based storage allows teams to easily keep track of the original media file and all related Adaptive Bit-Rate, post-production, and archive copies across storage tiers and locations. 

Remotely Accessing Content for Post-Production Workflows

In the long-term, we expect that Production Asset Management system vendors will make remote working a priority for their products. However, at the moment it can be challenging to access and use content in production storage from outside the facility. Media enterprises don’t necessarily want to extend VPN access to all of their remote users, so they are looking for a way to easily copy production content to the cloud, where it can be used by editors that are either running in home offices or on cloud-hosted virtual desktops. For example, our DIVA solution can orchestrate the copying of critical content from the production environment to cloud storage and can enable editing workstations to mount cloud buckets so that they appear as local storage.

Remotely Accessing Archival Content

With budgets limited and travel constraints still in place, the ability to access and reuse existing content is more important than ever before. Today, broadcasters are mining their archives to find content that can capture viewers’ interest. This is particularly the case for sports broadcasters since fewer live events are taking place. These customers need to be able to identify, edit, and publish archival content from any location. This is where the Kumulate Web App can help.

Kumulate enables remote workers to perform these functions from any web browser that can connect to the Kumulate server. This server can of course be accessed from inside the customer’s network, or they can open the appropriate ports to make it accessible over the public internet. In either case, users with the appropriate security rights can transfer content from on-premise archival storage (LTO, ODA, spinning disk) to pre-configured locations, including cloud storage locations that can be accessed by remote users. Kumulate’s data movers can even integrate with file acceleration services to increase the speed of content delivery.

Securely Submitting New Content from Remote Locations

For users such as journalists or news photographers who are gathering content in the field, Telestream ContentAgent, Vantage and Kumulate provide tools and workflows that enable them to transfer raw and edited content to cloud storage, so that it can be immediately accessed by their colleagues. These transfer workflows can be configured to check the content back into their on-premise production asset management (PAM) systems, such as Avid MediaCentral. Telestream can transcode, re-wrap, or lower the bitrate of video as it is transferred to arrive in the right format for editing and playout systems.

High-Resolution Viewing of Content Remotely

Another challenge users face working with broadcast media remotely is the ability to view broadcast mezzanine files in their native formats. To tackle that issue, Telestream designed a browser-based player named GLIM.

GLIM has been engineered to playback high resolution and high bitrate media files over very bandwidth-constrained internet connections. GLIM can playback any file that Telestream Vantage or Switch can decode or play.

Partner with Telestream to Power Remote Workflows   

Telestream provides all the tools to enable your remote media workflows. 

•  ContentAgent

•  Vantage

•  DIVA

•  Kumulate

• GLIM

To learn more about enabling remote working for your media staff, take a look at the links above. Please feel free to submit the contact form to have somebody reach out to you to answer your questions.