disguise takes on the new ‘normal’ with the launch of r17.3, its latest software release that delivers an improved workflow for enhanced efficiency and successful completion of projects post-lockdown. New features include Indirections, Multi-layer Editing, Object Assignment Hotkeys, Crossfaded Loop Section Mode as well as a number of improvements and bug fixes to further streamline the user experience.

In addition to the above, r17.3 also has a wide range of other improvements guaranteed to streamline workflows including:

NDI SDK has been updated to version 4.5

The ability to point manager at a template project

Alt-drag in the feed mapping editor

Clicking a tag or note now jumps the exact frame where the tag is placed

Dither parameter added to the gradient texture tool to help reduce banding

You can now pause the playback of a Notch block

Import and Export of feed maps

disguise r17.3 is available to download now from www.download.disguise.one

Post Control Helsinki’s top Visual Effects Supervisor Tuomo Hintikka, known for his work on “Dark Floors” (2008), “FAUST” (2011) and “The Girl King” (2015) says he is a big fan of DejaEdit. Also an accomplished film editor, Tuomo has extensive on-set experience with over 25 years of digital post-production knowledge, and the longest VFX track record in Finland. He recently used DejaEdit on all 8 episodes of the Swedish and Finnish TV drama series “The White Wall” for SVT/YLE/DRG, directed by A. Salmenperä and A. Zackrisson.

Pixel Power, the global leader in graphics production and playout automation, has appointed Sarah Deas to its head office team. Deas will provide internal sales support to the sales teams in the Cambridge base and regional offices in North America, South-East Asia and the Middle East.

Mediaproxy, the leading provider of software-based IP broadcast solutions, has been at the forefront of developing new television distribution workflows over the last 20 years. A major part of this has involved allowing increased remote operation of key functions such as monitoring and analyzing streams to ensure quality and compliance with international standards and national regulations.

There has been a growing interest in the potential of remote working over the last five years, particularly in allowing the coverage of news and sports events with smaller crews under the direct control of the main studio gallery. But the coronavirus crisis has forced a major rethink of how TV programs are not only produced but also monitored and distributed.

Mediaproxy has been able to offer its users, who include leading broadcast networks, streaming service operators and facilities, the flexibility to perform quality control (QC) and compliance monitoring away from the main master control room (MCR) or network operations center (NOC).

Saudi Broadcasting Authority (SBA), part of the Ministry of Media in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is replacing the playout technology for its main channels with an integrated solution from Imagine Communications. SBA, one of the most prestigious broadcasters in the Gulf region, is seeking to boost daily operational efficiency and eliminate human error for reliable and professional broadcasting.

To meet the requirements of SBA, Imagine Communications was able to propose a coherent end-to-end system covering network infrastructure, routing, monitoring, ingest, asset management and playout under ADC™ automation control, to replace the current system based on hardware from multiple vendors. The Imagine Communications proposal is largely based on software solutions running on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, using industry-standard workstations from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). It includes a Platinum™ IP3 router to switch SD, HD and 3G signals, with the capability of adding real-time IP switching to support SBA’s development plans. Additionally, the IP3 router provides integrated multiviewer functionality to ensure all monitoring is handled in a space-saving frame.

DejaSoft has launched Version 3 of its media file synchronising tool DejaEdit.

DejaEdit is an essential application for productions enabling Avid editors to work together from any location. It ensures media and bins are copied securely in the background, between each remote editing station or Nexus / EditShare storage system.

Version 3 enhances editors' user experience, provides improved workflow management, efficiency, and additional reliable security features. These new developments are crucial toolsets that support producers and post supervisors in simplifying complex media file sharing activities across the entire production process.

Highlights in DejaEdit 3 include the option for users to use their own S3 account for Cloud media storage; upgraded “Private and Public” bin sharing abilities; sophisticated “Folder Support”; “Notifications”; partial media downloads to each editor; License key safeguards; and the brand new DejaEdit Manager feature.

DejaEdit uses an intuitive “email” style interface, presented within the Avid environment, where bins and metadata can be shared with other users by simply dropping it into the Outbox, ToSet or ToVFX folders. Version 3 now allows editors to add subfolders to these pre-set folders to further organise shared media assets. A new notification system now alerts editors to available content and location. 

