At NAB 2014, on booth SU8505 AmberFin, a leading developer of file-based media ingest, transcoding and quality control solutions for owners, broadcasters, sports organizations and post-production houses, will unveil version 10 of its iCR (intelligent Content Re-Purposing) software platform. Billed as the company’s most significant software advance in terms of ‘real world features and functionality’, version 10 includes new enterprise class-features which lead the market in terms of picture quality, media file format support and cost-efficiency.
Making its North American debut at NAB, the new iCR Transcode Farm Controller functionality builds on AmberFin’s market leading multi-format transcode capabilities. It significantly increases the flexibility and versatility of a multi-node transcode environment, bringing improved resilience and robustness whilst simultaneously offering cost savings through more versatile network licensing capabilities.
The iCR platform makes intelligent use of a media facility’s resources, while making complicated workflows simple to operate for the end user. Visitors to the AmberFin booth (SU8505) will see how the iCR platform's enterprise class features can increase efficiency and profitability throughout a media facility's operation.
Transcode Farm Controller
In today’s increasingly file-based media workflows, file transcode operations have assumed critical importance. With media facilities both receiving and distributing content as media files, an efficient Transcode Farm Controller is essential. With the new iCR Transcode Farm Controller the transcode segment of the workflow is scalable, provides an appropriate level of redundancy to suit a specific application and enables a combination of high throughput and advanced system functionality.
The new iCR Transcode Farm Controller works by providing a single, reliable, redundant interface to the iCR Transcode capabilities. Jobs are sent to the iCR Controller and behind the scenes the system architecture is sized to achieve the required levels of redundancy and throughput required by that particular application. By combining the Farm Controller with AmberFin’s Network Licensing Server an even larger scale model can be created with pools of transcode nodes that can dynamically float across the underlying server hardware and no longer require fixed node-to-server relationships. This achieves even greater levels of redundancy and operational efficiency over a large-scale transcode network through efficient use of available hardware nodes, irrespective of node fall out at any given time.
The combination of the Transcode Farm Controller and Network License Server adds a third dimension in terms of enhanced network functionality. It provides floating software licenses for occasional functions, such as adaptive cadence correction, standards conversion, captioning, Dolby, audio processing and watermarking.
“Thanks to the versatility of the iCR platform, we can reflect the different configurations of Trancode Farm that users want from a single node proof of concept right through to a multi-node Transcode Farm with complete redundancy using the same approach,” commented Jeremy Deaner, Chief Executive Officer at AmberFin. “When you compare a 10-node iCR Farm with that of our main competitors, we can provide better picture quality and wider format selection at a very competitive price, which is important in today’s market.”
About AmberFin
AmberFin’s business is intelligent media conversion, solving file-based workflow challenges for broadcasters, sports organizations, post-production houses and other media content owners. Scalable, agile and efficient, the Amberfin iCR (intelligent Content Re-Purposing) Platform brings true innovation and cost-effectiveness to the demands of multi-platform delivery, enabling the industry to deal with high volumes and true-to-source high quality pictures at the same time, all with exclusive slim-file technology.
Unique to the iCR Platform, AmberFin’s industry leading approach to Quality Control, known as Unified Quality Control (UQC), introduces a QC mark that brings a new level of trust to media assets. UQC uniquely combines, automated processes that integrate third party verification tools with a human touch, enabling more efficient and effective decision-making and new levels of confidence in the file creation and transformation processes. AmberFin continues to experience market growth thanks to hundreds of iCR systems being deployed worldwide. Systems that are trusted where quality matters by some of the world’s leading media organizations including Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Turner Broadcasting, Canal+, ITV, ZDF, NRK, Nine Network Australia, Discovery and National Geographic. To follow the latest innovations in Broadcast-IT workflow technologies visit blog.amberfin.com