Server-based workflows

The whizz of a mid-air football. A sweaty, mud-splattered face. Slow-motion clips. Instant replay highlights. The fast-paced world of live sports is largely responsible for the push toward innovation in video server technology. Today, the capture, storage and production processes of the sports community are being adopted — and adapted — for a range of broadcast programming far outside the world’s sporting venues.

While server technology in the professional broadcast realm has always been about recording, storage and playout with little, if any, signal degradation, servers have been advancing to more effectively ingest and store greater amounts of content of varying formats and play out multiple synchronized and simultaneous video streams. Now, more and more, equipment delivering the fast turnaround, flexibility and integration of live sports is being used in studio environments — for news magazines, live shows, reality programming, onstage entertainment and dramatic TV series. Broadcasters are leveraging the speed and mobility developed to full advantage for a range of onscreen programming.

But that’s not the whole story. To grow and thrive, broadcasters and media companies today must meet consumer demand for the richest media experience. Higher quality, faster content delivery to multiple screens and multiple devices, with more interactive capability, is the mantra for our age of converged communications. And the much talked about convergence between IT and traditional broadcast technology must be addressed. For broadcast environments that have not yet transitioned away from tape, today’s servers can help transition to a tapeless workflow.