Exclusives

NAB 2017: 5th Kind Touts Aspera Integration; Crawford Sees Metadata Blossom

LAS VEGAS — 5th Kind CEO Stephen Cronan was all smiles at the Aspera booth at the NAB Show.

In addition to a completely revamped web site, the Culver City, Calif.-based company debuted a new version of its digital asset management (DAM) application, featuring streamlined ingest, distribution and review workflow for dailies work across desktop and mobile. Aspera transfer capability is included, as its the recommended method or uploading and downloading using 5th Kind.

“People love the new redesign and the unique way we approach the problem, and it’s great to be here with Aspera,” Cronan said.

Using 5th Kind and its digital asset management (DAM) solutions as a workflow backbone to sync projects securely, studios have been working with the Culver City, Calif.-based company for years now, and the latest upgrade to 5th Kind’s service includes a streamlined experience, drag-and-drop functionality, and a contextual sharing module, allowing for a streamlined experience for dailies review, distribution, photo kills, bidding workflows and more. Along with advanced security, the offering handles infinitely configurable meta structures, and includes
layers of automation with facial and object detection, speech-to-text conversion, IMDb and Google Maps integration.

“All layers of the application have been researched to use the most modern design patterns, deployment automation and quality assurance automation for fast user experience, deployment and upgrades,” Cronan added. “We’ve been receiving a lot of positive reactions as we’ve started to demonstrate the new product. We’re excited about the road ahead.”

Also at the NAB Show:

Crawford Media Services

What a difference a couple years makes, according to Corinne Whitney, director of content services for Crawford Media Services. Just a few NAB Shows ago, people would look at you funny if you said the word metadata.

“Now it’s on every billboard, every screen, everybody’s minds,” she said at the show.

crawfordnab Her company has undertaken a problem that’s proven to be a pain point for many clients: once you have the data, what do you do with it?

“Enabling new revenue opportunities is the big goal, and people are realizing automatic metadata services only get you so far, and a lot of those services can be lacking,” Whitney said. “We get them over that finish line.”

She said Crawford has found that more and more content companies are looking to better mine their catalogues, find new opportunities to monetize what would usually just sit in the vault. Getting the metadata associated with those titles is the place to start, she said.

Vubiquity

On her way out the door of yet another successful NAB Show, Darcy Antonellis, CEO of Vubiquity shared her thoughts on what she saw at the show.

“I think companies are finally beginning to realize the need to shift to IP, and what that means for their businesses,” she said. “My biggest takeaway is that there’s a diverse set of incumbents that are dealing with that shift.”

VUBIQUITYnab While Vubiquity does have several irons in the fire, there were new partnerships that had yet to be announced, but were coming soon, Antonellis added, while also sharing that her company is making more investments in the data and analytics end of things.

“It’s one thing to be talking about it, it’s another thing to implement it,” she said.

Just ahead of the show, Vubiquity announced a linear distribution partnership with media services company MX1, which pairs Vubiquity’s linear transport portfolio with MX1’s service infrastructure and content aggregation management and delivery technology. The goal is to give broadcasters, affiliates, rights holders and content aggregators the ability to aggregate content and through a single platform.

“We selected MX1 to provide the necessary innovative media technologies to support Vubiquity’s linear growth. We look forward to continuing to build this relationship,” Antonellis said.