MESA and Signiant are proud to present their upcoming webinar, “Secure File Sharing in the Cloud,” scheduled for Wednesday, June 12 at 11 a.m. PT/ 2 p.m. ET.

The free webcast will feature a panel of experts who will share real-world examples of how to identify and overcome key security challenges in the digital workflow.

The webinar will illustrate the unique challenges faced by our nation’s repository of content and how they are meeting the task of securely compiling, distributing and archiving this enormous amount of content, data and information.

Testronic Labs – the global leader in quality assurance, compliance, and certification services for consumer electronics, film and television, games, and enterprise – has been commissioned to enable standards and reporting for the Voluntary Industry Agreement (VIA). VIA was designed to support the achievement of the EU Action Plan for Energy Efficiency and the reduction of the potential environmental impact of Complex Set-Top Boxes (CSTBs). Testronic is working closely with CSTB service providers, equipment manufacturers, software providers, and component manufactures to support the goals of the VIA and help companies adhere to the terms of the agreement. The objective of the VIA, and the intention of the agreement signatories, is to move the industry and the devices that are central to it, towards environmentally sound practices which will ultimately be beneficial to consumers and other end users.

The VIA reflects an industry-wide commitment to reducing the potential environmental impact of CSTBs. Major European DTV operators are among the many signatories drawn from the spectrum of the CSTB industry, committed to achieving rapid and effective implementation of the VIA, while continuing to invest in and develop “best of class” CSTB products. It was important to include every step of the DTV ecosystem in the discussion, as the design of set-top boxes and other devices, as well as middleware applications, are all crucial to the effort.

As part of the VIA, every signatory submits the results of a series of tests, which are audited and reported by the industry group. The audits and reports are the core of the self-regulation project, and drive ongoing improvements in environmentally friendly business practices and products. Testronic, based on their exemplary track record and knowledge of the industry, has been asked to execute industry audits, which was managed by the Independent inspector. Testronic is the only company that can support all signatories with testing services for the VIA.

Johan Craeybeckx, CTO of Testronic, stated, “We have been happy to be involved with this project from the very early stages. It not only speaks to Testronic’s core capabilities, but it is the right thing to do. This VIA has put a strong foot forward to ensuring that the DTV industry is an environmentally friendly one. We are delighted to support these efforts and enjoy the opportunity to work with so many of our close colleagues at the many companies involved in the initiative.”

Following the successful initial releases of the exciting new audio format: High Fidelity Pure Audio in Paris last month, early reaction has been extremely positive. Universal, Dolby and QOL, the creators and driving forces behind this, have teamed up to create a collaborative industry group to drive this growing market.

“We have been thrilled with the incredible buzz generated among consumers and retailers worldwide following our Pure Audio releases” said Olivier Robert Murphy, Global Head of New Business at Universal Music and Chairman of the High Fidelity Pure Audio group. “I’m seeing first-hand the excitement created across the whole music Industry sectors as well as among those involved in Blu-ray. Companies are now recognising the format’s potential and the opportunity this represents.”

Jim Bottoms, who leads MESA Europe and has recently been appointed to spearhead the Blu-ray Disc Association’s local and industry activities, has been asked to run the High Fidelity Pure Audio group and its marketing and promotional activity moving forward.

The launch event will take place in London on Thursday 20th June followed by a drinks reception.

Attendance is  strictly limited and by invitation only. Should you be interested in attending or require more details on the event please contact Jim Bottoms at MESA Europe via email: jim@mesaeurope.org

Aspera, Inc., creators of next-generation software technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed, will showcase a complete portfolio of high-speed data transfer software and automation solutions for the broadcast and media industries, and share its expertise in powering digital media workflows across any type of infrastructure at BroadcastAsia (booth #5G2-05). Asia’s largest broadcast industry event takes place on June 18-21 at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.

Cloud-based services have the ability to greatly speed production workflows, increase storage and computing capacity, foster collaboration and reduce infrastructure costs. As the leader in next-generation video and data transport technologies, Aspera has implemented advanced transport and workflow solutions for broadcasters and media companies throughout Asia such as, Amana Group, Arirang TV, Australian Broadcasting Company, Cinema Cloud, CJ PowerCast, Dubsat, Encompass Digital Media, Foxtel, MediaCorp, Phoenix TV and SBS. Aspera’s president, CEO and co-founder Michelle Munson, will share how companies are leveraging the cloud’s many benefits while using advanced technology to solve the technical bottlenecks that can slow its adoption.

• Wednesday June 19—Munson will present on sports broadcasting in the cloud, exploring how high-speed transport technologies can enable broadcasters to take advantage of the cloud for ingest, management, storage and distribution of digital content. Munson will also present a case study on the UEFA Euro 2012 soccer tournament, taking a close look at how the LIVEX On Demand service was used for cloud-based content contribution, publishing and distribution.

