Telestream Enables Significant Business Growth for Asset.tv
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As a direct result of streamlined processes enabled by FlipFactory, Asset.tv expanded its business to include live webcasting services using Telestream Wirecast.
Asset.tv is now poised to capitalise on the explosive growth in mobile video and significantly expand its business beyond the investment community to reach new markets.
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“FlipFactory has been a fantastic investment which has totally transformed the way we work. Without it, significant business growth would not have been possible. Wirecast makes it a snap to switch between multiple live cameras and other sources … offering production values comparable to television broadcast.”
David Mann
Technical Director, Asset.tv
Background
For more than five years Asset TV (Asset.tv) has been providing the investment community with a full spectrum of video and web services. Established in 2003 with a team drawn from the worlds of conventional broadcasting, new technology and global financial services, Asset.tv evolved from providing television based services over VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) filming, editing, live conferencing, and training webcasts over the Internet. Today, Asset.tv offers its global clientele high-quality video production, hosted video libraries, dedicated web television channels, and live webcasts integrated with pre-recorded video, audio, and graphics.
The Challenge
Under the old workflow, encoding 100-200 videos a week, many one to two hours long, created a real delay in getting content delivered to clients. Typically recorded on tape and hard drive, video content was edited on an Avid and exported to Sorenson Squeeze for transcoding. Slow, unreliable encoding became the weak point in the company’s workflow.
According to David Mann, Technical Director at Asset.tv, “Transcoding became our production bottleneck, many times taking overnight, often with inconsistent results in quality. Getting same
day media turnaround for clients was impossible.”
The Solution
In March 2009 Asset.tv switched from Sorensen Squeeze to Telestream FlipFactory for its
transcoding needs. The result was immediate, with significant gains in production output quality and speed. Transcoding was being done in minutes rather than overnight. For the first time, Asset.tv was able to deliver projects to clients the same day.
Now transcoding is considered to be a “set it and forget it” process, completely automatic. Under the new workflow, QuickTime reference files are exported from Avid to a FlipFactory folder, then automatically uploaded to the FlipFactory server for transcoding to Flash, Windows Media, MPEG1 and MPEG-2 formats. When processing is completed, an email notification advises that the media has been sent.
“FlipFactory has been a fantastic investment which has totally transformed the way we work,” reports Mann. “It doesn’t matter how many files you throw at it, FlipFactory is very fast.”
According to Mann this has made a big difference in the way his team works. They no longer
need to think about exporting and encoding. Prior to FlipFactory, they spent a great deal of time worrying about how long the file took to export. “Now it’s there in no time.”
New Opportunity
As a direct result of streamlined processes and fast turnarounds created with FlipFactory,
Asset.tv was able to focus attention on broadening its services. Live Room was created in 2009 to reach and engage customers with high-quality video and audio live webcasts (broadcasts for the web).
Asset.tv wanted to create a compact, portable production “studio-in-a-box” for live remote
broadcasts and special events. Its goal was to maximize production value while minimizing the amount of technical operators and production crew needed. To mix live and pre-recorded elements, video files had to be previewed before being switched to a live feed. Encoders doing live streaming weren’t able to provide the production quality required for more complex live webcasts.
Again, Asset.tv turned to Telestream for its live webcasting needs. The company purchased three Telestream Wirecast live video production software licenses to run on PCs and a MacBook Pro. Developed specifically for web broadcasts, Wirecast works much like traditional hardware production switchers or vision mixers – cutting between multiple cameras and mixing in titling other elements. With Wirecast running on a MacBook Pro laptop at the event location, Asset.tv can now produce and deliver live web broadcasts with minimal crew and equipment.
According to Mann, “Wirecast makes it a snap to switch between multiple live cameras, slides and video, and add titles. Resulting production values are comparable to a typical television broadcast, without the large technical and production crews.”
The Result
Asset.tv anticipates expanding significantly next year. The company expects to grow its business beyond the investment community to new markets such as the trade industry.
“Without FlipFactory, significant business growth would not have been possible,” reports Mann. “Production operations can be scaled up without additional staffing or hardware costs for increased transcoding volume.”
With Wirecast, Asset.tv is poised to capitalize on the explosive growth in mobile video, while expanding its live production services into new market segments.