At IBC 2011 (stand 7.J15) AmberFin, a leading developer of file-based media ingest and transcoding solutions for content owners, broadcasters, sports organizations and post-production houses, today announces co-operation with London-based broadcast facility, TVT, that sees the company’s new Unified Quality Control (UQC) features and functionality integrated within TVT’s file-based workflow. The facility is contributing to on-going beta testing of this innovative file-based quality control solution.

Established in 1994, TVT offers versioning, localisation and media supply services: in 2008, it built a pioneering end-to-end file based facility which hosts edit suites, audio suites, ingest, dubbing, transcode, delivery and storage facilities. This new facility operates within a tapeless, file-based production environment and this is where AmberFin’s iCR file-based media ingest and transcoding solution adds most value to TVT’s operations.
UQC offers a unique approach to quality control combining multiple tools for baseband checks during tape ingest, file-based QC after ingest, and overall operator-controlled QC, including annotation and mark-up. TVT’s managing director, Kim Thesiger, believes that UQC delivers the promise of significant new efficiencies for facilities like his. “Like all companies, we are starting to receive a significant percentage of master material as files rather than tapes, so having a reliable, easy to use file QC solution is extremely important. Having a unified interface for tape and file QC is also important from a training perspective. Finally, we’re also planning to use AmberFin UQC to auto-QC outgoing Playout and VoD files to ensure that transcoding glitches and file copy errors are caught before the file reaches the client.”

TVT sees AmberFin iCR’s core value coming from it being an integrated solution, capable of producing high quality product with a good user interface that technicians find straightforward and intuitive.
“Like any media factory, efficiency is a key requirement for us,” commented Thesiger. “We integrate AmberFin iCR throughout our operations and it creates significantly increased efficiency in our operations. Our aim is to streamline our entire workflow so we have gone even further and automated ingest operations using iCR. We are very happy to contribute to the system’s development and evolution as this will benefit us as much as the entire industry.”

AmberFin believes that the active participation of companies such as TVT is invaluable in developing its system’s capabilities. “We rely heavily on customer feedback in developing iCR’s functionality and TVT is one of our longest standing and most progressive customers so we are delighted to have them assist us in fine tuning UQC’s operating features,” commented Bruce Devlin, Chief Technology Officer at AmberFin. “Brainstorming with the folks of TVT has allowed us to refine the capabilities of the UQC system to deliver great business value to customers ready to buy at IBC.”

About TVT:

Between programme planning and playout, TVT provide all the components to build channels: sourcing tapes and scripts, ingesting and transcoding, complying, editing, subtitling, translating and then sending off by fibre optic. TVT is an automated engine room that SD and HD channels flow out of, day after day, to schedule.

Its Chiswick facility was created from the bottom up as a tapeless environment, for flexibility and for cost effective control, to act as a single integrated system. So from the moment a programme is scheduled, a trackable process takes place to a predetermined timetable, until that programme joins hundreds on the conveyor belt awaiting transmission.

About AmberFin

AmberFin is a company at the heart of solving file-based workflow problems for content owners, broadcasters, sports organizations and post-production houses. The AmberFin Media Factory, based on the iCR family of modular software products, digitizes and transforms new and archived content, combining a service oriented design philosophy with intelligent use of cost-effective generic IT. This enables customers to save time, increase revenues and grow in-line with business demands.

Unique to the Media Factory system, AmberFin’s industry first 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 an automated process with a human touch, enabling more efficient and effective decision-making and new levels of confidence in the file creation and transformation processes.
AmberFin has experienced growth of 90% in the last year 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, NBA, Turner Broadcasting, ZDF, NRK, National Geographic, BT, Discovery and Warner Brothers.