Grass Valley has made a suite of announcements about its cloud-based platform GV AMPP, including a new collaboration with Amazon Web Services and plans to offer playout for free from this summer.
The company said it is working with AWS to provide media and entertainment customers with the technical-backing to transition their businesses to more a flexible, cloud-orientated future.
Andrew Cross, CEO, Grass Valley, said, “With Grass Valley Media Universe (GVMU), we enable our products and third-party partners to work together in the cloud and deliver new software and services that improve live content production and distribution workflows. This collaborative approach with AWS supports this strategy. It means our customers will benefit from a greater pool of talent and products for their every need. We are delighted to strengthen our relationship with AWS and look forward to working together.”
GVMU allows media companies to use both on-premise solutions – be that switchers, cameras, and asset management tools – and combine those with cloud technologies to build live production environments that suit their needs today while adapting to future demands.
Plans for playout
Grass Valley will offer customers free playout from GV AMPP from June 1st, as it aims to make the cloud-native solution accessible to more media and entertainment companies.
“Making AMPP Playout free is an exciting move and one that will change the media technology landscape,” said Cross. “AMPP has been created to meet the needs of modern media companies and has the flexibility and functionality to become the de facto operating system for media workflows. Just like any operating system, there are some core capabilities that should be included because they are essential for most applications.
“We believe that playout is one of these features and that it should not be a premium/chargeable feature. By removing the cost of our basic AMPP Playout product license, we will make it accessible to more customers, enabling them to deliver the content they create and manage on AMPP effectively,” he added.
Grass Valley said AMPP Playout’s agility gives its customers the ability to trial new types of live content without up-front investment and enables them to increase yield-per-asset.
Unreal Engine
Grass Valley has also agreed a deal with Epic Games to bring Unreal Engine to GV AMPP, enabling users to leverage the real-time rendering system natively with all Grass Valley video technology.
“Our customers will be able to leverage Unreal Engine to build virtual sets, augmented reality, and graphics into their storytelling, produced either locally or in the cloud, thanks to AMPP,” explained Cross.
“We are proud that Grass Valley is bringing native integration of Unreal Engine into AMPP,” added Bernt Johannessen, Unreal Engine business director for broadcast at Epic Games. “This new integration allows companies and individuals to build video products on Unreal Engine that directly integrate into broadcast infrastructure that can run anywhere, on-prem or in the cloud. With native support for Unreal Engine in their modern cloud-based platform, Grass Valley is opening up valuable opportunities for broadcasters to create dynamic workflows seamlessly.”
