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Telestream: Who will tame your file-based beast?

As I think about the state of the industry at this year’s IBC, I find myself reflecting on the constant churn we see across our industry. While change can and should be viewed as a good thing when you’re selling solutions, it’s hard to imagine that customers share that enthusiasm when it comes to the constant onslaught of new formats and standards, the recent wave of company mergers and acquisitions, or the latest lofty vision statement. As a matter of fact, from my conversations with them it’s clear that customers are growing weary of the noise and rapid pace of change they feel forced to adopt.

From Telestream’s ‘vantage point’ I can say that we are sympathetic to this feeling and as a result we will continue to help our customers remove the barriers to getting their jobs done efficiently. We will continue to focus on automating more and more of the repetitive processes and intelligently converting media and its associated metadata with the minimum amount of human intervention.

If you think about it, computers and software are quite capable of making very informed decisions (especially with a complete set of metadata). I wonder why there aren’t more companies innovating in this area. Everyone aims to tame the file-based beast, but few companies have the wherewithal to reduce complexity so customers actually see an improvement on their bottom line.

If I were a customer at this year’s IBC show, I would be looking at the types of technologies and the companies behind them that will be supporting us as we continue to wrangle with file-based workflows. Who clearly gets my unique challenges and will they still be here next year? What tools am I really going to need to lower the costs of creating and distributing content? How can I better utilise my people and their talents?

Everyone says they have the answer, but that’s the hard part at a trade show: how can you find a solution you can invest in that will grow with you without tremendous re-investment every other year? How can you be sure you are choosing a company that considers you a partner versus a revenue opportunity?

And when it comes to the cloud, make sure you’re clear in how you can make the best use of it. There are definitely advantages to some workflows, but we’re a long way from seeing it used for all media workflows. Finally,it’s time to start talking about UHDTV, not just 4K, and all the challenges it brings beyond a 4K raster with regards to frame rates, colour spaces, audio, etc. All of these characteristics will bring unique, and in some cases extraordinary challenges to file-based workflows.

At the end of the day, our customers create content that needs to be engaging and cost effective for their viewers. They need a partner they can trust who will minimise the churn at every opportunity. I want to see us remove barriers to creativity, distribution, and profitability by continuing to build intelligence into our software so that our customers can focus more time on their business.