Hello and welcome to the Avid Workflows with EMA and an NLT webinar.
My name is Chuck Blo.I'm the VP of business development here at EM.
Joining us today is Anno Thomas,director of technologies at EMA,
and Jim McKean,president of EL Technologies.
In today's webinar,we'll be discussing the new integration with NLT near Archive
and Media Transcoder platform,
creating a seamless media and metadata workflow
with avid interplay in Avid iNews.
EMA has entered into a strategic partnership with EL Technologies
to advance and enhance
the avid workflows in Emam.
EMA is a media asset management software that helps centralize,
organize,share,
and distribute all types of media and metadata.
This new integration helps streamline and sharing of media and metadata
between EMA and the Avid platform.
A new Thomas will now talk about the integration in more detail.
Thank you,Chuck.
With the integrated system,
we can index media and metadata from Interplay into EMA.
Once the media is indexed,
uh,users can browse the Avid OPMed directly from the
Imam interface.
And trigger the wrap or trans code options from the Imam user interface.
Imam can also
share and distribute
the media to S3 buckets.
Network locations and other systems like a Premiere and Resolve.
Another workflow is to ingest or check in the non avid media
to interply.
To transfer media and metadata from the avid environment
we use ELty Narca as the middleware.
NLT is capable of uh scanning stories from I news
and processing the associated media,not,not just uh interfacing with Interplay,it can also interface with the I news.
Here is a high level diagram showing the flow.
Imam receives the metadata XML,the original media,
H2264 MP for proxies.
And a thumbnail
from Eel the archive.
Then Iam creates the asset
based on the information provided in the XML.
In the reverse workflow,
um,Imam hand over the media to the NLT media transcoder.
That is a separate product from NLT.
Which then check in the media to interplay.
If the ace acety mum originated from the avid environment,
we retain the Modi in the system.
For non-navid media like camera rorous,etc.
this process involves transcoding to create a mix of Oia media.
Now,we will demo the product features from this lab set up.
We have an imam running from an easy to instance in Mumbai.
And the imam up node running from a physical server in the NLT lab in Boston.
Additionally,we have Interplay I News,uh,avid storage,um,
NLT Media Transcorder,
and Imam storage,which is a NS,
running from
the Boston office.
I will now invite Jim to demonstrate uh NLT the archive and media transcorder.
And their integration with the uh Avid Interplay I News and uh Media Central.
After that,
I will showcase the imam interface uh
the gym,uh,the floor is uh yours.
OK.
Can you see the uh EM screen?
Yes,we can.
So,this is interplay access.So this is an avid tool.
Uh,you may or may not be familiar with it.Um,we have
some clips in here and we can just select a couple clips.
And right click,and we should have the plug-in.So this is an extension to the right click menu in the Avid tools.
We use the Avid tools for the interface to the user,so the
customers already familiar with these tools
and uh to access our archive,we simply enhance the right click to allow that.
So there are two entries,uh,the services and the management console.
So I'm gonna start with the services.What it does is it says,OK,you've selected two assets
and you want to go to a target server,so we're gonna select this one to begin with.Uh yeah,let's do that one.
So this stores
Content or we can restore the content.So if these were offline we could restore from the archive and bring the content back online.
In this case,we can store it so I'll just put a little comment down here.
And we hit OK.So this should send a job to the
to the uh near archive engine that's running
and it would be processed and uh
and retrieved.
Now,the,the management is a web interface,
and the management interface should show you the um
the job interfaces,and I gotta get to a
Proceed unsafe state.
So these are the jobs on this particular server that were submitted.
And you can see that
this was a restore operation and the master clip was partially restored
and the sub clip was restored.So this is a partial file restore operation.
Um,
but basically when you submit a job,
the nearer archive engine picks it up and performs the operation,whether it's either going to store content
to the external storage via NAS or something like that,
or restore content from the external storage back into Interplay.
So this is kind of the job interface.So after you submit a job to it,
this is where you would see the status.
Um,
So,once the content is written there,
now we had uh
Some demo clips on here.
On the
E drive,I believe.
So these files are written.
To a folder structure
and the folder structure is what EOAs
picked up and he's picked up the the data portions,the MXF files
and the XML files,
and so
this is the XML file that you're importing.
And it contains all of the metadata that we've taken out of interplay.
So this is all the media files,the formats,their locations,
all the metadata that describes the asset,all of the
um
Duration,
creation dates,
basically everything that's an interplay,
the associations,the sequences,
um,all of that is in this XML file.
So NOPA has taken this and imported it into EMam that can describe that asset.
