HITS Exclusives

With more than 100,000 attendees, the annual NAB Show confab in recent years has been quietly making itself just as important as the Consumer Electronics Show, at least when it comes to the debut of technological advances for the development and delivery of content, across every device. Ball — singling out the decline of tape-based workflows and the growth of digital delivery — called the industry-wide changes coming out of NAB Shows of the past “exciting” and “fun.”

Among those companies looking to make a lasting impact on the industry this April 16-21 in Las Vegas, approximately 40 hail as members of the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA). And from Adobe to Vubiquity, they’ve got plenty to share at NAB.

Jim Ball is a new addition to cloud-based file software solutions company Signiant, joining in January as chief marketing officer. But when it comes to the NAB Show, he’s about as old hat as it comes.

“I’ve been to so many NABs that I don’t count anymore,” the long-time M&E industry marketer wrote in an April 12 NAB Show preview for Signiant. “To give you some indication [of] my level of experience (and age), I first started going to NAB … when technologies like non-linear editing were just starting to emerge.”

MESA will highlight what its members have on hand with two tours (starting at 2:15 p.m. on both April 18 and 19) of companies specializing in digital asset management. 5th Kind, Aspera, Mediasilo, GrayMeta and Qumulo will be on the tour on day one, with Prime Focus Technologies, Avere Systems, FilmTrack, Infor, Mediamorph and OpenText scheduled for day two.

Additionally, MESA will host an NAB reception for its members Tuesday, April 19 at
6:30 p.m. at the 1 Oak in the Mirage.

Here’s what MESA’s members at NAB are planning for the show (for a booth list, click here).

5th Kind

Located in the Aspera Partner Village, 5th Kind will show off its updated
Core DAM V6 platform, and share new partnership news with more than one major company dealing in file delivery and metadata.

Adobe

Adobe will show off new features for its Creative Cloud tools for video editing, audio and motion graphics, including new virtual reality capabilities. “There’s rapid change happening in the digital landscape with video now the fastest growing media type across social media platforms and OTT shaking up broadcast and film,” said Bryan Lamkin, EVP and GM of digital media for Adobe. “Adobe is transforming the industry with Creative Cloud and Primetime by helping customers create beautiful content to engage viewers and technologies that monetize content that audiences care about.”

Akamai Technologies

Akamai’s NAB focus will center around how its online video delivery solutions help deliver OTT, with a focus on live transcoding, latency reductions and predictive video delivery. Akamai will also share news of a new broadcast operations control center.

Amazon Web Services

The latest updates for AWS Cloud features, services and solutions for content produces and broadcasters will be on hand from Amazon Web Services, with the company sharing new ingest and storage options for cloud-storage of large volumes of data.

Aspera

Among the MESA members with the biggest footprint at NAB Show 2016, Aspera will showcase new high-speed transfer software (FASP 3.6) along with joint partner solutions. The IBM-owned company has been showing off secure file transfer technologies at NAB since 2004.

“In the decade since the media supply chain has come to depend upon high-speed transfer in virtually every workflow,” Aspera said in a statement. “Cloud computing and storage are now ubiquitous, and the pace of production now demands instant-on transfer services.”

Avere Systems

Avere will share the latest via its relationships with cloud providers like Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services, and what’s new for its enterprise storage and data management solutions.

Civolution’s NexGuard

The team behind NexGuard and its forensic watermarking technologies will show how content owners and distributors can better protect their media assets (from SDR to UHD HDR) throughout the content’s lifecycle.

Cognizant

IT consultant company Cognizant will share what it’s doing of late to help global enterprises keep their operations efficient and cost-effective, and what investments they need to make to stay competitive.

Deluxe

Deluxe Entertainment Services Group will show off its updated and new solutions for the creation and delivery of media, including new features for multi-screen and OTT media management platform Deluxe MediaCloud, new services specific to virtual reality, and support for advanced content formats (including HEVC, 4K and HDR).

Dolby Laboratories

If you’re familiar with Dolby, you’re familiar with its object-based sound technology Dolby Atmos and its HDR solution Dolby Vision. And while both will be up front and center at NAB, Dolby will also be showing off its involvement in virtual reality, and its work with the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard.

EMC

EMC’s executives will be on hand to talk about what’s new with the company’s media storage and converged infrastructure solutions, and will show off the results of its development of Isilon (now in its eighth generation).

FilmTrack

Intellectual property management software company FilmTrack recently acquired licensing and royalties software solutions provider RoyaltyZone, and at NAB will share how it will incorporate RoyaltyZone’s system to provide a better platform for managing license agreements, rights and royalties.

Fortium

Fortium will show off what’s new for its copy protection, content management and content filtering software technologies.

GrayMeta

A new metadata platform — one capable of searching through and extracting data from most every piece of content you can think of — will be debuted by GrayMeta at NAB. The company will show how its metadata agent can search for content via attributes that actually have meaning for them, including location, weather, and even the music in a video file.

