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Snell & Wilcox and TransMedia Dynamics deliver digital content ingest and management based on MXF

BBC One Vision and the UK’s Channel 4 become the first customers for integrated solution

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Hampshire, England, May 12 – Snell & Wilcox and TransMedia Dynamics have announced a new partnership which combines two separate products to create a powerful and standards-compliant ingest and management solution for digital content.

This couples the Snell & Wilcox Ingest Station with TMD’s Mediaflex management system to provide broadcasters and media-centric companies with the ability not just to ingest and digitize media in a variety of formats, but to manage both the process and the resulting files as part of a wider digital workflow.

An important aspect of the integration is its support for, and use of, the emerging MXF file and metadata format, which much of the industry is in the process of adopting for exchange of digital media.

This MXF support was a factor in the decision of two of the UK’s leading broadcasters, the BBC and Channel 4, to select the Ingest Station/Mediaflex integration for their very different requirements.

The BBC has chosen the Ingest Station/Mediaflex integration as part of pilot deployment within One Vision, the BBC’s pioneering technology project designed to implement a tapeless environment which will streamline production, encourage collaborative working and allow flexible delivery of content across a variety of delivery channels.  The BBC One Vision design incorporates a central repository, codenamed Atlas, within which the Ingest Station/Mediaflex integration will provide ingest, cataloguing and playout capabilities.

Channel 4 will use the Ingest Station/Mediaflex integration to secure the future of their archive, much of which is currently on 1” videotape. The content on these tapes will be ingested, digitized and stored onto LTO data tapes in MXF format, with metadata being recorded in the MXF file wrapper. The process will be largely automated with minimal operator intervention, and is aimed both at securing Channel 4’s program heritage, and allowing future and as yet unspecified exploitation of the program material.

“We believe that the Ingest Station/Mediaflex integration is one of the first practical implementations of MXF to be found anywhere,” says Simon Derry, Snell & Wilcox’s Chief Executive. “It is a strong indicator that MXF, which we and others spent so much effort defining and implementing, is really beginning to catch on.”

Tony Taylor, Chairman of Transmedia Dynamics, adds “This development is fully in line with our philosophy of creating systems which combine best-of-breed functionality with full interoperability. MXF helps us deliver a fully integrated production and media management environment, within which digital content can be efficiently and creatively created and delivered in ways to suit all possible business models.”

Snell & Wilcox recently announced that at NAB 2004 it will release a free set of software developer tools, MXF Express, designed to help broadcasters and equipment vendors ensure interoperability among file-sharing products and systems. It will also release MXF Desktop, a free software-based MXF file player that will bring MXF compatibility to any Windows PC desktop.
 

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SNELL & WILCOX is a world-leading electronics design, manufacture and engineering group with an international reputation for the development of advanced image communications technologies for the world’s broadcast television, video, satellite, cable, film and image communications industries. The company is dedicated to preserving the true content of the moving video image. Snell & Wilcox Inc. has offices throughout the United States and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Snell & Wilcox Ltd. is based in Hampshire, England with offices all over the world.

Americas’ Press Contact: Robin Hoffman, Pipeline Communications, 277 Valley Way, Montclair, New Jersey. Phone: 973-746-6970, Fax: 973-746-6701 or Email: robinh@pipecomm.com.

International Press Contact: Karen David, Wall Street Communications Europe, River House, 54 Bardwell Road, Oxford OX2 6ST Tel 01865 512662. Email: karen@wallstreetcom.tv.