From The NAB Exhibit Floor: Avid

Avid | Booth SU902 | Website: www.avid.com

On Sunday, Avid announced a series of innovations for its Avid MediaCentral Platform and its associated modular application suites, delivering further on the key promises of Avid Everywhere. 

The platform announcements include:

• Next-generation intelligent media storage: Avid NEXIS is the industry’s first and only software-defined storage platform, and enables fully virtualized storage so media organizations can adjust storage capacity mid-project, without disrupting workflows. Avid NEXIS delivers unrivaled media storage flexibility, scalability, and control for both Avid-based and third-party workflows. It has been designed to serve the smallest production teams as powerfully as the largest media enterprises and is the only storage platform built with the flexibility to grow with customers at every stage of their business.

• State-of-the-art graphics authoring for broadcast news and more: The new 4Designer graphics authoring software offers a complete solution for creating captivating 2D and 3D motion graphics in a wide range of resolutions. This feature-rich toolset provides broadcasters with the tools they need to create stunning real-time visual content for news, elections, sports events, weather segments, business reports, and more. As the successor to the award-winning 3Designer, 4Designer offers more power, speed, and new features in a more modern interface, yet maintains the same workflows and compatibility with existing 3Designer templates.

• Accelerated graphics production for sports: The new Avid Spark live sports enhancement telestration tool enables on-air commentators to draw and add graphics to a video in real time, giving audiences better visual insight into key plays, game flow, and analysis. Designed for fast operation, Avid Spark provides feature-rich capabilities to accelerate and simplify graphics production. An easy-to-use touchscreen interface eliminates the need for a dedicated operator. Unlike traditional telestrators, Avid Spark allows users to draw graphics in both onscreen and in-field perspectives, ensuring a realistic viewing experience. Ideal for small to mid-size operations, Avid Spark helps broadcasters produce better game visuals, attract a wider audience, and deliver more compelling content that stands apart from the competition.

• Extended Avid Resolution Independence: Avid introduced the industry’s first end-to-end production workflow for the Panasonic AVC Ultra-LongG video format, including full integration with solutions across the Avid MediaCentral Platform. With comprehensive MediaCentral Platform support, production teams can now benefit from this modern, highly efficient compression scheme in the most efficient way using streamlined and highly integrated workflows.

• Expanded Connectivity Partner Program with new third-party integrations: Avid announced new innovations that help customers reduce the burden of making disparate technology work together so they can focus on creating great content. The newly expanded Avid Connectivity Partner Program provides extensive new services, toolkits, and certification programs that help developers bring Avid-certified solutions to market, while the new Avid Enterprise Marketplace helps media professionals and organizations immediately access solutions from a convenient centralized location.

• Open and interoperable IP workflows for the MediaCentral Platform: Avid announced its plan to accelerate the media industry’s transition to IP by supporting real time IP signals in the Avid MediaCentral Platform, delivering a unified platform environment for converged file-based and live signal-based media workflows. In technology presentations at the Avid booth (#SU902) at NAB 2016, Avid will demonstrate native IP-based workflows as well as hybrid SDI/IP workflows that enable media companies to leverage standard IT infrastructure, while managing the transition to IP at their own pace.

In addition, Avid also announced that NBC Olympics, a division of the NBC Sports Group, has selected Avid to provide content creation and media management workflows for its production of the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, which take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from Aug. 5 to 21.

To accelerate and streamline production for the Rio Games, NBC Olympics selected the Avid MediaCentral Platform. The Avid MediaCentral Platform is the foundation of the Avid Everywhere, and is composed of four product suites that will enable NBC Olympics to streamline their entire workflow, from media creation and collaboration, to delivery, throughout the 17 consecutive days of coverage of the Rio Olympics.

This marks the ninth consecutive NBC Olympics/Avid partnership since the Sydney Games in 2000. The implementation for NBC Olympics production of the Rio Olympics is the largest and most comprehensive to date, and includes a range of solutions built upon the Avid MediaCentral Platform.

Avid Interplay | Production will help NBC Olympics to manage content creation, automate workflows, and empower collaboration across multiple production facilities worldwide. Avid Interplay | MAM media asset management will enable teams to find assets fast, streamline media operations, and make the most of revenue opportunities. Avid MediaCentral | UXprovides a unified, web-based user experience for all production tasks, enabling NBC Olympics to work quickly, with greater efficiency and flexibility.

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