Anna Knochenhauer is a well-respected Stockholm-based film producer/ post-producer with impressive titles to her name which include the likes of “Euphoria” featuring Alicia Vikander; “Welcome to Sweden” season 2 starring Jason Priestly and others.

Carving a successful career of VFX-heavy feature films and drama series, she declares DejaEdit is a revolutionary film tool that should be included in every production as industry standard. She uses DejaEdit in all her productions now, including recent films “Alone in Space” (2018), “White Wall” (2020) and “We Got This” (2020).

DejaEdit is a media file synchroniser that gives editors the ability to collaborate super-efficiently between multiple remote Avid editing platforms. “I depend on DejaEdit for all my productions because it ensures that the media files and timelines that we have created or imported in one connected system are shared and mirrored to the local or network storage of other connected systems. It all takes place quickly, securely and automatically in the background... 
The fact that DejaEdit ensures all media is pushed automatically to all connected Avids means that the Assistant Editor (AE) or Editors don’t ever have to search for any missing media files. DejaEdit has saved us a lot of time and headaches."

Intinor Technology, Sweden’s leading developer of products and solutions for high quality video over the internet, will be demonstrating how to do remote production in a series of live webinars with Danish company Skaarhoj, manufacturers of universal broadcast control panels. The aim is to showcase how the remote production tools from both Intinor and Skaarhoj complement each other to give a flexible, secure workflow for live production using a variety of different content sources and locations.

Interest in remote production workflows (or REMI) has been on the increase for some time now already. Even before the current global social distancing requirements created an added incentive for broadcasting companies to seek an alternative to the traditional travel-dependent methods of production, the economic and productivity benefits that REMI offers enables companies to more easily meet the rising demand for live content.

Cinegy, the global leader for broadcast playout software in the cloud has announced a new partnership with New Hampshire-based US Broadcast, a broadcast distributor that uses its channel marketing and technical skill sets to tailor sales for the North American market.

US Broadcast CTO Eric Pratt said, "US Broadcast is currently busy aiding resellers and customers with the technical challenges of connecting video and audio workflows, using our expertise in IP video and remote production to solve their problems. Lately, we’ve had an increase in enquiries with customers looking for help bridging the distance between contributors and production and we’re finding Cinegy’s software-based solutions are particularly relevant at this time.”

During these changing times, it’s more important than ever to ensure your company’s disaster recovery and business continuity tools are fit for purpose. Whether upgrading systems for remote working, streamlining workflows across a multi-site enterprise or enabling production sharing, each company has differing requirements and will often need complex integration solutions. With a complete portfolio of off-the-shelf apps and technology, plus an ‘interoperability lab’, where a library of third-party professional APIs and plug-ins is maintained, Marquis Broadcast has a unique ability to develop and deliver high quality and complex software integrations.

Many of Marquis Broadcast’s products have been recently upgraded. The latest versions of Project Parking and Workspace Tools systems provide native support and full functionality with the new Avid OP1A workflows. They also integrate with Avid NEXIS | Cloudspaces, letting you free up Avid NEXIS storage space and safely backup or park projects in the cloud. Medway allows the export of Avid sequences from all Avid platforms without requiring them to be flattened or conformed in Avid. This allows generation of genealogy information on a sequence, describing the content used in a sequence before exporting and flattening to a single output file. And Postflux, for Adobe^® Premiere^® Pro, improves the archiving, versioning, integrity, security, performance and sharing of Adobe Premiere projects in extended workflows, and has been updated to support additional project types, including Premiere Productions.

American singer Halsey kicked off her Manic World Tour 2020 in Madrid in February supporting her just released studio album, also called Manic. The Manic World Tour spans 48 shows, and kicked off in Europe, with the next legs currently being planned for Asia and North America later this year. disguise gx 2c media servers were selected by All Of It Now to drive the show’s video and Notch IMAG real-time effects.

Numerous features of the disguise solutions came into play for the tour starting in pre-pro. “The show’s video design used a multi-layered frame, and the 3D workflow of disguise Designer allowed us to create parallel maps that placed content on the screen spatially without requiring specific renders for certain songs,” explains Danny Firpo of All of It Now, a disguise Rental Partner and Workflow Specialist based in San Francisco, who did the tour’s video programming with Cade Moore. “This gave us the creative flexibility to move content around the screen and explore different approaches for certain songs.

