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It’s time to rethink newsroom editing

Mar 25, 2008 8:23 AM

    

Mahmoud Al-Daccak: We are trying to bring in an affordable editing solution that operates in the newsroom without having to really invest in multiple seats of SD/HD if you don’t need them. So, we are trying to transform the model or present an alternative to the market at the same time with the same technology but more distributed with publishing to different formats. We also are providing similar services but over the Web without purchasing equipment.

HD Technology Update: Do you see this dual SD and HD support as becoming more important as next February’s over-the-air DTV transition occurs and stations look for HD news solutions?

Mahmoud Al-Daccak: The deadline for transmitting digitally is looming in February 2009, and with our Sledgehammer and MAXedit products, we can help. One thing I forgot to mention is HD and the migration to HD. Migration to HD means investing in technology, which depends on the requirements for editing news. Migration to HD by itself is a cost that will be incurred by broadcasters, and here, because our server is capable of handling SD and HD, that migration will be a lot smoother.

All of the images are local to the centralized access storage via our server. All the editing and transitions are happening on the server. So if you happen to not have HD stations already and you don’t want to take the full leap of HD and don’t have all the HD equipment, you can immediately start editing in HD on our server from the Web browser.

So, we facilitate that move, or at least we support that mix between SD and HD, because the images are centralized and don’t need to move between the stations. There’s no aggregating on the stations themselves; everything is on the server.

HD Technology Update: Compare your approach with current server-based newsroom editing architectures.

Mahmoud Al-Daccak: The approach so far has been to have centralized storage, like Sledgehammer, but then stations have to have multiple, dedicated workstations fully loaded to do their editing. Then they have to move their images back and forth to do their editing.

So, basically, they have a workstation that does their nonlinear editing. If they happen to have five workstations, for example, if somebody wants to do editing, they will be occupying one of these stations. What we are saying is: You don’t need to invest in these stations.

Instead of having islands, or software silos if you want to look at it like that, each with editing software on those individual stations, you can edit on a centralized server.

HD Technology Update: Will MAXedit integrate via MOS with other newsroom computer systems?

Mahmoud Al-Daccak: We are based on open standards with open centralized storage, so our system can be integrated with asset management systems, news systems. We don’t specifically have solutions for those, but our system is open so it can be integrated with similar systems.

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