London, February 2012:

The Client – The Associated Press (AP) is more than 160 years old and its AP Archive is home to one of the most extensive collections of news film and video footage in the world. It holds around 70,000 hours of film and video content covering a time period from the early 1960′s to the present day.

The Requirement – As part of AP’s transition to digital file-based operations, the most valuable legacy content in the AP Archive required conversion from film and video to digital file formats, opening this unique Archive to a new audience across a new set of platforms, and enabling the delivery of high resolution content through a range of IP and other distribution networks.

It was vital for AP to identify a partner they could trust with their priceless content. AP needed an organisation with the resources to handle the high volume of assets arriving from its various locations, and the ability to deliver the digitised content quickly, to meet the ever-growing demand from customers and to deliver the subsequent monetisation opportunities.

It was also important that the partner was adept at handling precious film materials, and had the expertise to clean and restore anything that was damaged. PFT has worked extensively with companies such as the British Movietone Library, British Film Institute, Imperial War Museum, BBC, IMG, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Eros International, and has a proven track record in this area.

Finally, the project had to be economically viable. PFT was able to leverage its global footprint and the skillsets of its international staff, and automate elements of the workflow, to provide a solution for AP that was not only technically innovative, but also financially viable.

The Project – Following a stringent tender process, Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), the leading digital content operations specialist, was selected to deliver AP’s vision. PFT is utilizing the unique skillsets of its global organization to digitize the film and tape archive, then catalogue, manage, transcode and deliver AP’s priceless content for a digital audience. In total, a staggering 3,800,000 new assets will be created from 32,000 hours of AP Archive material over an 18 month period.

Held on 16mm film, Betacam SP, Digital Betacam video and DVCam video, and with the assets stored across various locations in London and North America, the content was first transported to PFT’s secure facility in central London where the huge project is being overseen.

The film assets total 3,000 hours, with an average of 60 clips per hour. An HD mezzanine file is created for each clip, and delivered to AP with four separate transcode files. In total, 900,000 files are being created from film assets.

The video assets total 29,000 hours, with an average of 20 clips per hour. An SD mezzanine file is created for each clip, and delivered to AP with four separate transcode files. In total, 2,900,000 files are being created from video assets.

The Workflow – Revolutionary in many ways, the project is driven by CLEAR™, PFT’s award-winning content operations platform. A team of in-house developers were tasked with writing bespoke scripts to support the innovative workflows required which utilize PFT’s own cloud technology.

Digitizing the archive follows a bespoke and highly efficient workflow. The content is delivered to PFT throughout the 18 month project timeframe, and upon arrival, each piece of material is logged for tracking purposes. The film is assembled onto reels, synchronized with audio and physically checked before being ultrasonically or hand cleaned, then transferred in a dedicated Spirit Telecine suite where a best light grade is applied and a HD digital file is created. Video tapes are also checked and cleaned prior to the digitization process.

The new files are made available to the PFT teams in the UK and India via CLEAR™, and dedicated teams of cataloguers are automatically assigned files as they become available. The teams have extensive experience in this field, thanks to highly detailed meta-tagging work completed for the BCCI’s online cricket archive, amongst many other projects.

Once the cataloguing and versioning is complete, a high-res mezzanine file is created and four separate transcode files are produced and QC’d automatically. The completed files are then pushed to AP’s London headquarters in Camden Town for upload to AP’s video platform. Dedicated connectivity between PFT and AP allows instant access to the enormous volumes of content generated daily.

The Reporting – Throughout the project, daily and weekly progress reports are generated by the CLEAR™ AP Workflow Manager to notify AP of all encoded assets, the technical characteristics of the assets and any anomalies found such as inconsistencies within the metadata, as well as any serious video or audio faults. These reports are also used to measure actual performance against pre-agreed SLA’s.

The Conclusion – PFT is delivering this ambitious project in an unprecedented timescale, creating over 3,800,000 new assets in just 18 months. Its global reach, infrastructure, international skillsets and pioneering use of cloud-based technology combined with smart automated and physical content operations made PFT the ideal partner for AP.

This project is part of a major investment in the film and video archives of the Associated Press. The digitised content will be hosted on a brand new web platform leveraging HTML5 for accessibility on a variety of devices. AP Archive customers will be able to purchase and download video content in a variety of formats including DV25 for standard definition and XDCam HD 4:2:2 for high definition content. The web platform will also contain a number of innovative features, streamlining users’ workflows and allowing them to access more content, faster and in higher quality.

Through working with PFT to digitize its archive, AP is making its valuable content available online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, accessible by anyone, anywhere in the world. It will be easier for AP’s customers to view its content, and quicker and more cost-effective for them to receive it, opening this unique archive of the events and people who have shaped the modern era to a whole new audience, and preserving it for generations to come.

