Cardiff, UK, 10th November 2010 – Object Matrix, a developer of secure archive and retrieval software, has supplied Porth based post production facility Avanti Media with its pre-production and nearline archive solution, The MatrixStore. The multi-purpose data management solution provides an audited, secure archive for the Panasonic P2 rushes that enter the facility and also a safe place to keep finished AVID projects online.

Avanti Media use The MatrixStore to manage the many terabytes of content that they work on every week, it looks after the location, authenticity and availability of the content so that the editorial staff can get on with more relevant tasks. The solution consists of a three node MatrixStore cluster, Dropspot and MxFS client applications from Object Matrix.

Rhys Bevan, Operations Director, “Due to the nature of the business we need to support the production effort both in-house and off-site. It is therefore crucial that any technology that we bring into the facility both adds value to our process and does not hinder our ability to work. In that respect MatrixStore so far has fitted perfectly into our workflow.”

Located at the historic Corona pop factory in Porth, Avanti is Wales’ premiere entertainment producers. Credits include Jonathan, which is filmed onsite, Wakestock and an impressive mix of live events, documentaries and weekly shows for clients such as S4C, BBC, ITV & Sky including the recent Welcome To Wales – Ryder Cup concert from the Millennium Stadium.

“The MatrixStore is an essential bit of kit for us given the current workload and the cost of our online storage. The local support we have received from Object Matrix has also given us the comfort factor that we know they will be on hand should we need them for anything.” added Rhys.

The MatrixStore vault functionality allows the team at Avanti to manage client content in their own distinct areas whilst using the same physical platform. it also allows them to protect rushes in a secure area where it cannot be deleted either accidentally or maliciously.

“Like to many of our clients the team at Avanti are coming to terms with content coming into the facility on tapeless media which have until now been clogging up there AVID Unity. With shooting ratios sometimes in the range or 60-1 keeping all that raw footage on the Unity is neither cost effective nor practical. Avanti also need a place to keep content at their fingertips so editors can quickly find content from the current series of a long running show which is why The MatrixStore is such a good fit for them” added Nick Pearce, co-founder of Object Matrix.

About Avanti
AVANTI’s Post Production is all done in-house at The Pop Factory, Porth. The department consists of 4 HD Avid Adrenaline suites and a Pro-Tools based Dubbing and Voiceover studio, each housed in individual, spacious rooms with plenty of natural light. With each room overlooking views of the Rhondda hillside, there is no better place to edit the wide range of programmes that we produce here at AVANTI.
The Pop Factory also houses three large recording studios as well as the loft and the tower which offer a more intimate recoding space.
www.avantimedia.tv

Caerphilly, UK and Portugal, 6th September 2010: Object Matrix, a leading developer of secure archive systems and MOG Technologies, the award-winning provider of SDI and file based ingest solutions, have announced a joint technology partnership. The collaboration brings together two innovative technologies that are helping the creative industries to manage, protect and streamline the deluge of file-based content that is entering facilities every day.

The integrated solution between the MOG Technologies mxfSPEEDRAIL F1000 tapeless media ingest platform and Object Matrix’s intelligent disk-based archive system, MatrixStore, provides seamless ingest workflows putting content at the editor’s fingertips whilst ensuring the rushes are protected at the highest levels.

Implementing a tapeless or file-based workflow has been highlighted as one of the top challenges facing creative organisations in 2010. They face the challenge of managing the ingest of multiple formats captured on a variety of cameras whilst ensuring the content is protected and available on demand. The elegant solution offered by MOG and Object Matrix provides workflows that are secure, automated, audited and repeatable, freeing up staff to concentrate on tasks that add value to the business.

“MOG Technologies is committed to offer the most simple, reliable and interoperable ingest solutions to the broadcast industry”, says Vitor Teixeira, MOG Technologies Marketing and Sales Director “Object Matrix disk-based archive system perfectly fits our mxfSPEEDRAIL F1000 system integration with NAS storage for the backup of material. This partnership allows MOG to offer a high performance tapeless system in a true multi-resolution workflow: edit proxy files in Avid editors, backup the media in MatrixStore storage and then get the high-quality sub-clips media available at the editor upon request.”

