The secret life of Walter Mitty is a 2013 movie directed and starred by Ben Stiller. During the film, the character who gives its name to the title is the bored manager of the photographic negatives of the Life magazine. After a confusion and a mistake in the mailing of a roll with the cover page´s photo, Mitty gets himself involved in an endless number of adventures trying to recover it. Something that would not have happened if the magazine had counted with a proper Media Exchange solution.
This kind of solution is essential for media companies with multiple sites that need to centralize their media files in one location for a quick, safe and efficient transfer and management.
Centralized, safe and fast exchange
Imagine a news service from a national broadcasting station and the communication with its regional sites. During the production process, these ones must make pieces, reports and videos quickly available to the central studios. In the same way, these provincial units must also be able to feed from the media resources of the national headquarters and other provincial units.
Let’s illustrate it with an example. The story of the day is a devastating fire that is consuming the south part of the country. We also have some declarations from the President, who is on a trip around the north provinces. In addition, we received the scope that a person has been arrested in another location of the country as a responsible for the fire. In all these different sites, the network has journalists covering the news. It seems logical that all this media transferred by reporters should be centralized and available for download in a single tool.
The core of this solution is VSNExplorer Exchange, a centralized content hub integrated into the VSNExplorer suite. It allows immediate file upload and download transfers between different exchange points. The user can customize the destination where the file should be downloaded and the file transcoding options. It also allows subscription to production categories (VSNExplorer PAM) to automate transfers once a file is ingested into them.
Additionally, other departments of the network itself can have access to the media as it is centralized in a tool accessible from a web interface. For example, those in charge of social networks and online media could download the news pieces to publish content.
Obviously, guaranteeing a secure exchange and the permissions to access the archives is a priority. Not all the employees from an organization can have access to the same files. VSNExplorer Exchange allows the management of the permissions on each asset to secure that they are only accessible to the right persons.
Beyond the simple transfer
However, a Media Exchange solution should not focus exclusively on exchange. Another important aspect is content quality control. Going back to our previous example, it is useless to have a president’s statement about the fire if the audio format is corrupted. Or images of the fire with an incorrect color balance.
Having a quality control system like VSNQC, integrated in the VSNExplorer suite, makes this step easier. This tool allows a detailed analysis of the files in search of audio, image or format faults and checks that the video meets the quality standards set by the user.
Last but not least, having all the information of who, what and how our archives have been downloaded is key. The VSN’s Media Exchange solution integrates VSNExplorer BI, a system that allows the production of complete reports on each asset to value its performance.
An example of the application of this solution is the VSN’s project for FORTA, that allows the Production Centres of all the TV Stations from the autonomous regions of Spain and FORTA headquarters to transfer and exchange between them all types of media files (news, sports, advertising, programs, films and TV series, or any other type of content).
Probably, if Walter Mitty had worked in a FORTA television station using VSN’s solution, his photographer would not have had any problem with the file transfer. Neither would he have left New York, or experienced the countless adventures seen in the movie, but for our day-to-day life outside of fiction, perhaps it is better to play it safe.
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