Advanced Systems Group has shipped more than 120 remote production kits to its clients over the past two months, as content creators have continued to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“The broadcast technical community has stepped up with creative solutions to enable video production to continue outside of traditional studio environments, and corporate communications professionals have followed suit,” said Dave Van Hoy, president of ASG. “As an industry, we have learned the importance of providing high-quality equipment for content creators working from home. Our remote production kits are helping clients produce professional results despite the inherent limitations of at-home productions.”

Designed to accommodate various levels of expertise, ASG’s remote production kits collect the equipment necessary to produce and stream professional video content, including lighting kits, laptops, high-quality microphones, and DSLR cameras with desktop tripods and prompters. While working around current equipment inventory shortages, ASG works with clients to customize each kit to meet the workflow requirements of specific production team members. 

ASG also provides training and best practices as needed for on-camera talent who are now responsible for their own production support. Units are available now and can be shipped directly to the homes of content creators.

LTN® Global, whose innovative modular offerings support the full media life cycle, has expanded access to automated channel management, advanced advertising, and content replacement workflow with its new LTN Cue offering. Built on the same technology behind the LTN Connect managed service, which is deployed on the user premises, LTN Cue takes SCTE 35 decoration onto the LTN Network and performs SCTE marker insertion en route to video distribution partners and affiliates. With a straightforward workflow for sending properly decorated feeds to cable, satellite, and virtual MVPDs including, YouTube TV, Sling TV, and Hulu + Live TV, channel originators can scale up their distribution, viewership, and ad revenue.

AVer Europe has today announced the integration of its pan-tilt-zoom cameras with world leading video standard NDI® capability to deliver enhanced Pro AV opportunities to the UK market.

The new PTZ310N and PTZ330N models feature NewTek’s NDI® video standard integration that enables the cameras to communicate, deliver and receive high quality content with low latency, which is also frame-accurate and suitable for switching in a live production environment.

The NDI® standard enables seamless interaction between various control systems and AVer Europe’s camera hardware for capturing and livestreaming. Users can create robust IP workflows throughout all components of their production setup via one cable rather than having to wire every video or audio source directly into an SDI router, saving significant time and money through increased efficiency.

This new functionality combined with the powerful zoom, smooth movement and high-quality imaging offered by AVer Europe’s PTZ cameras, enables higher education institutions to capture classroom lectures and broadcast events such as Ted Talks or graduation ceremonies. The cameras also facilitate coverage of major awards, press conferences and tradeshows in business.

“This upgrade for the PTZ310N and PTZ330N enables users to access a new range of event capturing and livestreaming capabilities within both education and business,” explains Rene Buhay, AVer Europe Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “By integrating NDI HX2 with our existing advanced features in our PTZ range, we are improving Pro AV processes for content producers globally.”

Advanced Systems Group (ASG), a leading media technology and engineering firm, today announced it has added the team of Kymberly Cannon and Kelli Clark to enhance sales and service efforts across Southern California. Cannon, a regional sales manager, and Clark, a solutions engineer, worked together at Quantum before joining ASG earlier this month.

Before Clark was a solutions architect at Quantum, she served for 23 years as the senior SAN/fiber channel architect and supervising engineer for 20th Century Fox, and also held technical roles for Pixar Animation Studios and Skywalker Sound. Cannon spent seven years as a regional sales manager for Quantum, often partnering with ASG on top strategic accounts. Previously, she was an account manager for Dell EMC/Isilon, HP, CommVault, and HDS.

While ASG has been an established media and entertainment service provider in Los Angeles for almost a decade, the company also supports high-end corporate video clients representing a diverse group of industries in the region. The Los Angeles office is led by Andy Darcy, who relocated to the market in 2018 after previously handling business development for ASG’s New York-based operations.

“This was a rare opportunity to recruit a successful industry team to our Los Angeles operations,” said Dave Van Hoy, president of ASG. “With Kym and Kelli, we look forward to building our customer base across a number of vertical markets, growing our Managed Services efforts, and continuing to lead with service across Southern California.”

www.asgllc.com

FOR-A Corporation of America has built integrated live production solutions that combine its HANABI series of video switchers with Variant Systems Group replay systems, ClassX graphics and playout software, ODYSSEY Insight video servers, and Brainstorm Multimedia virtual studios.

“Together with our technology partners, FOR-A is creating live production systems that make integration easier and more reliable,” said Ken Truong, President of FOR-A Corporation of America. “With the combined expertise from these companies across the professional video industry, we can offer best-of-breed solutions that improve workflows while delivering broadcast-quality results for HD, 4K, and beyond.”

Variant’s Envivo Replay offers a cost-effective sports and live event replay solution, with an intuitive user interface and continuous multiple iso-channel recording capabilities. It offers simultaneous clip storage of multiple angles, playlists for highlights playback, built-in branding capabilities, and direct publishing to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms. FOR-A is the exclusive distributor of Envivo Replay in North America.

FOR-A – the exclusive distributor of ClassX in North, Central and South America – also combines the latest ClassX real-time 2D/3D HD/4K CG and live motion broadcast graphics and playout solutions with its HANABI video switchers. An expansion I/O card for HVS-100, HVS-490, and HVS-2000 production switchers enables a close integration of the ClassX graphic playout from any HANABI video switcher directly by the switcher operator. ClassX’s real-time graphics playout software suite is popular with TV channels, news broadcasters, live event productions, and live sports productions.

