Exclusives

NAB Show: Rights Management, Security and Storage Solutions Among MESA Member Highlights

By Jeff Berman and Chris Tribbey

Members of the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) will be bringing a wide range of industry solutions to the NAB Show in Las Vegas, covering everything from rights and digital asset management, to cloud, storage and workflow solutions, to content protection and cybersecurity technologies.

Here’s a look at what Advantage Video Systems, Caringo, Digital Bedrock, FilmTrack, Fortium, IBM Security, Irdeto, Mediamorph, RSG Media Systems, Thinklogical and Vistex have on tap at the NAB Show.

RIGHTS AND DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT

Advantage Video Systems

Advantage Video Systems (AVS) will use NAB to talk about its integration work and the new products it’s selling, Jeffrey Stansfield, its president, CEO and owner, told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA).

One of the things AVS will be talking about is its Digital Asset Management (DAM) Team Building services (ATS-Asset Team Services), he said, adding: “AVS are proven experts in building and maintaining Asset Management systems and provide solutions for companies large and small.” Whether designing production asset management (PAM), DAM or media asset management (MAM), or “resolving issues, we are the go-to company in the entertainment and business industry across the nation,” he said.

AVS is also “one of the leaders on” content distribution network (CDN) channel integrators, he said, explaining: “So, you have Sohonet, Azure and other CDN platforms but you need a professional studio and we have built some of the best in the U.S.”

AVS will also be talking about its Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Certification infrastructures, he said, noting: “If you are a post facility and want to do work with the big studios you have to get a MPAA Certification and we can help.” SL14916, [email protected]

FilmTrack

This year at NAB, FilmTrack “will be unveiling the largest revision to our platform in its 20-year history,” according to Michael McGuire, its chief revenue officer.

“From rights and availabilities to royalties and participations, we’re excited to showcase new features and functionality that define the next generation in rights management,” he said.

First up is MyFilmTrack, which he said allows users to “create highly configurable widget-based dashboards that are personalized for each user.” As a result, there’ll be “no more searching through multiple screens or reports for the information you need,” he explained.

Next up is InstAvails, which he said enable an organization’s teams to “quickly and easily access data for better decision-making while streamlining the contract initiation process.” He added: “With InstAvails, you know what content you have available to sell at any given point in time so that you never miss out on new revenue opportunities.”

MyFilmTrack and InstAvails are new features of FilmTrack’s platform that will be shown for the first time at NAB, according to the company.

There will also be a preview of FilmTrack’s new user interface, McGuire said, adding: “Our sleek new look and feel will take FilmTrack from being not only the most robust” Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based “offering in the industry, but the easiest-to-use tool for rights management.” SU8812, [email protected]

Mediamorph

Cloud-based enterprise software firm Mediamorph will be at on hand at the NAB Show sharing how its clients are using its services to track the performance of content assets across global digital platforms.

Every major Hollywood studio and the biggest broadcast TV networks, cable and satellite operators and OTT providers rely on Mediamorph to be sure every asset (and the data associated with assets) is accurate, across every platform, language and region.

Most recently, movie kiosk and online streaming operator Redbox announced a new partnership with Mediamorph, with Redbox using Mediamorph’s platform to better manage content from its content partners.

Redbox — which rents DVDs, Blu-rays and video game discs in 41,500-plus self-service kiosks — launched a new online streaming service, Redbox On Demand, in December. The partnership with Mediamorph will help the company better manage both avails management and pricing for content for the streaming service, according to Lowell Bike, director of product management for Redbox. N4515, [email protected]

RSG Media Systems

RSG Media Systems will share the latest with its RightsLogic enterprise rights management system, showing off advanced scheduling and finance features. The service’s recently released next-gen avails tool accelerates how businesses find and exploit rights in their catalog. RSG Media’s Media Mantra platform also helps companies instantly adopt AI to improve performance, as changing viewership behavior continues to disrupt the industry. Additionally, RSG Media AdVant product line now also offers ad sales targeting, pricing, planning, and scheduling optimization for linear and digital. N5311, [email protected]

Vistex

Vistex will be at NAB Show showing how it delivers cross-platform solutions that support the entire broadcast licensing workflow. From acquisition to run-play performance analysis, royalties and participations to revenue recognition, the company’s software tracks everything associated with rights for studios, broadcasters, operators, game creators, and distributors. Vistex integrates with scheduling, DAM/MAM, and financial ERP to deliver a single-solution approach to managing IP.

