Grass Valley Group Previews Internet Technology—New WebAble Tool Suite Will Enable Distribution of Text, Graphics, Video—The Grass Valley Group plans to share more details about its WebAble technology at the National Association of Broadcasters convention (NAB 2000) in Las Vegas in April. Fueled by increasingly accessible bandwidth, the new media age is all about content, and content is a lot about video. The Grass Valley Group's Profile® XP Media Platform already offers the world's best system for storing and recording high-resolution video. Using the technology described today, Web publishers will be able to locate, access, and manipulate their media assets (video, audio, and metadata), design Web pages with a host of standards-based tools, and repurpose high-quality video to the Web with the push of a button. "The Grass Valley Group is the best at enabling high-resolution distribution today. Now, with WebAble, we'll be the best at enabling text, graphics, and low-resolution distribution of content for broadcasters," said Tim Thorsteinson, president and chief operating officer of the Grass Valley Group. "WebAble represents the first of the technologies that we're going to create to lead broadcasters to the Web—to enable them to enjoy Media Without Bounds. This is what the Web is all about—point, click, and go—and this is what the Grass Valley Group is all about." Profile XP Media Platform: Internet FriendlyA key enabler to the groundbreaking approach of the WebAble technology is the Profile XP Media Platform. Unlike traditional dedicated-function servers, the Profile XP Media Platform supports all popular formats for content creation and distribution, including high-definition, standard-definition, MPEG2, MPEG1, DVCPRO, RealNetworks, and Microsoft Windows Media Technologies. The Grass Valley Group's Profile XP Media Platform already offers the world's market-leading system for storing and recording high-resolution video. And as a digital media leader, the Grass Valley Group works with preeminent content producers and distributors worldwide, ranging from ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and CNN in the United States to BBC, BskyB, TV4, SVT (Swedish Television), NOB (Netherlands) in Europe, and China Central, Star TV (India), Tokyo Broadcasting (Japan), and the Seven Network (Australia) in the Pacific Region. WebAble will give these kinds of broadcasters an effective approach for delivery of content over the Internet that minimizes required investment and greatly streamlines Web production. With a rich heritage of openness, the Profile XP Media Platform uses Internet Protocol (IP) as a transport mechanism and supports a variety of standards, including MPEG2, Fibre Channel, and DVCPRO. Based on the Windows NT operating system, the platform features an interoperable PCI-bus architecture and supports the Win-32 application programming interface (API). Long considered the cornerstone of the digital transition, more of the world's broadcast video is stored on the Profile XP Media Platform than on any other video server. The Profile XP Media Platform also includes the Grass Valley Group's ContentShare™ software platform for accessing and managing digital assets regardless of their type or location. ContentShare software is the key to easily linking video to its related text, audio, and graphics assets, which is essential in any Web publishing operation. Built using Internet-standard technologies, the ContentShare platform uses the Java development language for platform independence and the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) standards for describing and formatting data. The ContentShare platform currently provides tools for managing and accessing media assets, with a special focus on video, within a broadcast facility's Intranet. "Our focus from day one has been to provide our customers the flexibility to deliver content-rich experiences through whatever digital pipelines they choose. Anyone who doubts that the availability of these pipelines will shift our industry's focus should go talk to AOL and Time Warner," said Thorsteinson, referring to the companies that earlier this month agreed to a $350 billion merger. How Do I Get My Media On The Web?It's the question that everyone in the world who wants to use video on their Web site is asking. And the answer must encompass a solution that moves at the same fast-paced rate as today's broadcast production techniques. "Today anyone can buy encoding solutions for Internet video formats and Web publishing programs," said thorsteinson. "The need is for a system which makes the workflow simple, fast, and powerful—despite the multiple sources of information." The Grass Valley Group has responded by combining the strengths of the Profile XP Media Platform, the ContentShare software platform, and any Web server. The resulting WebAble technology will make creating video-enabled Web pages a matter of click, drag, and go. "This technology will provide browse-quality access to any high-resolution video on Profile, newsroom scripts, graphics, and any information from ContentShare-compliant applications and make organizing this information for the Web as easy as point and click," said Thorsteinson. "Moreover, WebAble technologies will allow Web publishers to access high-resolution video information the minute the material is recorded on a server. This bypasses today's manual processes which make breaking news old news before the Web site is even published." Media Without BoundsThe Grass Valley Group's Media Without Bounds initiative is focused around three areas that encompass all facets of content creation and distribution: Media Software, which enables widespread media access and centralized device monitoring and control; Media Connectivity, which bridges the worlds of traditional video routing and standard computer networks; and Media Platforms, which provide video storage, production, and manipulation while supporting multiple formats and resolutions and open architectures necessary to meet both the current and future needs of content creators and distributors. The Media Without Bounds initiative is based on a belief that content creators need the freedom to access, create, and distribute content whether they are in the same building or across the world, without being impeded by format, resolution, protocol, or geography. Substantiating that belief, the Grass Valley Group today also issued a string of product announcements that touch every facet of content creation and distribution. From managing digital assets using browser technologies to offering robust IP networking and SNMP-based software for the remote monitoring and configuration of core production systems, the company made clear its intention to serve an industry transitioning from broadcasting to digicasting. By providing broadcasters with the greatest elasticity possible, the Media Without Bounds Internet initiative offers an unprecedented array of distribution choices, from traditional broadcasting techniques to those utilizing hub, central-casting, and push-pull approaches. "No matter where the eyeballs are, the Grass Valley Group will help our customers provide the content they want in whatever form they demand," said Thorsteinson. The Grass Valley Group is a privately held digital broadcast and video company at the forefront of the transition to digital transmission and video content production and has more than $2 billion of equipment installed worldwide. Whether it's distributing video over the air, through digital broadcast facilities and across standard data networks, or providing the industry's best video storage and production products, the Grass Valley Group has the digital solutions for the world's media markets. Its product lines include the Emmy award-winning Profile digital video server, Emmy-award winning Grass Valley™ switchers, and Grass Valley router and modular lines. For the latest Grass Valley Group product information, see www.grassvalleygroup.com. # |
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