Basically read the OP atoms and I think are making an OP1A
and maybe using this MP4 file,which is a proxy video of the asset.
And putting that into email.
So this is the system configurations,and these are pretty much static configurations that a system manager would set up.
But one of the options is integration into
INews.
And the the I news server,
um,
Has a portal that uses the iNews web services,which is a kind of a third party definition for how to access it.And so those web services are running on this computer on this particular port,
and we can test that and we can,OK,we can talk to the web services.
And then
To talk to the iNews server itself,
we passed the host name through the web services,so there's like a double hop going on here.
So when we test this integration,
OK,it's able to talk to the iNews,it's got its IP back
and everything passed.
So what we've done is once the configuration is set up that you can talk to INews,you can actually go out here
and look at all of the INews folders and cues.
So,
here we have wires.
I think I've been playing around with the show,I believe.
And I've made a a folder called Emam Demo,
and here are two different uh cues with uh I've been trying to get some stories in them.
But we can select this whole folder
or I've already selected
the 5 o'clock and the 11 o'clock
um.
A rundown queues.
So,you can select them individually or you can select the whole
um
the whole folder's worth of rundown queues.
And you can go down here and enable the different metadata that's going to come out of
INews as well.So we can import the story ID,the slug,that they,the,
the story body is important.
So all the content that's put into iNews as far as the story description.
We
can pull that out and,
and archive that as well.
So once this is all configured,
You set up different
schedules so I can say,OK,at
7 p.m. I want to,
you know,on a Sunday,or
maybe every day I want to do this.
I set up a time where I want to query the I new server.
So anything that's changed since the last time this has run,
and we can set up another query for midnight if we wanted to.
So this query would run at midnight.This would run at 7 p.m.
and
it would take any changes that were made in iNews from the last time it ran
based on
the folders and cues that you have selected and the metadata that you want to pull out.
So again,this is set up pretty statically.
Um,
once you have the,the shows and the cues defined and the metadata defined with the schedule.
The new archive server just automatically goes out based on that schedule in queries I news,
pulls the content back.
Well,basically it creates a job just like you manually,we manually selected a couple of assets and said
send these to the archive.
It would go out and query INews and create a job
that would just execute,
so that would store all of the content that it found that had changed since the last time.
And so that's,that's kind of the definition.
Um,
the user would use the INews client,
uh,it's already running,so I new clients,the user would use the INews client,for example.
These are the the stories that I've been working on.
And so a customer would use this,this interface to build the stories
um
that then we,we would archive once they ran.
And so that's,that's kind of what's going on with I news.
We have a um
Another integration with Media Central.
I showed you Interplay Access and I've showed you using Chrome as a just a browser to access the status of what's going on with
um.
In the archive uh application.
But we've also integrated into.
Media Central.
And this integration provides more of an integrated approach
to
managing all of that put together so we can navigate to catalogs.
Um,
go back to Emory I could right click
and go to the new archive services again this is all integrated in here so I could send this to
different servers,
but the,the web interface is up here
so we can go and let's pick right and see because the other one's not working.
We can see an integrated approach so everything is presented
to the user right here
so I can.
I can have a browsing with catalogs or I can,I can look at my different jobs.
And see what's going on.
And so that's the integration with Media Central.
We've begin implemented that right click with the browsing feature
and we've integrated an application that lets us query the
web server that's running on the the archive server to say what's going on?I've submitted some,
some assets to be archived or restored.
This is the progress of what's going on.Were there any errors?Is it still right into tape?It'll show you all that information.
So again,all these settings are are kind of system management level
configurations.The user would not be in any of this.
This is where the uh
the integration into Avid Web Services and then this is the avid storage,the host name of the avid storage,the workspace.
So this is basically
defining a
place where we can restore content
if the original workspace no longer exists.
So think of this as an archive and workspace names in the avid environment can change based upon
System managers changing roles or whatever.Maybe they've got a new piece of hardware they brought in and they've developed
a different workspace name.Well,when we archive content,we save the original
workspace that it came from,
so we always try to restore it.
Exactly where it came from.
But if that workspace is not available,
this definition provides a current
alternate location where it would be restored to if the original
no longer existed.
Or you notice there's a restore over
override button.
In that case,any restores,we would use these paths to restore the high revs or proxy.
To a given workspace.
That's the integration here.
And in this case,
instead of sending the file to LTO,
the new archive is placing the files in that e tribe.
That that can be the NSS and uh or any other shared storage location.
So we built the integration at that level.