To read the full press announcement on this groundbreaking project, click here.

Los Angeles, March, 2012 – Since debuting its award-winning content operations platform, CLEAR™, for the first time in the United States at 2011 NAB Show, Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) has added to its client roster a series of industry-leading global organizations and completed major advancements to CLEAR that allow it to better meet the needs of broadcasters today. Designed to support global businesses that need to manage their entire content operations from a single interface, CLEAR now works with one of the world’s largest news syndicators that reaches more than half of the world’s population each day, The Associated Press, as well as News Corporation’s Star India, A&E and LaserNet. Prime Focus Technologies will be located at Booth SL10805 at 2012 NAB Show in Las Vegas from April 16-19.

CLEAR is a game-changer in the digitization of business content operations, having been designed to encourage cross-departmental collaboration, provide time and cost efficiencies, and unlock new revenue streams. Addressing the three key challenges faced by broadcasters – the transition to file-based workflows, the switch to HD broadcasting and delivery to multiple platforms – its operational model enables not only digitization of content but also digitized workflows in one integrated, enterprise-wide solution. This platform simultaneously increases the agility and profitability of an organization.

The Associated Press, the world’s largest news-gathering organization, chose CLEAR and its supporting services earlier this year to digitize, manage and monetize the most valuable content in its huge archive of priceless news footage. CLEAR is being used to create nearly four million new assets from 32,000 hours of film and video content in just 18 months, opening the archive to a new audience across a new set of platforms, and subsequently creating new revenue streams for the organization.

Similarly, News Corporation-owned Star India, which reaches 400 million people every week across India and more than 100 countries across the globe, is now deploying CLEAR to move its entire broadcast operations into the cloud, facilitate its transition to HD and to create an eco-system for the supply and delivery of content.

Supported by volume metrics and a full range of SLA driven services, CLEAR is managing over 150,000 hours of content for its clients in the entertainment and media industry: on a yearly basis, this includes the management of 40,500 new episodes of TV content; syndication and Video on Demand fulfillment of 5 million files; and subtitling services for over 10,500 hours of TV and Film content.

CLEAR’s innovative hybrid-cloud model has been further extended this year across Prime Focus Technologies’ global network into South Africa through a strategic alliance with South African internet service provider, LaserNet.

Addressing the new needs of today’s broadcasters, CLEAR has been enhanced to include iPad integration, increased-functionality of dashboards, adaptive streaming, automated fulfillment and HTML5 integration. CLEAR’s iPad application lets users take advantage of the functionality of CLEAR on-the-go, including asset library access with advanced search, enabling the user to review assets, annotate, send for review and publish while away from their desk.

Additional broadcast-centric product enhancements include:

• Customer-friendly dashboards and automation 
Automated concurrent high-speed content delivery to new media platforms allows broadcasters to leverage web and mobile for new revenues and additional promotion. User-role specific workflows, backed up by separate views of CLEAR for Programming, S&P, Operations, Traffic and OAP users, with custom notifications for each user role, provide further clarity and functionality.

• New automated fulfillment system for syndication and delivery 
Users are able to schedule advance delivery of content by creating orders with delivery specifications, and to customize workflows through an order management system with customizable approval steps. Fulfilling prioritized delivery is the ‘workflow tracker’, that dynamically allows users to change the priority of a fulfillment request.

• Adaptive streaming 
An integrated technology that seamlessly throttles content quality based on the available network bandwidth, compensating for the latency in transmission. The highest quality is streamed to the user when network bandwidth is good, and quality is progressively lowered based on network latency, improving the user’s browsing experience.

• An integrated HTML5 video player 
This player provides multiple features including frame accurate playback of video, support for dynamic subtitles and dynamic audio based language selection, allowing for seamless delivery of content.

Interview with Ramki Sankaranraryanan, CEO of Prime Focus Technologies.

Prime Focus Technologies expands global horizons to South Africa

LaserNet comprises a team of seasoned professionals from the across the media and IT industry which includes founder Ivan Bridgens, Alan Otto, Grant Randal, Warren Clarke and Neels Bester. LaserNet have negotiated selective partnerships with leading industry vendors with a single common goal - to deliver transformational solutions that alleviate the internal and external pressures that media organisations face every day.

 “We are now connected to all the major players” says Bridgens who founded the company seven years ago. “We have enabled them to move content in and out and all around South Africa. Having established the network with large bandwidth between the main media players we started enabling services on top of this. The network is quite mature, and  we are connected to every broadcasters, the main post houses, agencies and a lot of others. LaserNet has become the de- facto way of moving digital content around.

