NETIA Unveils Radio-Assist™ 8.0 Digital Audio Software
NETIA is introducing its Radio-Assist™ 8.0 range of digital audio automation software at the 2009 NAB Show. Equipped with a broad range of tools for end-to-end multimedia workflows, the newest version of NETIA’s acclaimed software suite now extends beyond traditional broadcasting by:

• Allowing users to prepare publication at an early stage of the workflow. Publication is prepared at the same level as the on-air thanks to new planning tools.
• Integration with NETIA’s Media Asset Management system for all media – video, images, texts, and audio.
• Offering an automatic publishing engine for all media as well as managing associated metadata and linked media.

Radio-Assist 8.0 gives instant access to all types of media, archived or online. Regardless of the storage medium, items can be previewed and restored for repurposing and distribution, both for broadcasting and for multi-platform distribution.

By interfacing with NETIA’s Media Asset Management system, Radio-Assist 8.0 also responds efficiently to the needs of media groups having to manage and share video, audio, images, and text throughout their entities.

Radio-Assist 8.0 makes three different types of publishing available to users. With the software’s new “Publication” tab, journalists can publish only audio content and its metadata; publish audio and associated media, such as video, text, or images; or prepare a group of items for automatic conversion and publishing to an array of destinations, such as a podcast, posting on the Internet, or delivery to mobile devices.

NETIA’s Radio-Assist family of digital audio software programs covers each part of the production and broadcast workflow, allowing users to record, edit, or prepare a playlist. In addition to new browse and publishing tools for full multimedia functionality, the software features tools for acquisition, sound-file editing, commercial and music production, newsroom systems, scheduling, multicasting, administration, and more.

Manreo™
At the 2009 NAB Show, NETIA will highlight its Manreo™ software family, designed to maximize productivity gains in media asset management and use of rich media, which can then be repurposed and published to multiple platforms including mobile devices. At the heart of Manreo is an archiving tool that interfaces with a wide range of production, automation/playout, and storage and ingest systems for efficient handling of video, audio, images, and text with support for all industry-standard formats (MXF, XDCam, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, .wmv).

Manreo ingests content in high resolution and converts it automatically to a low-resolution proxy used to index the video and its content. Speech-to-text functionality further enriches the media by turning dialog into searchable text. Manreo’s Warehouse Web module provides easy access to media, allowing operators to share and preview content through a convenient Web-based interface.

By restoring required high-resolution files to editing systems, such as Avid®, or to playout systems, Manreo simplifies production and repurposing of stored media. Manreo also supports automated transcoding and publishing of media and metadata to the Internet, VOD, mobile services, and IPTV. An integrated monitoring tool updates the operator as to the status of the restoration, transcoding to the appropriate format, and publishing of media to the target platform.

Warehouse Web 2.0
The company will highlight its Warehouse Web Version 2.0 audio and video broadcast and display platform that can provide new services and revenue opportunities for Manreo™ users. This full-featured software solution provides companies with a system for centralizing, sharing, and viewing audio, image, and video archives, and broadcasting them across multiple distribution channels (Web portals, mobile devices, ADSL, etc.). Because Warehouse Web 2.0 has been developed using the REST (Representational State Transfer) architecture and includes Xml Web Services, it now offers up to four easy-to-use interfaces, making it more ergonomic and powerful.

Warehouse Web’s Catalog Interface offers Manreo users a global view of all files and metadata, along with more powerful searches. The Terminology Interface manages the Thesaurus and allows users to add, delete, and modify words and interaction between words. The Media Interface manages the storage of both audio and video files. Using this interface, users can view various files and file format support. Finally, Warehouse Web’s Monitoring Interface lets the user track file conversion and publishing workflows to various platforms including mobile phones.

Manreo™ Video Recorder Module
The video recorder module within the Manreo™ suite is used to acquire and digitize videos from tape. With functionality including start, stop, forward, rewind, etc., Manreo Video Recorder controls the VTR and launches the acquisition and digitization (MPEG-2 with MainConcept) process. For TV stations and other media companies with large stores of tape-based archives, Manreo Video Recorder enables migration to lossless and more secure digital storage.

The migration of media libraries to digital is critical to preserving media, but it also can be a very demanding process. This latest addition to the Manreo product line uses the RS-232 and RS-422 protocol to control external VTRs and allows users to connect a jog/shuttle control via USB port for easy navigation. The operator can watch video as the media is being digitized; plus, in and out points can be marked to create a clip or even a new video, produced automatically from a series of marked segments.

Media Logging™
The company will also showcase its Media Logging™ family at the show. This range of solutions meets the increased worldwide demand for radio and TV monitoring systems by carrying out the capture, indexing, transcoding, and distribution of audio and video content. Broadcasters, telecom and mobile phone operators, and Internet companies use Media Logging for continuous capture of video and audio files, 24 hours a day. Each file is examined individually, segmented, and completed with the necessary associated metadata – in an automatic or semi-automatic mode – through the use of sophisticated new speech-to-text and image recognition techniques.

OpenNET

U-Share
NETIA’s U-Share network management system, as part of the company’s OpenNet Range, has been integrated into Radio-Assist™ to simplify the distribution of audio content from one site to multiple destination sites. U-Share can also be used by television stations and telcos.

U-Share automates the exchange of content over the latest transmission platforms – IP transport or DVB video transport – for easy management of content distribution to the right place, at the right time. Other content exchanges can be organized according to priority with flexible options for setting and modifying transmission schedules. U-Share optimizes the exchange of video and audio content through autonomous and automatic management of its transport network. For each transfer request in a given time slot, U-Share offers the best solution for the current network congestion, thus considerably reducing transfer costs.

NodalMaster
Also as part of the OpenNet Range, Netia will be highlighting its Nodal Master full-featured software solution for controlling all the routing and processing equipment in a nodal suite, from audio and video program schedules to audio and video tuning equipment, monitoring devices, etc. NodalMaster provides users with a single interface for controlling all this equipment while enabling them to make links or switching from any source to any target.

IP Recorder and IP Player Modules
In the spotlight at the 2009 NAB Show are NETIA’s new IP Recorder and IP Player modules for OpenNET. These two new software modules allow OpenNET users to simplify the acquisition and distribution of IP-based content.

The IP Recorder and IP Player modules reduce the complexity of taking SDI video from the camera to editing by eliminating the need for a video server. A simple file server and a facility’s existing architecture can instead be leveraged for acquisition and delivery of digital video. The IP Recorder streamlines acquisition of SDI content, accepting the encoded IP stream and delivering media to the file server, where it is available for editing, archiving, and autoindexation. The elimination of the video recorder, video grid, and video encoder reduces overall costs and supports a fast, completely digital workflow with more timely delivery of rushes and replays of live content with delay. A simple computer system can be used for review and quality control.