News

Marquis Demonstrates Medway with Extended HD Support and New HD Transcoding (25/3/2008)

Major Upgrade Delivers Significant Business Benefits for Broadcasters and Ensures Workflows are Future-Proofed for HD Processes

Marquis Broadcast, specialist in broadcast workflow studies and solutions, will be demonstrating Medway: The Media Highway at NAB 2008 with wider support for HD, including the addition of HD transcoding and enhanced native support for other HD formats. These new expanded HD capabilities follow on from Medway's Avid DNxHD functionality announced last year, making it easier than ever before for broadcasters and content producers to migrate their workflows from SD to HD processes.

Medway allows metadata attached to the media to be processed through the workflow in a multi-vendor environment without creating interim files. Workflows become more efficient as files are able to move faster through the various postproduction and broadcasting processes.

At NAB, Marquis will be showcasing Medway with bi-directional HD transcoding from Avid DNxHD to MPEG-2 long GOP (20 MB/s to 200 Mb/s), and native support for Panasonic DVCPRO-100 HD CODEC. Transcoding between DNxHD and MPEG-2 I frame (20MB/s to 200MB/s), and native support for Sony XDCAM HD422 will be added during Q2 2008.

Also at NAB, Marquis will be introducing Medway with tighter integration for media asset management and nonlinear workflow management tools including the Avid Interplay production environment. Using Avid Transfer Manager APIs, Medway will feature powerful new metadata creation, editing and handling capabilities giving users improved performance when registering, searching, browsing and exporting clips and sequences within the Interplay database.

Medway 2.1 Debuts at NAB 2008

Marquis will debut Medway 2.1 which includes a range of operational and business benefits designed to reinforce Medway as the interoperability engine of choice now and into the future as new HD technologies continue to emerge. New features include:

Improved Metadata Management

Marquis has added new features based on extended use of metadata management, for example, metadata payload can now be individually mapped according to its destination. This means that a transmission server can be sent different metadata to that of an archive or web server for the same piece of content. It is also possible to capture metadata automatically from 'comment markers' or 'programme segments'. By adding these powerful new metadata management features to Medway, customers can easily customise content according to multiple distribution platforms and business models.

Intelligent Multi-Codec Handling

This allows Medway to automatically select the most appropriate compression CODEC when transferring media between different source and destination compressions schemes. This provides users with optimised picture quality and minimises any concatenation issues. Medway 2.1 includes an intelligent transfer process so that media is transferred only once even if it is being used in multiple projects. The software checks to see if content is still available from an earlier transfer when referencing it in any subsequent transfer.

Genealogy

The addition of genealogy gives users the ability to investigate the history of source content and clips relating to an edited sequence. This includes source video tracks, slo-mo or off-speed sequences, audio tracks, FX processing as well as other XML metadata. A beneficial spin-off of this feature is the creation of information that can be compiled for usage, performance, royalties or rights billing reports.

Redundant Architecture

Medway 2.1 includes new fail-safe redundant architecture that provides automatic back-up operations should there be a hardware failure on any of the transfer servers. In such an event, the back-up system would take over as the primary server and would be updated automatically with the status of all transfers, as well as continue to manage the transfer processes. Should the failed device come back online, it would act as the back-up device and would itself be updated with the status of all transfer processes. This intelligent fail-safe feature delivers further peace of mind for users by providing assurance that processes will continue to function without loss of performance in the event of a hardware failure.

GUI

Medway's improved graphical user interface allows faster access to information concerning the movement of media within the broadcasting environment. Users are presented with additional information showing the status of media moving to and from the Avid environment. This enables them to more easily identify when and where to purge storage, thereby maximising workflow efficiencies.

Medway 2.1 is available from Marquis' network of business partners. Under the terms of Marquis' customer support philosophy, existing Medway users will receive the new 2.1 software upgrades at no additional cost as part of the company's beneficial support contract. Medway with HD transcoding will be available from Q2 2008.

www.marquisbroadcast.com  

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