 “Our client base is continually expanding, and this includes the Cape Town Film Studios. We are now moving filmatic material around for them. In fact most of the movies that come in and out of South Africa are facilitated by us, and we work between South Africa and the US as well as Europe. For clients such as eTV, we coordinate all of the stations incoming news content from stringers and international feeds, manage it and get it into the eTV network”

This has been LaserNet’s business up until now, however Bridgens vision goes much further. “When we started LaserNet” he says “my five year plan was to get into archiving and digital asset management for the industry. I have been investigating this for a number of years and when Bester joined three years ago we work-shopped the basis for an asset management and archiving systems. The breakthrough came last year.

 “We had basically bought a lot of the components required for our archiving system, and while we were at IBC last year we came across a company called Prime Focus Technologies (PFT). They provide a global digital content services platform to organisations that deal with content and are keen to exploit it across platforms. CLEAR, its unique ‘hybrid cloud’ multi-platform content operations solution provides a secure way to produce, process, manage and deliver content for revenue-generating multi-platform opportunities.

“Their main base is in Mumbai India, as well as London and New York. We had a detailed look at what they had developed and rolled out and discovered that it was very similar to our vision. We approached them and eventually entered into a partnership agreement to bring the platform into South Africa. We will be hosting and selling the services in conjunction with several other offerings.

“Together with our knowledge of the local market they bring the technology. We provide the bandwidth etc, so its a match made in heaven. We have purchased a building in Sunninghill office park and we are installing our data centre here. We will also be installing redundant power supplies, generators UPS, air conditioning and the required infrastructural connectivity for our purposes. We will have another node in Cape Town in about 4-5 months time”.

“It’s basically is a content management service” says Bester, “and within this service are several offering. Clients have all this data so where do they store it, how do they manage it and are people able to access it? - this is essentially the level of  where people are looking at archiving at the moment”

“The actual archiving is probably about 20% of the service and the rest is providing the ability to leverage the content. We look at creating the cloud and mixing it with a real demand cloud and other services all integrated in a service based solution. The options and leverage include the ability to take content and display it on many and varied mediums”

Their customers are any content creator. Broadcasters, post production companies and agencies. Essentially any company that either manages or generates content in the media industry as they all essentially have the same problems - “how do we archive?, how do we then find it? and how do we ensure that the brand is uniform throughout“? says Bester. “The only way to do this is to put all the assets in and make them accessible to anybody authorised to view them at the same time.

“The conditional access of the content is dependant on the Meta Data, so if you have a company uploading media for an agency  - when they log in they will have access to all their data based on that specific field even if its uploaded by three or four different houses. Its not Silo based, its relation based”.

The Indian Cricket Board are a good example . They digitised their entire library - some 15,000 hours all of which was on tape. They ingested it into a robotic machine - and are now able to tell you who, for instance, scored the most sixes against a specific bowler in 1980. So the two main essentials are the Meta Data and the life cycle management and if you don’t have this properly deployed the system will fall over. .

“This is where we took the big step” continues Bester. “We must get from providing archiving to where people can upload and search and find what they are looking for. and taking it from that step to where we are now - this was a radical step in thought processing and strategy”.

LaserNet visited Satellite Television Asian Region (STAR) which is an Asian live on-air TV service in India, and spoke to the CEO, who said that whilst the system was not an easy installation they now had to admit that it was the best thing they ever did and now they outsource all their content management to PFT.

“There was not one tape in sight” says Bester. “PFT connect Star TV in India with 32 production companies that deliver short and longform content to them digitally. So they have a server, and they log into a web page, upload what is required, and all the material is trafficked, scheduled. It comes in and is QC's, mastered and any problems are sorted. Everything is logged and errors are corrected before air. Security is managed to the nth degree and Star TV's strategy now is that everything that their people are required to do is accessible via ipads.

“PFT move fast and tailor made solutions. The main thing is that the user experience is very good. It’s simple, unique and clean. They have handled and developed it extremely well.

“We will be able to do bulk digitising, QC, cataloguing and we will provide all related services as well as a bureau service in conjunction with file processing. It goes further than just providing the technology and know how. There a

re very specific clients that we will be targeting - like tourism, national archives, as the archiving has been talked about ad infinitum - but nothing has happened.

My vision going forward is basically mimicking what PFT have already done” says Bridgens. “We are going to create a whole new group of people in the industry. If we look at Star TV - they employed about 100 people - and PFT took over a lot of this staff when they secured the business.

“We must offer a system that can grow. The architecture is expensive and too expensive for  an individual company to accommodate. The question is why should a smaller company be excluded simply because of cost. We will be able to supply to a smaller user through a multiple client platform.

Our partners at PFT are very excited about their entry into Southern Africa, and we are equally excited about the partnership between two companies with such synergistic visions”.

Prime Focus Technologies expands global horizons to South Africa

~ Digital Content Specialist forms strategic alliance with ISP giant LaserNet ~

Mumbai, March 2012 - Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), the global Digital Content Specialist, has entered into a strategic alliance with South African ISP giant LaserNet. The agreement will see LaserNet providing PFT’s CLEAR™ unified content operations platform and supporting services to its substantial Media & Entertainment sector client-base in the region.

This alliance reflects a synergy between PFT’s technological innovation and content operations expertise, and LaserNet’s established client relationships and network infrastructure. The merging of these complementary strengths will accelerate the already growing pace of digital transformation in the South African marketplace.

PFT’s CLEAR platform will allow content owners in South Africa to add new revenue streams, drive efficiencies, reduce cost and exploit content by enabling them to migrate to file-based workflows and capitalize effectively on new multi-platform opportunities. With the dynamic combination of PFT’s technology and experience and LaserNet’s strong local foothold and infrastructure, the strategic alliance will result in new growth and development opportunities for the media and entertainment industry in South Africa.

Speaking about the alliance, Ramki Sankaranarayanan, Founder & CEO, PFT commented, “Since LaserNet have established a network connecting all the major media and entertainment players in South Africa, they were our natural choice of partner for this region. We are really excited about this strategic alliance. Bringing the CLEAR™ platform to South Africa, a gateway to Africa will have a profound effect on how organizations in the region are able to managed the business of content.”

LaserNet Founder Ivan Bridgens said, “The South African Media and Entertainment industry is ready for digital migration and transform the way the it operates. After a thorough evaluation of the solutions available globally, we were sure that the cloud technology will be complimenting to our business, but PFT’s Hybrid Cloud Technology platform had a lot more to offer and was more than convincing. The fact that they have a proven technology platform, used by global clients like Associated Press, STAR TV, BCCI, Eros International and many more was reason enough for us to partner with Prime Focus Technologies. Having established a relationship & network of all the major media players in South Africa, LaserNet will now mount the CLEAR a Hybrid Cloud based technology platform on its network, to manage the content & workflows for players within the industry.”

 About Prime Focus Technologies

Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) provides unified multi-platform content operations solutions to organizations that deal with content and are keen to exploit it across platforms. CLEAR™, its award-winning combination of a hybrid-cloud technology platform and managed services increases agility within a business, driving creative enablement, cutting operating costs and is available in a pay as you grow model. Backed by a global network of studios, CLEAR™ offers a secure solution for concurrent file-based new-media, channel, distribution & delivery and library operations.

PFT works with major content owners across the broadcast, film, sport, advertising and brand sectors. Its clients include Star TV, Associated Press, Eros International, Sony Music, Viacom 18, Sony MSM, BCCI, Indian Premiere League, Hindustan Unilever Limited, A & E TV Network, Vijay TV, Netflix, Schawk! and WPP. PFT is part of Prime Focus, a global visual entertainment services company.

For more information visit: www.primefocustechnologies.com.

About LaserNet

LaserNet of South Africa delivers transformational solutions that alleviate the internal and external pressures faced by the media organizations. LaserNet has been at the forefront of digital media technology services in South Africa for the last seven years, and is currently working with South African broadcasters as well as all the major media and facilities companies for managing and archiving digital media. 

South African streaming media service LaserNet has implemented a Signiant-based automated workflow for the country’s free- to-air broadcaster eTV.

The service will be used by eTV’s news operation to transfer general news and other material from the field to the Cape Town and Johannesburg news centers. Similar workflows will be used for other domestic and international broadcasters.

“We are using the Signiant Content Distribution Management software to manage file delivery of news and sports content across LaserNet’s media network for our customers,” said Ivan Bridgens, MD at LaserNet.

 “LaserNet’s network is built of 300Mb/s nodes, giving it aggregated 1000Mb/s to our backbone. This can be increased as and when we need it. We, in turn, supply anything from a minimum 10Mb/s up and down to 10Gb/s to our clients. We are constantly upgrading, and using Signiant, we can manage the speeds and workflows across our network to any of our servers in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, the USA, Germany and the UK” Launched in 1998, eTV is South Africa’s only free-to-air TV channel. The station carries a mix of news, sports and entertainment programming.

SIGNIANT AND LASERNET POWER THE NEWS FOR eTV

Automated content management workflow enables secure and easy transfer