Pronology Continues Its Tradition of Providing World-Class Workflow Solutions for The Oscars

Employing the very latest in workflow technology along with the collaboration of many parties is just a fraction of what it takes to ensure that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' annual OSCARS telecast goes off without a hitch. Pronology, a developer of cutting-edge tapeless workflow solutions, was once again behind-the-scenes in the months leading into and at the event itself with its full suite of production tools. In its eighth consecutive year providing support for the show, Pronology's flagship CenterPoint media asset management platform along with its mRes(tm) standalone multi-resolution encoder were deployed. As a new addition to this year's broadcast, Pronology's StreamFile Core application was used with NewTek's NDI standard for video production over IP.
"The OSCARS is the culmination of acknowledgement for the best-of-the-best in our industry, and we are proud to once again be a part of it,\" says Jonathan Aroesty, president of Pronology. "We are honored that the Academy sees the value, reliability and ease-of-use of our production tools, and continues to add to the production workflow with the addition of our new StreamFile Core encoder."
Thousands of pre-produced audio and video elements must be formally approved by ABC Broadcast Standards and Practices (BS&P) prior to the event's broadcast. Pronology's CenterPoint was used to manage the approval of the nominee packages and voiceovers, which were recorded on-site at the Dolby Theatre at the Hollywood & Highland Center. CenterPoint also provided a secure portal to arrange, share and transfer content with the SIM Group, the edit facility charged with compositing and delivering all the final elements.
With Pronology, the BS&P team monitored the deliveries coming from the SIM Group in real-time, directly from its offices across town. Immediately after content was created, it could be approved for air. In order to achieve a real-time, cross-town collaborative production environment, HDSDI streams were encoded using StreamFile Core to NDI onsite at the Dolby Theater and streamed via NDI to the SIM's post production facility for rehearsal viewing. In addition, StreamFile Core captured the NDI streams in both ProRes and DNx file types.
"Using CenterPoint, we were able to receive content via email for immediate review and approval,\" says Rob Paine, OSCARS Supervising Producer. "The ability to access this information, both remotely and securely, is a major advantage for us. Additionally, we can send an approval notification through the system that then prompts the production team to move forward. With staff members located across the country, this really streamlined the process for everyone involved."
Pronology's mRes standalone multi-resolution encoder was also deployed, proving valuable for the musical acts. Having the secure web-streamable proxy enabled, the performers were able to watch their performances during rehearsals as well as post-event.
"For the past several years, Pronology has filled an important role here at the OSCARS. We rely on its flexible production tools to securely manage the thousands of playback elements and performance footage,\" says OSCARS Engineer-in-Charge Tim Kubit. "Pronology once again proved instrumental in allowing the Academy to seamlessly review and approve the pre-recorded content, from various locations, for this year's event."
About NDI
NDI is in use on millions of devices and allows multiple video systems to identify and communicate with one another over IP. NDI can encode, transmit and receive many streams of high quality, low latency, frame-accurate video and audio in real time. This benefits any network-connected video device, including video mixers, graphics systems, capture cards, and many other production devices. This makes it possible to exponentially increase the number of sources available for live production switching, without directly attaching to devices, changing locations, or investing in expensive, high-bandwidth networks that simply replace SDI-based workflows. #NDIcentral
About Pronology
Pronology's digital asset management and production tools, designed by Emmy Award-winning developers, simplify the tasks of content creation and distribution for today's file-based workflows by unifying the production process from acquisition to archive. Its award-winning standalone multi-resolution encoder, mRes, provides even greater flexibility to today's multi-resolution, multi-frame rate and multi-codec production environments, by providing access to multiple formats, instantaneously. Due to its native uncompressed recording architecture - various file formats can be created without any loss of quality or signal degradation since each copy is created from the original uncompressed file.
Pronology's comprehensive CenterPoint asset management system allows a limitless number of users to simultaneously and remotely acquire, manage, approve, log, distribute, transcode and archive content using a standard web browser. Its user-friendly interface has been designed by users, for users, to accommodate a wide range of possible workflows. Its Location Intelligence feature further accommodates global workflows by allowing users to quickly determine whether content is available on-site or needs to be transferred from a distant location. For more information, please contact us at 212-660-1600/ info@pronology.com or visit us online at www.pronology.com.