Did you know?
AmberFin iCR can reduce distribution costs by up to 85% when compared to traditional videotape delivery methods
Supporting your move to the file world
AmberFin solves your file-based content challenges
The move to file-based assets is a great opportunity for the film and broadcast industries—but one that also presents formidable challenges.
The need to support an ever-growing range of formats and standards is increasing. So is the need to take advantage of automated systems to cost-effectively manage encoding and repurposing of new and archive content.
A whole new set of capabilities are being added to existing workflow systems and new systems are being created daily by the industry. AmberFin has designed its iCR software to ensure these challenges can be overcome by offering the following solutions:
Production Encoding
iCR encodes directly to many formats used within the film, broadcast and internet industries, at the highest-possible levels of quality.
Mastering
iCR offers industry-leading ingest and encode quality with integrated quality control (QC) reporting and annotation tools.
Review and Quality Control
iCR offers detailed automated quality control reporting that saves time and money compared to traditional processes, plus automated review and annotation of video files.
Virtual VTR
iCR can be a file-based videotape recorder that can bring images all the way back to a broadcast monitor.
Repurposing
iCR effortlessly publishes content to new channels such as the Web, VoD and mobile devices.
Benefits
Increase revenues
There are numerous ways to take advantage of the potential of the new file-based media world.
AmberFin iCR can help ensure success whatever path is chosen, because:
- AmberFin iCR has enabled customers to digitize over 800,000 media assets, allowing them to move into new emerging business markets with their content.
- With more than 100,000 different combinations of video, audio and file formats in the market, iCR eliminates incompatibility barriers and easily creates content for customers in the format required.
- AmberFin iCR taps into the value of archived content by repurposing it for new distribution platforms.
- AmberFin iCR delivers the best HD in the market globally, ensuring new HD revenue opportunities are exploited to their full potential.
Reduce costs and increase efficiency
The challenge for production and post-production companies is how to reduce costs and flourish in a changing market. This can be achieved through increasing efficiency within the digital workflow in areas such as ingest, quality control and distribution. AmberFin iCR’s applications have been developed to help address these needs by providing a high level of automation and wide compatibility with existing systems. For example:
- By encoding 100,000 hours of tape per year, AmberFin iCR can save up to 1800sq meters of physical tape storage.
- By working with a major sports franchise, AmberFin iCR has enabled high-reliability, frame-accurate HD ingest and repurposing to and from commodity storage, saving substantial budget on video server investment.
- AmberFin iCR can reduce distribution costs by up to 85 percent when compared to traditional videotape delivery methods.
Free up time
In a business where time is money, AmberFin iCR helps maximize the speediness and efficiency of workflows in a range of ways. For instance:
- Running 24/7 automated operations with a single operator can reduce staff costs by as much as 75%, meaning they can be allocated elsewhere in the business.
- With market-leading speed and efficiency, a single AmberFin iCR can repurpose up to 100 hours of content in 24 hours.
- One of the world’s leading content owners has mandated AmberFin iCR as the mandatory ingest system, ensuring repeatable quality and reliability.
- AmberFin iCR has enabled Turner Broadcasting to successfully switch over 100 million homes to a new streamlined network on its flagship TBS and Cartoon Network channels.
Maintain quality
We appreciate the value invested in content and know it is critical to maintain the highest quality possible at all times.
That is why our repurposing process is recognized in the industry as providing the optimum balance between file size and content quality. Our reputation is built on image quality which we bring into the file-based domain.
Unify workflows
We recognize that today’s multitude of formats and standards provides a number of challenges. So we aim to create technologies that are master translators, working fluently in whatever format, standard, flavor or edition chosen or needed to be adopted.
We already lead the way in interoperability with the collaborative development of a new application specification for Material eXchange Format (MXF) wrappers that allows complete, flawless interoperability between Pinnacle and Omneon media servers.
A heritage you can trust
In fact, leading the way is something that is built into our DNA. We have had 35 years of experience in flawlessly converting video and audio from one standard to another, moving from the analog world to the digital. The high level of investment that we put into R&D differentiates us from the competition and our core competency within algorithms for moving images ensures we continue to drive innovation.
At AmberFin we are dedicated to bringing this expertise into the file-based world, combining our Snell & Wilcox heritage with a host of new skills appropriate to the software domains that are increasingly being operated in.
An investment in the future
At AmberFin we intend to work with the industry to offer a painless migration path to file-based assets. We are conscious that there are many ways to tackle this challenge and we aim to give the best balance of quality, efficiency and cost effectiveness.
We know that success is dependent on the ability to make the right technology choices and investments. Our aim is to be a trusted supplier of that technology to the film, broadcast and internet industries.
AmberFin iCR is already trusted by some of the most prestigious content owners and providers in the world, such as Sony, NBA, Turner Broadcasting, BT, Channel 4, RTM and Warner Brothers, to manage the digitization, review and quality control and repurposing of their content.
AmberFin also leads the way in its open approach to working with leading technology partners. Our open standards approach, supporting common API and industry standard protocols, has simplified integration giving increased efficiency and a faster time to market. This has been proven by the large number of automation and asset management companies that have already fully integrated our iCR software.