Documentary television cameraman Jonathan Young has relied on Peli cases to protect and transport his valuable camera kit for over 20 years. He has travelled with Peli cases to the most inhospitable and sometimes downright dangerous locations throughout the world, including war torn Afghanistan and Gaza.

He has embarked on his latest adventure with several new Peli Air cases; these have been designed and engineered to maintain the same level of durability, but reduce the weight of each case by up to 40 percent. Air cases are waterproof and crushproof and offer additional sizes to the Peli Protector and Peli Storm case lines.

Jonathan explained “I am shooting the new series, the South America leg of The America’s with Simon Reeve for BBC. This is the first leg of the journey across the Guyana Shield; Southern Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam, French Guiana.

These pictures were taken at the top of a Tepui. A Tepui is where the indigenous people’s gods live. They are sacred spaces that are 2800m above sea level. When working and camping at that altitude in such a rugged terrain, you have to be able to rely on the equipment you bring with you. To protect that equipment from the elements - sand, rain and the rough handling in transport to the top of the mountain in a cargo net slung under a helicopter, there is only one choice that ticks all the boxes…Peli cases.

The new Air range has taken every single journey I have made across various remote parts of the globe, housing my camera kit in its stride. I had worried at first that the cases might be too thin. My fears were unfounded. The cases I have used, they have taken every beating and battering baggage handlers, airports, rough tracks in pickups and the exposure to the elements. They have done exactly what they were supposed to do.”

The Peli Air range is now available in 16 sizes with more colour choices for many models. Deep cases and a long version, the 1745, have recently been added to the range.

Colorfront (www.colorfront.com) – the Academy, Emmy and HPA Award-winning developer of high-performance dailies and transcoding systems for motion pictures, broadcast, OTT and commercials – will showcase the powerhouse capabilities of its products to enable color-consistent 4K/6K/8K SDR/HDR acquisition-to-post workflows during the 2020 HPA Tech Retreat, 17-20 Feb, Rancho Mirage, CA. The company will also participate in the groundbreaking, cloud-based, live production of “The Lost Lederhosen” short film, and share details of its pivotal role in the making of this mini-movie during the Retreat’s “HPA Makes A Movie” Supersession on Feb 18th.

Advanced Systems Group (ASG), a leading media technology and engineering firm, today announced it is a founding member and sponsor of Silicon Valley Video (SV.V), a new international information resource for tech industry leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area. The association’s first event, “IP Academy,” will be held March 12 at 5 p.m. at LinkedIn Studios in Mountain View, Calif. Registration is free to qualified video professionals at siliconvalley.video.

“IP Academy” will discuss the benefits and potential drawbacks of moving to an IP-based infrastructure in today’s corporate video environment. Gary D. Schneider, manager of broadcast systems engineering and lead media systems architect for LinkedIn Corporation, will serve as conference chair and keynote speaker. The four-hour program will also include dinner, networking opportunities, panel discussions with video technology experts, and tours of the LinkedIn production facilities.

Produced in association with Sports Video Group, which has supported the professional sports production industry since 2006, SV.V is dedicated to developing educational resources for the video production teams of Silicon Valley tech companies. Industry leaders will serve on an advisory board to help the association produce events and provide platforms for professional development. A portion of all SV.V proceeds will support local community causes and initiatives.

mediaClass, a globally active provider of OTT TV everywhere solutions, has announced its own developed AI-based recommendation Engine.

”We have been testing and measuring the success rate of the engine for some time," says mediaClass CTO Stilian Tchlakov. "For this release we have settled on two operator-selectable modes, both of which offer excellent results."

"Without giving too much away technically, mode one is based on AI analysis of personal preferences and searches; mode two is based on studying and machine learning the watching-behaviour of hundreds of thousands of anonymous subscribers” adds mediaClass Head of Research and Development Youri Kalinov. "The mediaClass AI Recommendation Engine uses state of the art technology from Liberate AI to predict and deliver viewer-specific television content recommendations. This is a step change from what has been possible in the past."

“Judging from the measurement results I have seen, the Liberate AI machine learning technology certainly gives us a significant edge," details mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "We will be providing the engine as an integral part all mediaClass deployments. We now have to decide whether to market the recommendation engine as a standalone package to offer its advantages for non-mediaClass deployments.”

mediaClass reports a sustained acceleration in demand for subscription based services offering video content directly to connected viewers. Bypassing traditional broadcast and satellite platforms, OTT services are typically streamed over the top – meaning over any internet connection rather than a proprietary network.

"Given the rapid changes in product offerings and market trends, the choice of OTT and streaming technology is absolutely key," says mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "The established OTT middleware products on the market are incremental improvements and add-ons to older IPTV-based systems. This leaves them with a heavy footprint requiring massive servers which are inefficient and inflexible."

"Using our detailed knowledge and long experience of TV services to develop a modern, agile architecture and approach, we invested heavily to develop a full product range from scratch. The key parameters for our customer-centric view were to speed up deployment and enable a low-cost legacy IPTV path for service providers and telcos who want to move to a world-class offer which is disruptively affordable. We have developed our own software modules for functions including a content management system, digital rights management and AI recommendation engines as well as CDN and mobile clients."