Mediaproxy, the leading provider of software-based IP broadcast solutions, is helping its customers ensure their output of the highest technical quality at a time when many operational staff are having to work from home. The company's compliance analysis and logging systems can be accessed remotely using laptop computers to allow all confidence monitoring to be carried out.

The coronavirus crisis has made broadcasters dramatically reassess not only how programs are produced, but also how distribution operations are managed. The move to both IT and IP-based broadcast infrastructures had already made it possible for technicians to access systems from wherever they are. This option is now widely available, meaning broadcast centers can still run efficiently, while, at the same, time allowing self-isolation and social distancing guidelines to be observed.

OWNZONES Entertainment Technologies, the leading cloud-based video supply chain company is helping studios and post houses around the world respond rapidly to the growing global consumption of content through its remotely compatible cloud-based platform, OWNZONES Connect™.

OWNZONES Connect, is the next-gen content servicing and supply chain platform. The first cloud-based solution to support SMPTE IMF and ACES workflows, Connect was designed natively in the cloud to join the fragmented pieces of many post-production workflows by replacing multiple vendors, non-compatible formats and expensive data servers. The largest movie studio, or smallest indie network, can easily connect with their audiences by rapidly processing and delivering content in any format to any platform. Through Connect, users can transcode video content up to 35 times faster while reducing costs up to 90 percent.

The demand for content has increased significantly due to the COVID-19 virus. However, production has slowed dramatically, and even stopped for studios and content companies. They are looking at their vast libraries to try and fill the demand and OWNZONES is helping them conform their content and deliver it to global platforms through its cloud-based infrastructure.

Trailer Park Group, the award-winning global entertainment marketing company, which counts many of the world’s most prestigious and successful companies, brands, media properties and film franchises among its clients, is the newest customer of IPV and will be using its latest release—CuratorNow—to allow their editors and producers to continue to produce video from home. IPV is delighted to welcome them aboard.

As global events force a change in the way people have to work, CuratorNow gives Trailer Park Group the functionality they need to seamlessly continue to produce secure, high-level content for their clients at full capacity from home.

IPV CEO Mark Fagan said, “As the world headed into temporary lockdown, Trailer Park Group realised that they needed a robust solution to enable their editorial team to continue to deliver new material for their clients under these unprecedented circumstances.

“The nature of their work required a rapid deployment solution that would both scale to meet their urgent needs but also give major studios the assurance that their content was secure even in the current, highly disruptive environment.”

Trailer Park Group CEO, Rick Eiserman, said, “Video editing brings a unique set of challenges to working from home so finding a robust, cloud editing solution was absolutely critical for Trailer Park Group. With over 300 creatives working on projects for the world’s top media and entertainment clients, we required a state-of-the-art product that both we and our clients can trust.

Industry leading media asset management software provider IPV today announced the appointment of Philip McDanell as Chairman of the Board.

McDanell is a highly knowledgeable executive director with extensive experience in the media and technology sector, having held senior board positions at MTV, Chrysalis Group, and most recently Peach, formerly Group IMD, where he helped devise and execute the company’s global business strategy, growing the business value from £14m to £100m.

McDanell said, “I am excited to be joining IPV at this interesting stage of its growth. IPV’s Curator platform is without doubt one of the best products that I have seen. I am particularly pleased that IPV has just launched CuratorNow to help the broadcast industry address the present market difficulties by enabling editors to work remotely on frame accurate proxy videos.”

Available immediately and deployable in days, CuratorNow fast-tracks the ability of creatives to work from any location, including their home, with just basic Wi-Fi for project collaboration using the core tools of Curator, IPV’s proven flagship video content management platform, allowing for simple scalability and an easy upgrade path.

IPV CEO Mark Fagan said, “Philip brings highly relevant experience to IPV, especially from his most recent position at Peach during which time the business expanded from a UK-centric business to operating in more than 40 countries after having transitioned from original legacy software to a world-beating cloud platform.

“We are currently in a similar position with the expansion of our Curator platform to include the remote operation benefits of CuratorNow and very much look forward to gaining from Philip’s expertise at a corporate level, as well as the demonstrable benefits that will naturally accrue to our customers, existing and new, worldwide.”

McDanell’s appointment is effective immediately.