MOG’s mxfSPEEDRAIL F1000 ingests tapeless MXF media (video, audio and metadata) from any location seamlessly into any shared storage solution. Launched in 2009, it already has a large number of users across Europe and the American continent reaping the benefits of a centralised ingest concept. mxfSPEEDRAIL F1000 is a quick and simple way to move media between servers and editors, with faster than real time speeds, multiple simultaneous transfers with partial-restore and sub-clipping options. A perfect fit for multi-channel and multi-resolution workflow systems. It also preserves camera metadata when transferring clips, making it available for editors and MAMs.

“Working with a forward thinking company like MOG Technologies not only broadens the eco-system of products and applications that can interact with MatrixStore but also offers more advanced workflow options to our customers and the market in general. We are very pleased to be working with the MOG team and look forward to evolving the solution to add more automated workflows in the very near future”. Nick Pearce, co-founder, Object Matrix.

The MatrixStore provides functionality that is perfectly suited to the ingest of file-based content. It is scalable, secure and can lock down rushes from accidental deletion until the production process is complete. With digital fingerprinting of content, continuous data verification and meta-data extraction it provides producers with the peace of mind that their content is not only protected in two locations but is also guaranteed to be authentic. The MatrixStore is current in use as a secure rushes repository in the UKs largest broadcasters and post-productions facilities.

Availability
The integrated mxfSPEEDRAIL/MatrixStore solution is available now from MOG Technologies, Object Matrix and their worldwide network of business partners.
You can find out more about the integrated solution at IBC 2010 where MatrixStore and mxfSPEEDRAIL will be demonstrated on the MOG Technologies Stand (Hall7 G39).

About MOG Technologies
MOG is a recognized leader in the development of MXF technology. The engineering team, former researchers at Portuguese R&D institute, actively participated in the development of the MXF standard itself. With several years of experience in both IT and Broadcast technology under their belts, this team started in 2000 the development of a reference MXF software implementation that accompanied the development of the first drafts of the MXF standard.
In 2002, the team fully integrated at MOG Solutions, applied the gathered and matured know-how to develop the first commercially available MXF software product. www.mog-technologies.com

The View From OM

Partnering with the team at MOG is another case of providing more elegant workflow solutions and providing a secure, integrated ingest option that the industry is asking for and needs.

But moving data from digital media, PCs or SANs to secure data storage doesn’t need to be a time consuming, error prone nor a complex operation.

DropSpot (product data sheet pdf) is a simple yet surprisingly powerful asset manager application that runs on Linux, Mac and Windows and that allows you to quickly copy data between your digital devices and your MatrixStore archive as well as to handle, add to and search on metadata.

The DropSpot User Interface

DropSpot understands the digital media devices that it is reading from and optimises (e.g., through “multithreading”) its configuration appropriately to yield faster performance results. DropSpot then transfers the data using the most appropriate data transfer protocols, designed for internal, high latency  (e.g., internet) or secure channel based communication. Therefore, as well as a data movement tool, it is excellent when used as an ingest tool to move data into a MatrixStore archive, such as in this customer’s P2 and Avid workflow:

Workflow showing DropSpot used to ingest data

There’s no point keeping data safe unless you can find it and DropSpot can extract metadata from files to allow for instantaneous searching back of the data stored. It has a powerful facility to understand digital media formats such as P2 and is completely configurable to allow the administrator to enforce extra metadata (such as production names), which can then be requested to be added when users drop data. Below is an example screen that can be configured to pop up whenever someone drops data into the MatrixStore archive. From DropSpot v2.4 this is completely configurable and it can be modified to capture as much or as little data as you want to:

Furthermore, DropSpot provides job control, so that jobs to copy data can be later reviewed and if necessary, verified or restarted (optionally, from the point where the job stopped, avoiding the need to copy all the data again):