So we look for that location.It's configured here
periodically and if there is a change,if there is a new XML present,
we take that one
and then uh uh at that point,we are actually not doing any transcoding or anything.We just index the media like we index the OP atom media.
Uh,IEA
and uh then uh we use that proxy provided by,uh,again,there is a proxy file and the thumbnail provided by the archive.
So we load that uh proxy into EMA and that proxy goes to the cloud.
And uh from there you can directly access that location,that archive location uh from the browse interface,browse interface,
and then you can trigger the delivery.So if you do a trigger the delivery
at that time,
we do a wrap job
and wrap it as OP1A and uh
uh send it to the
other systems like external systems other than it.
Then the opposite workflow,
uh,
suppose if there is a GoPro footages or files are coming from other systems like ENBS or Octopus or whatever other new systems or other sources,
we send that media to uh the media transcoder,that's a separate product,
and then the media transcorder can check in that to the uh the environment.
So if you're just going to receive an OP1A type file,what we have is a
A watch folder that was designed to just read OP1A media and rewrap it,
which happens very,very fast.
So we have a watch folder that we've defined
on either
a network share or a local drive.
Um,and then we've defined
where we want the content to go on the avid side,
so the OP atoms are placed in this folder.
And then a check-in folder where we've to find the
uh where the media is going to be checked into and if we want to change that folder,we can
just select a different folder.So all of this is coming right out of
um the interplay database in real time.
So we can select a different target.We can create a new folder for a target.
Um,but this is the check-in folder.This is where the storage is
defined for the OP OP Adam,
and this is the watch folder where the OP1As would be dropped.
And we also have another,
another watch folder where we can take
uh GoPro or MP4 files or what have you.It's a very similar.
Uh,
type of definition,
except that it has the capability to
uh not only uh watch for a folder,but to transcode it to a specific target.
So if it comes in H264 in an MTS or MP4 file,
we can say,OK,well,the house format is XDC 50
and we're going to create XDC 50 media from that original source
and put it in the respective
check-in and storage locations on the avid storage land.
So there's a couple of different ones that we have to find here.
Um,
we have the capability to find uh multiple workflow engines to have
different watch folders,so you could have one for sports that went into a
sports ingest,you could have one for,
you know,dailies,you could have one for news,you could
basically design
as many of these as you wanted to have.
OK,so then uh let me take out and show the,uh the,the view from the imam side.Uh,give me one second.
OK,
um,here is the Imam,uh,director interface.
Uh,in the browse budget,
uh,there are options available to browse uh different storage types.
Um,as we are
indexing the media from the avid environment.
The storage will be listed under the
uh source storage.
When I go to
NLT,
this is something
I am browsing,
um,in our storage.
You can go to assets,uh,maybe 400.
And then I can,
I can see an asset of,uh,inside that location.
So,in this case,I'm uh previewing the H26 or MP4 proxy video
um
that exists in a history bucket in Mumbai and also I'm uh
Uh,
Getting the thumbnail from the
uh NLT environment,but the original media that exist in this uh
uh NS location in Boston.
Let me connect to the
uh
team you are,
so now I'm,I'm in the um.
The TV are connected to the up node in Boston.
So let me go to the
uh this location and um
so again this is that NS,so I'm just browsing that NAS storage.
I it's um 400.
And uh yeah,the these uh location,the files are like this one there are.
Um,multiple mics of files,um,
um,XML files,and so on,
but we are mainly scanning this folder
and indexing that in the Imam system.
So if you look at this XML,there is uh
uh the name of the file coming in
the interplay source path and all other informations are there locators and all other information.
We are taking from this XML
like modified it and uh the master clip details,the,
the mobileD and all those things we are taking from this XML.
And uh showing that in the uh
the imam system.So if you look at the metadata.
So there is a basic metadata.This whole information is coming from that XML.There are embedded metadata,as you can see this is an OP at Mexa file
exists in that location.
And the
And then there is also a related metadata like um MoD and source MoD and so on and also the file path,
the locators are coming from that system from interplay.
And uh now this proxy is connecting to that original media
that exists in the uh the storage in Boston.
And another view,let me quickly go to the,
um,again,now I'm in the up not in Boston,so let me just uh sign into the Media Central.
So again there is an option to sign into the Media Central or
uh the interplay
so you can
see from here,
so there is uh catalogs,
gym,
demo,uh,all those things are there,right?The XDC 1080.So all these um.
Uh,
details are available here and of course you can browse the same thing through,uh,here.
And um
that that information is available here too.
So now if you look at EMA.
Uh,we have the,the same structure,so if you let me just maybe go to the the search filter across the project.
Tore,
catalogs,gym.
