One major pain point which has been constantly cited by broadcasters, post-production companies, and production companies during the last few years is the management of camera card ingest into editorial.
As organizations move to a complete file-based workflow the ability to efficiently process dailies/rushes for viewing copies, editing/finishing, and archiving is key to having a cost-effective workflow. Organizations currently tie up valuable resources and editing systems for camera card ingest. Many post-production companies ingest cards overnight with a team of assistants driving the effort. The process is very inefficient and ties up valuable staff to spend many hours manually backing up camera cards and preparing them for editing.
Telestream has developed a comprehensive solution for automating camera card ingest. ContentAgent, our workflow automation product will recognize and automatically process camera cards. Many popular camera cards/formats are supported, including Sony XAVC/XDCAM, Panasonic P2, DJI, Canon EOS and RED etc.
Key Benefits include:
- Automate camera card back up to archive storage.
- Automate ingest into popular editing systems including Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Apple Final Cut Pro.
- Automate proxy clips for camera card viewing copies including adding visible (and non-visible) watermarks such as a company logo and timecode.
- Provide complete offline/ online workflow for Avid Media Composer, including standalone and MediaCentral | Production Management based relinking.
- Rewrap native camera cards to allow native editing, such as creating Avid op-atom MXF files from Op1a MXF clips such as XDCAM and XAVC based media files.
- Ability to process via Render Farm for faster than real-time ingest
- Accelerated GPU decoding for formats such as ARRI RAW, Sony X-OCN, and RED R3D.
- Ingest camera cards in a variety of ways through Watch Folders, the ContentAgent User Interface, and CardAgent, the intuitive media wrangling submission tool.
These benefits allow an organization to efficiently deploy its resources with an excellent return on investment. Because the ingest process can be automated, less staff are needed to manage the process. These resources can then be deployed to other valuable workflows.
With the addition of CardAgent, ContentAgent customers and users can deploy several CardAgent’s to aid the ingest and preparation of camera card media for editing, etc. CardAgent features a simple user interface enabling non-technical operators to initiate a variety of workflows from commonly used cameras.
Operators can browse, select, playback media, and add custom metadata. Automated workflows can be triggered for transcoding and re-wrapping for the creation of proxies, high-resolution copies and backups, and the subsequent delivery to editorial. Associated clip and card metadata is extracted and stored in ContentAgent’s database. Avid integration, in both standalone and Interplay environments, free up resources, as ContentAgent automates the transcoding of ingested clips into Avid compliant MXF files, checking them into the Avid MediaCentral | Production Management Asset Management database if required.
CardAgent v2.0 Remote Workflows
New functionality has been added to CardAgent to enable it to kick off ContentAgent ingest workflows from remote locations.
CardAgent can now run on a laptop or desktop PC without needing to be connected directly to a ContentAgent system on the same network.
An operator can launch CardAgent, browse camera cards (or single clips), add custom metadata, and then choose to upload media files to cloud storage platforms that support the S3 protocol. CardAgent also now has a queuing engine that allows multiple clips and cards to be queued while awaiting upload to S3 cloud storage.
With S3 based workflows, the remote operator can kick off an automated workflow by having ContentAgent watch the S3 bucket where clips will be uploaded from the remote CardAgent system. ContentAgent will then download the media files and kick off a workflow automatically. Any custom metadata added by the remote operator via CardAgent will be inserted into the workflow.
In conclusion, ContentAgent has a comprehensive feature set to enable the automated ingest of camera card media, saving time and money and providing an excellent return on investment.
You can read more detailed information on Camera Card ingest:
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More information:
- Customers who have questions about ContentAgent 3.11 release, please contact us.
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