Jobs can be verified or re-run (from the point of failure) if for any reason there was an interruption to the data copying service

The view from Object Matrix

DropSpot is not trying to be a full blown DAM (such as Final Cut Server, Blue Order, CatDV etc), and it is not designed to replace the need for those types of applications in larger organisations. However, DropSpot provides secure, reliable data transmission via a simple to use yet surprisingly powerful interface. It provides lightweight asset management and strong metadata entry and search facilities. Furthermore, it’s free to install it on as many client machines connecting to MatrixStore as you’d like to.

DropSpot high-level features:

• One click archiving
• Simple search, find your data instantly
• Basic DAM/MAM functionality
• Reduces management overheads and processes
• Intuitive user interface. Easy to use without special training
• Linux, Mac and Windows versions
• Works as a GUI or from command line interfaces
• Options to review, verify or to re-run jobs
• Understands digital media such as Panasonic P2
• Automated metadata extraction
• Allows extra metadata to be entered by the operator to identify the data being stored
• Completely free to use on any number of client machines with a MatrixStore archive

Caerphilly, UK and Paris, France 6th September 2010 – Object Matrix, provider of The MatrixStore data storage platform, has today appointed DID Technology as a Value Added Reseller for its storage and workflow solutions in France.

According to Nick Pearce, co-founder of Object Matrix, the appointment will enhance the positioning of MatrixStore within the local market and provide Object Matrix with local video workflow and storage expertise. “DID Technology have broad creative video workflow expertise that bridges the underlying technologies that their client base have in place. More and more of our clients have a healthy mix of Apple, Adobe or AVID platforms in their architecture which makes it very easy to work with teams that possess skills across those disciplines. DID Technology provide just that.”

The MatrixStore from Object Matrix is well positioned within Avid and Apple workflows as a Pre-Production Archive helping organisations to manage the ingest, protection and authenticity of content from tapeless media; a nearline or parking platform for ongoing projects that should not be sat on the production disk; and a disk-based archive for legacy content.

“Many content producers and post production facilities current own or manage a large volume of content kept on a variety of different video tape formats. To keep those tapes in good condition takes time and valuable resources. Only a handful of companies have media asset management or complex and expensive library systems for searching, managing or logging content. The vast majority of these companies also do not have the financial resources available to the larger broadcasters yet they face the same challenges. The Did TECHNOLOGY team has chosen Object Matrix products and services to offer affordable, scalable archive solutions to all of its customer base.” Sebastien Collin, co-founder, DID Technology.

About DID Technology

Established in 2010, DID TECHNOLOGY is a systems integrator based near Paris (France) founded By Sebastien Collin, Jean Michel Bouvet and Christophe Galerme. The team have accumulated 25 years of strong experience selling and supporting Avid and Apple products and helping customers realise complex workflows.

DID TECHNOLOGY has 3 main activities: resale of broadcast products, post production rental activity (avid media composer and apple final cut workstations)and support/services.

DID TECHNOLOGY customers include producers, post production & broadcast facilities, educational and any institution that requires broadcast solutions.

www.didtechnology.com

We will be on stand with our partners MOG Solutions (Hall7 G39) from Friday to Tuesday showing various tapeless workflows and will also be taking part in various Apple reseller and partner events at their Amsterdam EBC. So, if you would like to learn more about any of the following please do drop us a line or come along to see us:

- File Based Ingest Workflows (manage and protect P2, EX3, XDCAM rushes using DropSpot, MXFS and also mxfSPEEDRAIL from MOG Solutions)

- Nearline Archiving (take the load off your ISIS or XSAN, put content somewhere more appropriate)

- Deep Archive (Keep your content alive and available for re-purposing or distribution. Use DropSpot, Final Cut Server or Vidispine to protect, find and use your content on-demand)

The View From OM

Three times a year the body and soul of Object Matrix toddles off to various locations across the globe, standing around for hours, miles of walking and yards of imbibing, all in the name of business. Is it worth it? We think so.

