Irish Broadcaster TG4 Chooses Telestream FlipFactory TrafficManager to Improve Commercial Workflow
TG4 becomes first European customer for FlipFactory TrafficManager; integration with Adstream Digital Delivery Service completed
Nevada City, Calif. , September 20, 2005 - Telestream, the leading provider of media encoding and workflow solutions for the broadcast industry, today announced that TG4, Ireland 's national television channel, is the company's first European customer for its FlipFactory TrafficManager commercial workflow automation application. Following successful deployment in the United States , TG4's implementation becomes the first in Europe to utilize Telestream's FlipFactory TrafficManager with new digital delivery services from Adstream. Together, the Telestream and Adstream solution enables TG4 to integrate their current Adstream digital delivery system with a fully automated, all-digital workflow for the receipt and ingest of commercials at their broadcast facility.
"The beauty of the new technology is the advanced level of automation and operational efficiency it provides us," said Neil Keaveney at TG4. "Now we can receive commercials, news packages, promos, etc. digitally without having to go to tape. The entire workflow is seamless, from receipt to playout. It drastically reduces the steps involved, and the need for operator intervention, which saves us time and money. Operational staff are obviously delighted with the elimination of one of the more mundane aspects of their job."
Adstream, a leading provider of online advertising production and delivery services targeting UK , Ireland and Australia , utilizes Telestream's FlipFactory universal transcoding application at their materials preparation facilities in London and Sydney to encode media files to a common format for delivery to catch servers located at the broadcast sites. TG4, the Irish-language public broadcaster and one of the most cost-efficient stations in Europe , wished to take advantage of the new Adstream digital delivery service.
TG4 ordered Telestream's FlipFactory TrafficManager from Irish distributor, John Roche at Eurotek Ireland Ltd., to automate their commercial ingest operation. As a result of this order, Telestream developed a software plug-in which monitors the Adstream catch server to automatically detect the arrival of new commercials, extract appropriate metadata, and deliver the information to the station's traffic application.
"Telestream's FlipFactory TrafficManager fulfills an important part of the commercial content delivery workflow for our broadcast customers," said Andy Jones, Chief Technology Officer at Adstream. "Telestream integration extends our digital delivery to provide automated media ingest from our servers, including format transcoding, critical metadata extraction, and media and metadata file transfer to destination devices."
At TG4, once their traffic operator has accepted the commercial, FlipFactory TrafficManager automatically transcodes the media file into the format used by their Profile broadcast server, and it notifies their OmniBus automation system that the new clip is ready for play out.
"We are delighted that TG4 has selected our workflow automation solution as a key element in achieving their operational improvement goals. We are equally pleased to be working with Adstream in Europe," said George Boath, Telestream Sales Director for Europe, Africa and Middle East . "As new digital services emerge to improve delivery of news, program content, and now commercials to broadcasters, we are delighted that these companies and their clients are turning to Telestream to provide the ingest automation element for their workflows."
Telestream FlipFactory TrafficManager and the new plug-in module for Adstream servers are available from Telestream's worldwide sales distribution network.
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About Telestream (www.telestream.net)
Telestream products have set the standard with the world's leading media and entertainment companies, corporations, and government institutions for the encoding, organizing, and delivery of digital media. Customers rely on Telestream products for convenient, cost-effective, and robust digital media access and exchange over IP networks. The company's automation applications and smart media organization solutions streamline workflows for broadcasters and media companies, as well as content owners and content creators in government, higher education, and corporate markets. Telestream and its team of video experts are located in Nevada City , the "video valley" region of Northern California . The company is privately held.
About Adstream (www.adstream.com)
Adstream was founded in Australia in 2001 to provide digital asset management and distribution services to the global advertising community. Initially focused on TV commercial distribution and digital asset management, today the company develops and provides easy-to-use, web-based tools that substantially improve the way companies create, produce, distribute, collaborate on, duplicate, store and access entire advertising campaigns for TV, radio and print. In 2003 Adstream Europe was opened and in 2004 the company merged with Quickcut, a leading global provider of print advertising digital asset management and distribution services, in order to offer the global advertising community a digital workflow solution across all major media.
The Adstream service involves the ingestion, safe storage, indexing, classification and large-scale distribution of millions of large digital files throughout the advertising supply chain from creation to broadcast and print. Adstream's users are able to access the speed and versatility of fibre or satellite delivery from their desktop via Adstream's private IP network through a simple set of web-based tools.
Although its primary customers are advertising agencies, Adstream's users embrace the whole advertising workflow process, including agency clients, production and post-production houses, regulators and media outlets. Nearly all UK commercial TV broadcasters use Adstream today to receive digital ads, and a growing number of major advertising agencies are choosing to use Adstream's workflow, asset management and distribution systems.
