SOLUTIONS

All Ingest Solution

All ingest types in one solution ― file, social media, camera, tape, feed, stream, field, remote, studio, and archive

x-dream-group gained a lot of experince by building ingest workflow of different sizes and functionality.

A sophisticated production environment requires a proper Ingest Solution that addresses the needs of the operations, making use of the ingested essences and assets, as well as making those essences and assets available. 

Our All Ingest Solution covers all types of sources in and outside your facility. It offers user interfaces as needed by the use case. It allows automated processing where possible.

Master Ingest Puzzles

Why is ingesting such an important topic?

It's been a long time since "Ingest" meant to simply bring a video file into a post-production application. Nowadays, the term "Ingest" describes the starting point of a complex and fully integrated file-based post-production and publication. Needless to say, production workflows also include various processing steps. Each step requires its own set of essence files and metadata. Such essences files usually include, among other things, video, audio, graphics, and subtitle files. Metadata can be technical, descriptive, business, or for control. It's clear "Ingest" developed towards a versatile topic.

But where is the origin of all these files and data? While the answer might be different per customer use case, it will most often be a combination of central (central ingest desk), decentral (kiosk systems, editing stations), remote (journalists abroad, regional offices), B2B (movies, commercials, news, sports), and archive ingest. Other sources might be databases (e.g. rights). Most often, ingesting is a manual process, but some sources (e.g. metadata) might be available for automatic retrieval. Moreover, several processing actions can be automated prior to the essences finally being handed over to the production systems.

Typical Network Architecture

Titel

Central Ingest Station

The Central Ingest Station is the main place for ingest operations. It's usually located in a room where all new content is brought to. Several dedicated workstations are used by a team of ingest specialists to bring files from various storage devices into the sales and delivery environment. While doing so, files are previewed, selected, pre-cut, and stitched. Technical metadata is automatically generated and descriptive metadata is added manually. The product used for this function is Woody IN2IT Access. It can transcode and re-wrap the files to the platform-internal format.

A variant of central ingest is offered when the source devices are attached to a server or files are being moved there before the ingest operations. In this case, Woody IN2IT Exchange is the right choice. Most often via watchfolders new files are detected and automatically ingested with standard metadata. If metadata is to be manually set Woody IN2IT Access can act as a client to IN2IT Exchange.

In other cases the need is more about starting an automatic workflow for a bunch of files. In this case x-dream-media's Workflow Starter allows you to remotely browse, preview, select, and segment video files via a WebGUI. Compared to Woody's IN2IT, the x-dream-media Workflow Starter sends the files for processing to x-dream-media's Workflow Manager (WFM). WFM orchestrates transcoding, re-wrapping, QC, virus scanning, and other operations. It's usually used to manage larger amounts of material.


Desktop or Kiosk Ingest

In addition to the central ingest, desktop or kiosk ingest offers journalists and creatives to bring source material into the production environment from their workspaces or dedicated computers close to their desks. A dedicated computer allows addressing the risk of viruses professionally. Furthermore, it saves costs when expensive storage devices like Sony XDCAM HD are required. The functionality provided is identical to the central ingest desks. The product of choice is again Woody's IN2IT Access in combination with x-dream-media's WFM and other tools for virus scanning and QC.

To serve a larger number of journalists at their desks for occasional ingests, the Upload web client of IN2IT Exchange is a cost-effective alternative. Please see "Remote Journalists" below.

Social Media Ingest

There is the saying "What happens, happens first on Youtube". So ingesting social media content is taking content from end-user publishing portals back to production environments. Often, a journalist has found an item of interest and faces the challenge of retrieving and ingesting the file. Download tools can be used in combination with the usual ingest tools. A more efficient method is using one integrated tool. In our solution, we use Woody IN2IT Social for directly downloading and ingesting from social media and web portals.

Live Feed Ingest

Live sources can be provided by satellite feeds, lease line, or studio transmissions. Traditionally, video is provided as HD-SDI signals. The recording usually happens as a "crash-record" or scheduled record. For a fully integrated multi-camera or multi-feed recording, our solution is based on Woody IN2IT Live ingest software. It supports the recording of NDI-based IP studio signals as well as many types of web streams.

