The RadiantGrid Platform: Performance + Intelligence

Ryan Salazar Post Production Engineer | Columnist | Speaker Ft. Lauderdale Florida USA ©2012 CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved.

The recent acquisition of RadiantGrid Technologies by Wohler Technologies may soon produce a new powerhouse giant in the file-based media processing and multi-platform delivery industry of broadcasters, cable networks, content owners and distributors.

This new partnership unites RadiantGrid's advanced parallel processing technology with Wohler's modular monitoring and processing solutions to effectively address the broadcast industry's most critical needs, efficiently and economically. "Our customers are increasingly making the move to more IT-centric infrastructures and looking to file-based solutions as a way to realized increased efficiency and profitability," explained Carol J. Dempsey, President and CEO of Wohler Technologies in reference to the recent acquisition. "We have assembled engineering talent to develop our own file-based solutions, and the strategic acquisition of RadiantGrid ... expands and accelerates that program."

Combining the strengths of both innovative companies into the New Media Automation Platform, broadcasting organizations will be better equipped with streamlined and automated IT-centric workflows encompassing a diverse range of solutions for video, audio, data and QC.

The heavy-duty features of the RadiantGrid Platform include: file-based ingestion and metadata indexing and management; media preparation and optimization; intelligent and multi-platform transcoding and packaging, distribution of digital media content, closed caption and ancillary data management; audio processing and mapping; workflow orchestration and automation; content management, storage management and aging policies; reporting and notification and open integration standards (FIMS, FXF, REST).

One of the foremost goals behind the RadiantGrid New Media Automation Platform was to address and eliminate the ever-growing, inefficient "ping-pong" effect of sending content back and forth from one vendor's server to another, even within the same organization. The RadiantGrid protects and ensures the best possible asset quality on its parallel architecture while processing in batch or grid mode, or a hybrid of both.

Behind the Platform's simple and interactive dashboard, is a robust, grid-based, non-linear, intelligent parallel processing engine, TrueGrid. The secret behind this powerful engine lies in the leveraging of two prolific technologies: its underlying content management framework and intelligent media processing functions.

The Grid also 'plays well with others' in both augmenting and integrating with legacy, trafficking, rights management, linear automation, business process management and content delivery systems.

While there are many different solutions available in the marketplace today which adequately handle such tasks as transcoding and content management, the RadiantGrid Platform solution represents the potential to move beyond the traditional standalone tools and solutions by managing content across the entire lifecycle.

Accelerated media transformation processing across multiple computing nodes or stations based on user-defined profiles defining final output formats from a single ingest; with the added flexibility of being SOA-based and capable of being hosted within the organization, a data center or via a cloud-based implementation. What's not to love?

This new workflow solution also reduces critical resources typically associated with a multi-platform production by compressing technology dependencies into its parallel platform architecture. In addition, all workflow policies and on-demand workflow actions can be pre-determined and fully automated via user-created profiles (using the interactive workflow dashboard) enabling automation of the entire workflow including the processes of ingestion, indexing, preparation, transformation, QC, publishing and distributing.

The RadiantGrid's innovative approach to the workflow flies in the face of convention through using an integrated model that tightly binds file-based processing tasks (i.e., transcoding) with intelligence that is carried through the asset lifecycle. Using a combination of algorithms and models, workflow tasks are broken into sub-components (or "jobs") that can be run sequentially (or in parallel) across one or more servers. These sub-components include workflow tasks like asset indexing, mezzanine preparation, closed caption extraction, video or audio correction, loudness management, transcoding, transwrapping, quality control, storage management, publishing, and distribution.

Optional modules/plug-ins are also available to further enhance the RadiantGrid Platform's high-powered capabilities. These modules or plug-ins include: Linear Acoustic AERO Plug-In; Cinnafilm Tachyon Plug-ins; Production Manager Module; Quality Analysis Module; Workflow Orchestration; the Watermark Plug-Ins; Media Publishing Module and more.

The RadiantGrid Platform has been well-received -- and acknowledged -- by some heavy-hitters thus far. In April, the Library of Congress selected the RadiantGrid for archiving all their film, videotape and digitally-created sources. In May, Turner Entertainment Networks International in the UK announced implementing the new software platform. In June, ESPN also moved to the RadiantGrid Platform to collect, manage, transform and distribute match content from recorded games.

Shortly after Wohler's acquisition of RadiantGrid Technologies, the New Media Automation Platform also received the 2012 STAR (Superior Technology Award Recipient) Award, presented by the editorial staff of TV Technology magazine.

The RadiantGrid may very well represent a giant leap forward in content management, processing and delivery. Delivering at faster speeds, with comprehensive user-defined automated workflows -- all while demanding less resources -- the RadiantGrid Platform may well be the next media transformation engine calling your name.

In a recent ad, RadiantGrid and Wohler Technologies reminded their readers, "You can't hit full speed ... unless every cylinder fires." Are you running on all cylinders in your file-based media processing and multi-platform delivery?

For more information about the RadiantGrid, go to www.radiantgrid.com.

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