Mediator delivers for Ascent
Article first published in TVB Europe October 2009
A year after installation at Ascent Media's London-based European Transmission Centre (ETC), Pharos' Mediator content management platform is delivering business savings. According to Steven Samwell, technical director, Ascent Media, "Our customers saw a huge benefit in moving from a transactional-based model to a managed service fee model. Previously clients would pay separately for every single job from ingest to playout. Mediator allows us to offer a managed service where the client is billed one fee per month. That approach significantly helps customers reduce their media administration overheads."
Originally incorporated within the ETC to serve the transmission needs of broadcasters like Sony and Disney, Mediator has enabled Ascent to add VoD provider Filmflex to its roster.
"One of the key reasons we selected Mediator was that it could service different types of business model," affirmed Samwell. "It offers the flexibility to increase or scale the system for clients without escalating the cost. Today we ingest content for Sony for transmission but since the assets we store for them are now entirely browseable they can start to publish content for platforms like VoD, web and mobile. This truly is ingest once at high quality and repurpose many times to maximise the value of your asset."
At IBC Pharos unveiled a range of workflow options to increase the efficiency of content preparation from Mediator. Version 4.2 includes the ability to ingest raw footage and rushes for swift transference to editing platforms including Avid and FCP. Mediator can now import metadata from third party editing systems, such as Avid Interplay, for storage and later use during editing.
Published on 29 Oct 2009