“We are excited to move forward with multiple new cloud products that are tailored to suit all aspects of the media supply chain, from large enterprise through to mid-level distributors and even to independent companies that need a straightforward, easy to use rights management system,” said Tom McDonough, Vistex’s senior manager of solution delivery for media.”For enterprise customers who use SAP for financials, we offer our Vistex SAP embedded solution which is rolling out functionality for media rights and royalties that had traditionally been served by our Counterpoint Maestro suite.”

For enterprise customers who prefer to use a non-SAP solution, Vistex’s additional cloud-based offerings house the same functionality as the company’s SAP embedded.

“We see how the need for availability information is expanding given the complexities today around rights exploitation, and Vistex offers the most robust analytics around availability reporting.” N4435, [email protected]

CLOUD, STORAGE AND WORKFLOWS

Caringo

This year at the NAB Show, Caringo will be demonstrating how media and entertainment (M&E) organizations “can leverage object storage to get all the benefits of cloud storage without sending data to a cloud,” according to Adrian Herrera, its marketing VP. “This enables you to optimize media storage, access and protection for post-production, delivery and archive workflows,” he told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA).

Caringo will be providing multiple opportunities for customers and partners to experience “hassle-free storage administration, expansion, and security for rapidly scaling media libraries” at the show, it said. Attendees will be able to see demonstrations of the company’s “integration with leading asset managers, apply for a no-charge 100 TB Swarm software license, and enjoy happy hour with the Caringo team while learning more about hassle-free, limitless storage expansion for their digital assets,” the company said in a news release.

Caringo will have storage experts there who will “showcase how Swarm hassle-free object-based storage can be readily implemented as a target with widely used asset managers including Pixit Media, CatDV and ReachEngine,” Caringo said, adding: “With limitless scale, the ability for 1 administrator to manage hundreds of petabytes, and built-in protection from hacks and ransomware, Swarm is the ideal storage platform for keeping rapidly scaling media libraries securely accessible during all stages of the M&E workflow from creation to delivery and archive.”

Just ahead of the show, Caringo announced a technology partnership with Pixit, certifying Caringo Swarm with the Pixit Media suite.

The combined software-defined approach pairs Pixit’s PixStor and PixStor Ngenea Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) solutions with the Caringo Swarm scale-out object storage platform, “delivering performance, protection and access for every stage of the content workflow from creation to delivery and archive,” Caringo said in its announcement.

For a limited time, Caringo is offering a no-charge, full-featured 100 TB Swarm software license for qualified M&E companies that are “struggling to store, manage, and protect their ever-growing library of digital assets while keeping them securely accessible,” it also said.

Prior to the official start of the NAB Show, Caringo will be featured at the JB&A Pre-NAB Technology event, April 7-8, the company said, calling it a “must-stop event on everyone’s NAB itinerary for a jump-start on the new technologies” that will be seen on the NAB Show floor.

The Caringo booth will also be featured as a stop on the MESA DAM(n) 2018 tour for select M&E executives and content owners, Caringo noted.

Caringo will also be hosting happy hour April 9 and 10, starting at 1:30 p.m. at its booth, providing NAB Show attendees with the opportunity to taste local Las Vegas beer as well as to meet Caringo storage experts and learn more about the 100TB promotion, it said. The 100 TB software license and integration consultation is immediately available to qualified M&E organizations. Interested parties can visit here for more information. SL11807, [email protected]

Digital Bedrock

At the NAB Show, Digital Bedrock will demonstrate “how digital preservation is more than storage and backup,” according to Linda Tadic, founder and CEO of the Los Angeles-based digital preservation service provider. “We perform this complex work for clients so they can focus on creation, and sleep better at night knowing their valuable assets are secure and being monitored,” she told MESA.

One difference between Digital Bedrock and many other companies exhibiting at the NAB Show is that it’s a service provider, she noted, explaining: 
“We aren’t selling software licenses or hardware. All other storage solutions require the clients to do the work themselves through licensing or purchasing equipment. In contrast, we perform the detailed, managed preservation work required to keep digital content secure and usable into the future.”

The company’s clients include a major independent Emmy Award-winning studio, director Stephen Soderbergh, producers, film archives, distributors and educational institutions, she pointed out, adding that, at NAB, “we will demo our core applications.”

Digital Bedrock will also “definitely be describing the process of how we preserved” Soderbergh’s film “Logan Lucky,” and will continue on with his latest movie, “Unsane,” and future titles, she said.

The company recently announced an agreement with Soderbergh and his company Fingerprint Releasing, under which Digital Bedrock is preserving the digital masters for “Logan Lucky” and “Unsane.” To preserve the 2017 heist-comedy film “Logan Lucky,” Digital Bedrock analyzed roughly 50 TB of data, covering a variety of file formats, including four versions of OpenEXR image sequences, production sound, final sound mixes, DCPs, and ProRes masters.