When metadata handling is less importang during live recording Libero Systems Ingest is a perfect alternative for recording to disk and processing via x-dream-media's WFM workflow orchestrator.

For bridging between live sources of different type like SDI, SMTP2021, RTMP, WebRTC, ABR stream, etc. we recommend Liberso Systems Hybrid software.

And for conecting remote interview guests from their mobile phones, laptops or PCs we provide you with MultiCAM'S AirBridge. It converts your master control room to a video call in center. For more static or reocuring connections Medialooks Video Transport is the video engineers swiss knife.


Tape Ingest

Even though tape might be dead, archives often still consist of tapes. Sometimes tapes are still used in production or for transportation. Consequently, our ingest solution addresses this by making use of Libero Systems Ingest software in combination with Woody's IN2IT Exchange.

Remote Journalists & Contributors

Although journalists in the field and contributors provide content occasionally and in smaller volumes, there are many of them. Therefore, a simplified way to up- and download video files with related metadata is required. Tools have to be accessible globally and intuitive to use. We address these needs by Woody' upload WebGUI for IN2IT Exchange very nicely. It allows to contribute from remote directly into the production chain as an operator on-site would do.

A special variant of remote ingest is given when firstly a workorder is received and afterwards a production result is handed back. In this case x-dream-media's "x-dream-Fabrik File Exchange" is a great solution for extending on-premises workflows by integratiing external prodution partners. A workorder is received via a so called "room". Technically, these rooms are websites that take in the essence files to work on and further metadata that describes the workorder. The contributor has access to their own room as a permanently registered user or they are invited by an operator to a temporary room.

Remote Offices & Facilities

Staff in remote offices or production facilities requires tight integration into the systems of the main facility in order to be as productive as possible. Larger facilities can be equipped as the main facility. Smaller facilities get provided with a fully featured but smaller scale system. In both cases, the users interact with a local system that sends and retrieves the files and metadata to and from the main facility as a background process.

B2B Content Exchange

Today's content production and publishing happens across collaborating companies. Studios send material to post-production facilities who, after editing, forward to agencies who then forward to broadcasters and publishers. A high volume of video files, including metadata, needs to be sent via a safe, secure, and guaranteed method. Within our ingest solution, we provide market leading technology to address these needs. Cross-team workflows are implemented via our hybrid workflow orchestration layer.

Processing

After files and metadata have been ingested, fully automated actions can take place, such as transcoding and re-wrapping to a house format or browsing proxies, quality control, audio processing (e.g. normalising), or video processing (e.g. standard conversions). Finally, assets (files + metadata) are handed over to the production system(s). For instance, while a high-resolution file is moved and checked into the production asset management system (e.g. Interplay PAM), a low resolution browsing proxy is made available to the media asset management system (MAM) or the newsroom control system (NRCS). Squared Paper's Busby is the backbone of our ingest solution. It orchestrates and processes the ingest workflows. Built-in user interfaces or x-dream-media's OneGUI provide an overview of any volume of ingested assets.

service architecture of our Ingest Solution

Ingest master solution service setup

The Ingest Management System (IMS) is the heart of our Ingest Solution. It orchestrates the ingest workflow operations but also exposes user interfaces for operators to interact and monitor. All ingested sources, as well as delivery targets, are integrated within the IMS. For the IMS, we've selected Squared Paper's Busby.

For customers with distributed organisations, the IMS can be deployed at every facility and connected to act as one global system via a bridging module. In larger installations the IMS is part of the all over Production Management System that orchestrates and integrates all the facilites building blocks and teams to become one efficient end2end business process.

All ingest solution partners

Woody Technologies

Central and decentral file-, as well as social media ingest

Libero Systems

Tape ingest and live feed recording

Capella Systems

File transcoding

Flow Works

Quality control

Squared Paper

B2B file transfer and workflow automation

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