In the fast-paced world of news production, being the first to break a story is paramount. However, the technology currently in use is inherently designed in a way that introduces delays.
These delays can result in missing critical windows for impactful reporting, allowing competitors to break stories first and potentially leading to a loss of market share. In the news industry, speed, agility, and efficiency are essential for success.
The Challenge of Rendering Times:
Using the current technology, rendering content with non-linear editing systems (NLEs) poses a significant challenge in modern news production workflows. Even basic changes, such as cutting clips, adding transitions, or adjusting audio levels, often require time-consuming rendering processes to finalize content for broadcast. These rendering processes can hinder news production in several ways.
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Delays in Story Delivery: Every second counts in news production. Prolonged rendering can delay story finalization, causing newsrooms to miss crucial reporting opportunities. Often last minute editorial changes cannot be made due to the time it would take to get the content ready to go on air. This stifles the process and potentially leads to crucial information not being shared with the audience.
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Stalling Collaboration: Newsrooms thrive on collaboration. If one part of the team is waiting for rendering, it can slow down the entire workflow.
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Decreased Flexibility: Fast turnaround times necessitate agility. Lengthy rendering times limit the ability to make last-minute changes or experiment with different storytelling approaches.
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Resource Drain: Rendering consumes valuable computing resources, potentially impacting other production aspects like ingesting new footage or handling live feeds.
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Reduced Efficiency: Prolonged rendering times can bog down newsrooms, affecting their ability to cover multiple stories simultaneously.
Historically, solutions to mitigate rendering times involved proprietary hardware and software, which were expensive and limited in scalability. These systems often supported a limited variety of file formats, requiring transcoding before content could be accessed. Today, the available options to ensure a workflow with no delays are extremely limited, and where they do exist, they are prohibitively expensive to implement. Until now.
The Renderless Solution: Vidispine's Web Render Engine
Vidispine’s Web Render Engine (WRE) revolutionizes news production by allowing content to be stored and managed efficiently without creating new files for every sequence, thus removing the need for rendering processes. While most modern MAM systems store sequences, edits, etc. purely as metadata, they still require the content to be rendered before the final review, approval, and layout. With the WRE, this final render stage is not required. When users edit a sequence, cut a clip, or adjust audio levels, only metadata is generated, eliminating the need for file movement or rendering. This enables multiple editors to work simultaneously on the same content from anywhere, using either Vidispine’s proxy editor VidiEditor or craft editors like Adobe Premiere Pro.
Key Business Benefits of Renderless Production:
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Enormous Time Savings: By enabling immediate playback and quick access to sequences, Renderless Production significantly reduces review and approval times, accelerating the entire production process.
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Optimized Storage for Complex Projects: Our advanced media repository, VidiCore, allows you to store intricate sequences effortlessly, ensuring you can access and organize your projects quickly and efficiently.
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Instant Playback for Faster Decision-Making: With the ability to play back sequences immediately in MediaPortal, you can speed up review and approval processes, leading to quicker project turnarounds.
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Accelerated Review and Approval Cycles: Editors and producers can swiftly access and approve sequences, significantly reducing the time required to finalize projects.
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Enhanced Collaboration Across Editing Platforms: Seamlessly integrate with popular NLEs like Adobe Premiere Pro, allowing for smooth sequence exchange and improved collaboration among team members.
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Streamlined Transition to Broadcasting: Play sequences directly on video servers, simplifying the path from editing to broadcasting and ensuring a faster delivery to your audience.
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Real-Time Publishing During Recording: With Vidispine you can publish sequences even while recording is still underway, enabling you to provide immediate updates and content delivery, keeping your audience engaged.
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Cost-Efficient Rendering: Render sequences only when necessary using VidiCoder, allowing you to save on resources and time by creating file copies in any required broadcast format only when needed.
These benefits highlight how Renderless Production not only streamlines your workflows but also enhances collaboration, speeds up delivery, and optimizes resource usage, ultimately driving greater efficiency and productivity in your media production processes.
Streamlined Architecture for News and Sports
Vidispine’s WRE optimizes production workflows for news and sports by eliminating the need for render files and file movement. The WRE’s integration with MediaPortal allows seamless playback of sequences without time-consuming rendering, enhancing the overall production workflow.
Premiere Pro and VidiEditor Integration
The MediaPortal panel in Adobe Premiere Pro stores projects and sequences in VidiCore, enabling immediate browsing of proxy copies while editing. VidiEditor users can also make changes to sequences created or edited in Premiere Pro, independent of media resolution.
Fast Review & Approval Workflow
Our WRE facilitates a rapid review and approval process, allowing producers to access and review edits in real-time. This continuous communication between producers and editors ensures that changes are instantly available in MediaPortal.
Modern Playout Capabilities
Modern video servers can playout sequences generated with either Adobe Premiere Pro or VidiEditor. Vidispine’s backend normalizes sequences to ensure all effects can be rendered during playout.
Open Publish for Live Events
The sequence management supports open publish scenarios, such as time-shifted playouts of live events like press conferences, where sequences don’t have defined out-points when playout starts.
Conclusion
In the fast-paced world of news and sports production, every second counts. Vidispine's Web Render Engine revolutionizes the industry by eliminating the delays caused by rendering. This breakthrough enables immediate playback, seamless collaboration, and the flexibility to make last-minute changes, ensuring your content reaches the audience faster and with greater accuracy.
By integrating Vidispine’s WRE into your workflow, you gain efficient storage, direct playout capabilities, and the ability to publish while recording without breaking the bank. This renderless approach is a game-changer, empowering production teams to deliver high-quality, real-time content that keeps audiences informed and engaged.
Embrace the future of media production with Vidispine’s Web Render Engine and stay ahead in the race to be the first on air.
Stefan Eckardt
Stefan Eckardt started his career in TV production and moved on to S4M - Solutions for Media in the early days of Media Asset Managements as a project manager. After heading product management for several years he is now in charge of the portfolio management of the VidiNet products of Vidispine.
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