News

Quantel unveils Mission Media and Asset Management system (10/5/2007)

Mission provides natural companion to asset production

Quantel is unveiling its new media asset management (MAM) system for Enterprise sQ and Newsbox HD systems at NAB. Titled Mission, the new system is tightly integrated into the Quantel ISA database environment, making effective asset management a seamless extension of the ergonomic Quantel workflow.

"As broadcasters transition their news operations to a fully tapeless ecology, so they are finding that managing the sheer volume of data ingested is of increasingly vital importance," comments John Woodhouse, Senior Product Manager, Quantel. "Without effective asset and media management, the efficiencies that server-based production offers can quickly be squandered. Mission provides exactly that management, and users will find that the Mission applications blend seamlessly into the Quantel production workflow, making asset management a natural companion to asset production."

Mission is comprised of several components. At its centre is Mission Central, which provides the core MAM database, keyframe shot generation, user logon and production access. Users have instant access into it via Mission Tracker, which runs on all operational workstations in the system and uses familiar Quantel menus to search and display media assets and associated metadata. Web-based remote access and tracking is provided by Mission Webview.

"The tight integration of Mission with the ISA database means that media can simply be dragged and dropped onto the desktop ready for production," points out Woodhouse.

Mission Transfer provides a wide range of advanced tools for managing the ingest of video, files and agency feeds, automatically handling transcoding material for web distribution and assigning automatic deletion dates as background tasks. Mission Capture extends metadata capture to include associated keyframe and text data from agency feeds, automatically extracting and presenting this to the user via Mission Tracker. Mission Archive enables users to archive material out of the system and search and restore material for production use; its integration with ISA allows for entire projects, not just flattened files, to be saved. Finally, Mission Store is designed for customers wanting to create a complete software and hardware archive system, Mission Store is a combined disk and tape library offering enough storage capacity for 2-3 years' worth of typical news production.

"Mission truly takes production and workflow integration to the next level, providing broadcasters with the perfect blend of functionality and usability to enable them to maximise the efficiencies gained from server-based production," concludes Woodhouse. "And because it is fully integrated with Quantel's server technology, it does all this equally well with HD and SD assets, making it the ideal system for broadcasters looking to transition to the format in the short to long term."

www.quantel.com

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