Adobe/Trams

Digital Workflow Event (15th June) www.trams.co.uk (London)

Who: Nick Pearce & Mark Andrews

Cyfle/S4C/Boomerang/Mwnci

File Based Production Seminar

• Caernarfon (June 22nd) (Who: Mark Andrews)
• Cardiff (June 24th) (Who: Nick Pearce & Mark Andrews)

EBU Technical Seminar – “Networked Content Exchange”

Geneva 22nd/23rd Jun

Who: Nick Pearce

WIG2010

Workflow Innovation Group. Cardiff 29th June.

Who: Jon Morgan, Nick Pearce, Mark Andrews

Feel free to sign up where appropriate and come chat!

The View From OM

June looks busy for both events, sales and technical progress. Exciting times.

• Secure, Searchable Rushes/Dailies Ingest and Protection (Panasonic P2 etc)
• Nearline or parking space for AVID or Final Cut workflows
• Local Library, keeping assets alive to be re-purposed/re-used

The View from OM

NAB is always an experience and shows how niche storage vendors can dominate in a space not yet penetrated by the big tin companies (thought they all claim to be there). Please do get in touch if you would like to have a chat with Mark or myself.

The video (HD version available here) provides a high level view of The MatrixStore in this role:

As shown in the video there are 4 main benefit areas:

• Guaranteed Ingest - MatrixStore generates a hash (digest, digital fingerprint) of the content on the client and also on the two MatrixStore nodes the content lands on. Three different places where the content is checked ensuring the content in MatrixStore is bit for bit the same as came off the P2 or SxS card. Because MatrixStore keeps that digest/fingerprint as metadata with the content we are able to automatically, periodically and systematically (insert line from Grease here) ensure the content on disk matches the digest kept with it. Forever.. and ever.

• Secure Protection - MatrixStore provides the option to keep content in vaults that can have retention periods set upon them. No deletion or modification before the retention date. End of. This helps not only for the long term retention of content but also as a highly secure ingest vault for rushes/dailies coming into the post process. Set a one month retention policy on an ingest vault and that content will be secure from the accidents that do tend to happen.

• Searchable Metadata – “If you can’t find it you don’t have it”. DropSpot harvests metadata contained within the P2 (and other formats) media and creates a searchable rushes (dailies) repository allowing producers or editors to find and retrieve clips in an instant.

• Making use of the content – Now that the data is online and protected at the highest levels you can now access the data. Using either DropSpot or MxFS from any authenticated client content can be copied to and from the archive or can be accessed from within applications like Media Composer or Final Cut Pro. Using MxFS, The MatrixStore is perfect to provide quick access to content to browse or perform a quick edit before working ‘online’.

The View from OM

There is currently no de-facto standard or best practice defined for the safe ingest of tapeless content. The MatrixStore offers the ability to provide guaranteed ingest coupled with an audit trail from ingest through to archive in AVID and Final Cut Workflows.

During BVE last week I spent time chatting with Larry Jordan for the ‘The Digital Production Buzz’ podcast talking about:

• The two maxims .. now three…
• Highly secure protection of file-based rushes/dailies
• MatrixStore as nearline or parking space
• Keeping legacy assets online in order to re-use or re-purpose

We also touched on the integrations with CatDV/Final Cut Server and disk based archiving in general.

Click on the image to to to the website:

Larry  is an internationally-renowned consultant and Apple-Certified trainer in digital media with over 25 years experience as a television producer, director and editor with national broadcast and corporate credits. Based on Los Angeles, he’s a member of both the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America. Jordan is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Edit Well, the rich-media newsletter for Final Cut Studio, published by Peachpit Press. He is the author of hundreds of hours of online training, published by Lynda.com and two books on Final Cut Pro, published by Peachpit Press. Visit his website at www.larryjordan.biz.