The company extracted both technical and embedded metadata to make it searchable, validated formats to help identify obsolescence vulnerabilities, and created SHA-512 checksums (a unique file “fingerprint”) for every file. Nearly 800,000 files were ingested, processed, and indexed.

Files were first collected by Technicolor PostWorks using Digital Bedrock’s curation package tool, and Digital Bedrock will perform ongoing preservation maintenance on the “Logan Lucky” data to ensure its future viability, the company announced. Digital Bedrock will provide similar services for Soderbergh’s 2018 thriller “Unsane,” which hit theaters March 23 in the U.S. SL13408, [email protected]

Thinklogical

Belden Brand’s Thinklogical will showcase a new all-in-one solution for extending virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) architectures in media and entertainment, with live demonstrations at its booth. The TLX Client Integration module is a full-featured virtual machine processor combined with a high-performance keyboard, video and mouse (KVM) extender, eliminating the need for a separate client device in VDI implementations. The system can be installed in point-to-point applications or implemented in conjunction with a Thinklogical matrix switch, enabling connectivity between multiple sources and user destinations for enhanced productivity and collaborative workflows.

“With our new client Integration module, Thinklogical is disrupting the media and entertainment marketplace by delivering the quality and performance of no-added-latency KVM and 4K video extension and switching, combined with a cost-saving virtual machine client,” said Olivier Bojarski, president of Thinklogical. “Content creation professionals no longer need to compromise on productivity, performance and image resolution quality when working in a virtual desktop environment.” SL6328, [email protected]

CONTENT PROTECTION AND SECURITY

Fortium

This year at the NAB Show, Fortium will be showing the new features of MediaSeal for “easier-to-use” file security for TV and film post production in sound and picture editing, localization and marketing, according to its CEO, Mathew Gilliat-Smith.

“Even behind firewalls, cybercrime is becoming more common and the threats of theft are greater,” he told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA). “Also, ever-faster workflows can mean leaks from accidental distribution. File encryption for files at-rest, in motion and in-use means safely balancing security and risk, without impacting post-production workflows,” he said.

Fortium will provide demos at its Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) booth in the South Hall (Upper level), SU10603, as well as at the booth of partner Aspera, in the South Hall (Lower level), SL5910, Fortium said. Its MediaSeal encryption at-rest and on-the-fly protection is offered as a feature on Aspera’s high-speed file transfer and collaboration platform.

Fortium will detail at the NAB Show how organizations can keep content secure through with its range of both disc- and file-based security solutions, the company says at its web site.

In addition, Fortium will be taking part in Avid Connect in Las Vegas, April 6-8, and is a sponsor of the Avid security panel at 2 p.m. April 7 at the Wynn Hotel, Fortium said. You can find more details here: http://www.avidconnect2018.com.

On April 8, Fortium will also be participating in the CDSA Cyber Security & Content Protection Summit, at the Westgate, 1-6 p.m.

On April 9 at 4 p.m., Fortium will be taking part in a panel debate hosted by Connected Media IP, in the South Upper CMIP area of the LVCC. The debate is entitled “From the camera to the consumer — understanding how we can secure content in the world of OTT.”

On April 10, Fortium will host its own panel debate that it was still finalizing the details of, the company said. The event will be hosted by Adam Krentzman, its VP of business development, and will focus on the challenges facing post-studios when it comes to protecting media files, Fortium said, adding guests from production studios are already lined up to take part. SU10603, [email protected]

IBM Security

IBM Security and its integrated system of real-time defenses, analytics and security experts will be on hand at the NAB Show, showing off everything from automated IT risk management services, to IBM Cloud Identity Connect (an IDaaS solution that acts as a bridge from on-premises identity and access management to the cloud), to IBM MaaS360 with Watson (an endpoint protection platform that offers cognitive insights, contextual analytics, and cloud-sourced benchmarking capabilities). SL5305

Irdeto

At the NAB Show, Irdeto will demonstrate its OTT Live Watermarking solution, technology that embeds the watermark on-the-fly, ensuring that illegal activity is detected and the source of the leak identified in a few minutes.

For operators and broadcasters adopting Irdeto’s watermarking solution, the integration point is moved to their just-in-time packager, meaning that their encoder stays the same. OTT Live Watermarking aims to merge the benefits of on-demand, head-end based watermarking with the fast detection times. Combined with Irdeto’s Piracy Control Services monitoring, the service promises to give broadcasters an effective way to protect their content. To learn more and view a demo of the solution, stop by the Irdeto booth (#SU14608).