HCL America

India-based IT services company HCL will show off the results of its recent partnership with Microsoft Azure.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise will tout its cloud-based service capabilities for media and entertainment companies, and how the company is enabling both the creation and delivery of content, and the management of metadata.

IBM

IBM will be show off IBM Watson, its analytics and security solutions, and its end-to-end portfolio of IBM Cloud Video Services. New IBM companies Cleversafe, Clearleap, and Ustream are likely to get a mention.

“At NAB 2016, IBM brings together the company’s most accomplished industry leaders, experts and partners including IBM research, to explore advanced technologies and solutions that let you outthink your competitors and outthink ordinary,” the company said in a statement.

Infor

Reps from Infor will be on hand to show what’s new with its cloud-based business applications.

Kaltura

The latest OTT services from Kaltura — touted as easily designed and launched even faster — will be available for inspection by both broadcasters and telcos at NAB. “Kaltura allows you to monetize your content, your way – combining any business model and any device from day one,” the company said.

Mediamorph

Mediamorph comes into NAB with plenty to smile about: its cloud-based applications and data management service was honored by CableFax in March as one of the top commercial software companies around. Mediamorph’s products are currently used by most every major studio and major cable network.

Mediamorph will show off how its platform allows clients to launch new offerings and better manage current services.

MediaSilo

Ahead of NAB, video sharing platform company MediaSilo debuted a first-ever, on-demand, real-time watermarking service: SafeStream. The offering will allow content producers to add their own custom watermarks as they go, giving customers the ability to add anything from emails to IP addresses to subscriber IDs, making user-identifiable info as a visual watermark with video files.

OpenText

OpenText’s NAB goal will to show how it can help companies do digital asset management (DAM) more easily, allowing for better engagement of audiences across devices and channels.

Prime Focus Technologies

Just ahead of NAB, Prime Focus announced an update to its Emmy-winning DAX Digital Asset Management offering. Now called DAX Production Cloud, the offering will give clients one software solution for all dailies and post servicing workflows. And during the show itself, a Prime Focus partnership with Amazon is expected.

Quantum Corporation

At NAB, Quantum will demonstrate expanded capabilities of its StorNext workflow storage platform, and how it can maximize efficiencies for an industry dealing with higher resolutions and multi-format delivery.

Qumulo

Software storage company Qumulo — which offers data-aware, scale-out, mass network-attached storage solutions — will show off its latest hybrid storage appliances at NAB.

Rovi Corp.

One of the first names that comes to mind when talking about discovering entertainment, regardless of the platform or content provider, Rovi will use NAB to show off how its technology allows consumers to find content specifically relevant to them.

RSG Media Systems

At NAB, RSG Media will share the latest with its content rights management system RightsLogic and ad sales management solution AdVant, and debut a new product for promo campaign management, dubbed Media Mantra.

SeeQVault

Reps from Next Generation Secure Memory (NSM), the group behind the secure flash memory technology SeeQVault, will use NAB to update attendees on how the technology benefits the broader content development and delivery ecosystem. SeeQVault encrypts purchased and rented digital content as it’s delivered, before porting it to flash-memory based media.

Signiant

Enhancements to Signiant’s SaaS platform — specifically geared toward content creators’ and distributors’ need to move large files over public and private networks both quickly and securely — will be the company’s main push at NAB.

Sohonet

Film and media industry service provider Sohonet will share its latest news covering prototypes and next-gen products.

Technicolor

Technicolor will be a big player at NAB, with new HDR delivery partnerships, and a major push of virtual reality technologies.

Teradici

What’s new with Teradici’s PCoIP (PC over IP) technology — and who’s taking advantage of its cloud editing solution — will be shared by the company.

Verizon Digital Media Services

Verizon Digital Media Services (DMS) — the cloud-based video division of Verizon — comes into NAB on a high: In mid March the company announced it would acquire video tech company Volicon. What that acquisition means to DMS — along with new partner announcements — will be unveiled at NAB.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions

Verizon Enterprise Solutions — Verizon’s tech solutions arm for the company’s business clients — will share the latest IT technology news for Verizon Cloud, its networking solutions and more.

Vistex

Vistex — which offers rights management and royalties solutions for media and entertainment companies — will offer up a closer view of its latest cloud-based solution, one geared specifically toward the independent film and TV market.

Vubiquity

The latest upgrades to Vubiquity’s end-to-end solutions for content producers and distributors — the company’s proprietary technology platforms AVC (AnyVU Cloud) and DETE (Digital End-To-End) — will be showcased at NAB.

Xstream

At NAB, Xstream will exhibit Xstream MediaMaker, the company’s cloud-based video management system, as well as MediaMaker Loading Dock, its OTT content supply chain tool.