See that,that entire structure is available in.So if you click on here,
so you can see the
uh
the same
view.
Uh,here too,like,um,
so there is a.
Uh,again,I can adjust the sort option and all those things here,and that's the identical view.
Uh,but you can
see it in,
in the,uh,interplay.
So if you.
Uh,do a side to side comparison,
so this is.
Very identical.
So that means we,we are indexing all the media and uh
um
in this case,both interplay is pointing to the media in Boston and um um what what I'm seeing in the EMA interface is just a proxy.
That is also pointing to the the media uh in Boston.
So now if you,if you need to trigger a delivery workflow,I can change my
workspace here.
So I can select um maybe one of these um
uh files from here.
OK,let me go to.
One of these files from this location.
And then I can just um
track and drop that into my
delivery.
And uh
so then I have multiple options like I either I can
um wrap everything to an OP1A,uh,like a consolidate that uh OP atom into OP1A,
or I can transcode and create that XD 50 or or or some kind of a destination format.
And I'm going to add that to the uh.
The delivery queue.So in this case,if I go to my dashboard.
So there is one item chewed,and that is processing.
So now the app node in uh Boston is going to pick up that job.
And it's going to deliver that file to this,uh,this fold of the delivery,as you can see,the,the file is appeared here.
And it is creating new files.
And uh
so that.
File,
if you look at the media info.
This one is a a wrapped file.It's a consolidated and uh OP1AXF.
With um
multiple audio tracks,uh,like there is uh audio track 1,
audio track 2345678,and so on.
So that is a consolidated file.
So in this way,
we can take
an avid OP active file.
And consolidate or runs good.
And uh push that to uh other locations.So this is again a distributed hybrid architecture,
um,and managing that delivery workflow from a web user interface.
The actual job is,uh,carried out by the,
the app node,uh,
running here.
That app node is again we got a lot of background services for managing the ingest
the.
Cloud connectors,uh,the delivery manager and arca manager and uh and task manager
and so on.
So then the reverse workflow,
uh,suppose if I have uh the uh the imam system
and I have the.
Uh,the files may be in a bucket or other location.These are the non-avid media.
So these files may be uh coming from uh.
Uh,
camera or,uh,
GoPro or some other sources.
Let me go back to the cloud storage again.OK.
So now if I need to send this media
to Interplay,
what I should do so I can
track and drop the similar,it's a similar workflow,but,uh,earlier I
delivered a media from the Interplay to the uh the other network,uh,storage location.
In this case,I'm delivering a media that exists in S3.
Uh,to the,
uh,interplay,
and,um,so in this case,I'm going to,
uh,trigger the delivery.OK,
before triggering the delivery,let me just show you what is going to happen behind the scenes.
So,
uh.
The up node
um is going to pick up that job.
And
then.
It hand over that file
to uh the.
Media transcoder.
So the media transcorder is again an NLT product,
and in the media transcoder.
Um,
It is looking for the media coming to this location.
And then it is creating an XP 50 OP atom,
and then it is
checking to the interplay to the EA inest folder.So that is the,the,the overall workflow,
which I'm going to trigger it from the uh imam system.
So
from the imam I'm going to click on uh deliver
and in this case um I'm going to select the option uh send to interply to trigger that workflow.
And now the job is added.If you go to the dashboard,you can track that job from the imam dashboard.
And also,
if you come here,
that job is going to appear here in the media transcorder.
And then
eventually,
so that the job is appeared here the progress is 0%,it's progressing now.
And now if you go to the
uh the media central and go to the incoming media
and I mean just that
that's already showing up here,but now there is no media
and also if you look at uh here in the incoming media,
so the file uh now it's showing no head frame.
But once the process is completed,
the media will be completely uh checked in into the Abi environment from the,from there it can go to I news or uh
um
like whatever kind of uh uh destination within the Aed environment.
So the,the workflow is bidirectional,um,
so we can index the media from the uh interplay environment.
Uh,in Imam and then connect all other workflow that
exist in the EMA system.So if you look at all the,uh,the different widgets and everything,
so we can connect all these workflows.
And um
Uh,and also we can bring the media from the nonit environment,
uh,to the,uh,interplay environment.
Uh,this is all work flowed through two different,uh,um,
uh,products from NLT.One is the new archive and another one is the media transporter.
So there is a round trip,uh,workflow between,
uh,both the systems.
Uh,yeah,there is a lot of other things to show,
uh,open for QA,
and,um,so let me know if there are any questions,
uh,please use the,uh,
the question section,and,uh,we will,uh,answer those.