The View From OM

I would like to thank Larry for once again giving us the opportunity to talk about MatrixStore and it position in video workflow. I will post about other nice stuff at BVE in another post.

So that’s what we did. We built security and compliance functionality into MatrixStore from day one. I would like to state now (in the way one of our percieved competitors seems to do quite often .. wow .. geee, aren’t we the bees knees, woot!) that it was our incredible foresight that saw this functionality being 100% applicable to the media and entertainment space… yeehaa. However, the reality is that as a talented team of geekoids we decided to build Rome (compliance, distributed search, seamless scaling, replication .. yada yada yada) and wait to people to come and buy it. If you build it they will come?

Anyway, back to the point of this blog post. How is it that the functionality (included free don’t you know) built for the protection of cheque images and MRI scans is applicable to companies with video workflows or legacy assets? I have covered some of the key points below and at the bottom of this post is a 2 pager on how MatrixStore helps with organisations under the regulatory cosh.

Authenticity

Producers, Facility managers want to know the content that has come off the camera and going into post is authentic. Guaranteed. MatrixStore generates a hash (digest, digital fingerprint) of the content on the client and also on the two MatrixStore nodes the content lands on. Three different places where the content is checked ensuring the content in MatrixStore is bit for bit the same as came off the P2 or SxS card.

Because MatrixStore keeps that digest/fingerprint as metadata with the content we are able to automatically, periodically and systematically (insert line from Grease here) ensure the content on disk matches the digest kept with it. Forever.. and ever.

Retention

Generating video content and adopting creative workflows is no longer restricted to post-production facilities or broadcasters. There is a bucket load of content being generated daily within heavily regulated industries. Hospitals, banks, police forces, utility companies. All producing video and some of them required to adhere to regulations around the retention and authenticity of that video content. Banks for instance may face FSA regulations that require content to be kept protected and available for 1 year from creation. Another factor is that a lot of these organisations are managing the creative process in-house which means they are turning to video workflow solutions over the less appropriate IT based tools. Solutions integrated into those workflows will win.

MatrixStore provides the option to keep content in vaults that can have retention periods set upon them. No deletion or modification before the retention date. End of. This helps not only for the long term retention of content but also as a highly secure ingest vault for rushes/dailies coming into the post process. Set a one month retention policy on an ingest vault and that content will be secure from the accidents that do tend to happen.

Mind you, ask most content owners how long they want to keep their completed works for and the answer will be forever. Good recurring support revenue/business if you can get it.

Access & Availabilty

Not providing an email for a court case has cost some companies a pretty penny. Broadcast or post facilities not being able to serve up content in a timely fashion can be equally costly. Data on demand is key functionality even if components fail.

Find is also key here, the magical eDiscovery. If you can’t find it, you don’t have it (Maxim no. 2). Metadata coupled closely to the content is very important if you are going to stand a hope of getting the proverbial needle out of the 500TB haystack. MatrixStore has that covered.

Equally important is restricting access to content from those who are not authorised to do so. MatrixStore allows content to be kept in vaults that can only be accessed by personnel who have the correct security credentials. Whilst using the same underlying hardware the vaults are completely distinct.

Auditing and Governance

Being able to provide a full audit trail of the actions performed upon a piece of content is crucial in the world of regulations and is also a nice feature for organisations with video workflow (and can actually be very useful where elements of the workflow require repeatable results). MatrixStore provides a built-in full audit trail of all actions, both management and data operations, performed against a MatrixStore cluster. Who archived the content? Who deleted the content? Who TRIED to delete the content? Who retrieved the content and put it on YouTube just before it was officially released? That sort of useful.

The view From OM

Organisations across the globe that are subsiduaries of US companies are pretty much tied to keep in line with US regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley. Even if video data is not a concern of Sarbanes Oxley the internal compliance departments within organisations tend to want all business data treated the same. It has to be protected, authentic and available when required.

We have provided this functionality as part of the solution, at no extra license or cost. As it should be. here is the sheet for your perusal: