M+E Daily

NEW YORK — Dell EMC, Ooyala and Prime Focus Technologies were among the many members of the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) that showcased their latest products and services at NAB Show New York Oct. 18-19 at Jacob Javits Convention Center.

Dell EMC: Dell EMC used NAB Show New York to help communicate to the industry that “we’re really coming together as Dell EMC,” Thomas Burns, Dell EMC CTO-M&E, told MESA at the show.

“For the content creation and broadcast crowd, being able to show them integrated workflow” that’s made possible by a product such as Dell’s Canvas is a major benefit, he said, pointing to the 27-inch smart workspace display that the company demonstrated at the show. The display has been shipping since earlier this year at about $1,800, but initially only in limited quantities, he told us. “Now it’s shipping in volume,” he said, adding that “nobody really knew what to do with” the device initially. Since then, however, the company has been demonstrating it publicly and “artists really like it” after seeing it and trying it out, he said.

Ooyala
Ooyala Flex was again spotlighted by that company. The media logistics solution, previously known as MioEverywhere, helps broadcasters, studios, publishers and brands modernize video production workflows.
Flex is used across the media supply chain and “we have customers who use this product in lots of different ways,” Matthew Carter, senior director of sales engineering, told us at the show. Brands, studios, post houses and broadcasters are finding the “configurable platform” appealing because of its “flexibility,” he said.

Artificial intelligence (AI), meanwhile, is the “hot topic of the moment,” he went on to say, noting Ooyala recently teamed with Microsoft on that front. Ooyala integrated Microsoft’s Video Indexer service into the Flex Media Logistics platform to enable auto-transcription, translation, content-aware advertising insertion and better content monetization and search, the companies said in May. Part of Microsoft Cognitive Services, Video Indexer is an integrated bundling of Microsoft’s cloud-based AI and cognitive capabilities applied specifically for video content and makes it easier to extract insights from videos, according to Microsoft. 

Prime Focus Technologies
After skipping the New York show last year, Prime Focus Technologies decided to exhibit this time around, T. Shobhana, VP and head of global marketing and communications, told us. Like other MESA members we interviewed at the show, she pointed out that the New York event allowed her company to meet with broadcasters and other East Coast clients who don’t always attend the annual Las Vegas NAB.

Prime Focus showcased its updated CLEAR Media ERP Suite at NAB New York 2017. Calling it “the world’s first, proven Hybrid Cloud-enabled Media ERP Suite,” Prime Focus said in an Oct. 18 news release that the CLEAR Media ERP was “enhanced with a new Work Order Management functionality that is pre-integrated” with its Media Asset Management, Workflow Engine and Video Tools. That “further elevates the CLEAR Media ERP promise of bringing enterprise digitization to the next level, by enabling users to manage assets, resources, tasks, and workflow orchestration all on” one system, it said.