• Thursday June 20—Munson will participate in a power panel on “Is cloud broadcasting the future?” Alongside fellow panelists from Shanghai Media Group, Alcatel-Lucent and Shemaroo Entertainment, Munson will discuss issues such as the impact of cloud services on digital entertainment, barriers to rolling out cloud services for the broadcast industry, and strategies to enable the cloud for large-scale broadcast workflows.

At booth #5G2-05 Aspera will showcase the latest innovations in its comprehensive portfolio of high-speed file transfer and automation software that enable broadcasters and media enterprises to deploy on-premise, cloud-based or hybrid infrastructures for complex media workflows including:

Aspera Orchestrator – The Aspera file-based workflow automation platform has been enhanced with full failover support, integrated Active Directory and LDAP support, and multi-tenant capabilities. It also offers an expanded plug-in library for a host of leading transcoding, watermarking, quality control, antivirus, ad insertion, asset management and other solutions.

Aspera On Demand – The platform as a service (PaaS) enables media companies and content service providers to use high-speed fasp™ transport to ingest and distribute large files to and from the Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Windows Azure clouds, and integrate their platforms into media services running in the cloud.

Aspera faspex™ and Aspera Shares – Web applications and mobile clients for fast, ad-hoc file exchange enable collaborative, person-to-person workflows spanning on-premise, cloud and hybrid deployments. The faspex and Shares solutions are uniquely designed to allow media files to be securely transferred between any storage locations (on premise or in cloud) on behalf of users or project groups with privacy, security and fine-grained access control. Aspera will demonstrate sending via faspex dropboxes to Aspera Shares destinations by workgroup, full SAML integration for single sign-on, and configurable distribution lists.

Aspera Sync – The high-performance (10-100X rsync), multidirectional file replication and synchronization solution for remote collaboration and disaster recovery scenarios offers full integration with Aspera Console for global visibility and control of sync sessions across the entire network, advanced file handling options such as file-level de-duplication eliminating unnecessary transfers and reducing storage use, and added support for OSX and Solaris in addition to Windows and Linux.

Aspera Drive - Aspera will preview high-speed synchronization from desktop to cloud with Aspera Drive. Completely integrated with the Aspera high-speed transfer platform, Aspera Drive offers integrated desktop and mobile browsing of remote files, drag-and-drop high-speed upload and download from cloud storage, background file synchronization, and sending and receiving of extremely large files and data sets at global distances for the ultimate secure file distribution experience.

faspex 4.0 – Aspera will preview faspex 4.0, a file sharing and package sending web application tier, which powers the Aspera Drive file-sharing ecosystem. A new project-based approach combines users and user groups with file and directory resources (“Shares”) into project collaboration spaces.

Beta versions of Aspera Drive and faspex 4.0 are expected to be available in Summer 2013.

Join MESA and HITS for an insightful Think Tank discussion on June 18 at 4 p.m. at the Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel. The Think Tank, “From Frame to Finish: What’s Your Digital Content Management Study?” will delve into the evolution and impact of file-based workflows and how they are influencing Hollywood.

From the first frame shot to the global distribution of finished product, every studio is adopting ways to tag, manage and ultimately, monetize their content throughout their new digital supply chain – from production through long-tail distribution.

The Think Tank will be highlighted by a panel of studio experts representing the different pieces of the digital supply chain who are key decision-makers for the content strategy of their organizations.

Mary Yurkovic, Digital Asset Management Community Builder and M&E Industry Consultant, recognized a need in the home entertainment space to bring people together, and is working with MESA and HITS to help organize the event in the hopes of tackling some of the industry’s pressing issues with content strategy.

“The Think Tank works because it gets some of the industry’s top visionary thought leaders together in a non-competitive environment to start to address the issues in the space, but also share some of the solutions that have been successful for them,” Yurkovic says.

The Burbank Think Tank is set for Tuesday, June 18 at 4 p.m. For more information, go to:

http://www.hollywooditsociety.com/events-2/hits-bt2/

To register, go to: https://sferainteractive.wufoo.com/forms/hits-burbank-think-tank/

The Hollywood Post Alliance® announces the opening of the Call for Entries for the 8^th Annual HPA® Awards, which will take place on the evening of November 7^th, 2013 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, CA. Considered the standard bearer for excellence and innovation, the HPA® Awards recognize the achievements of the individuals and companies that have contributed to groundbreaking technologies and creative excellence within the post production industry.

The HPA Awards invite entries in the following competitive categories:

• Outstanding Color Grading-Feature Film
• Outstanding Color Grading-Television
• Outstanding Color Grading-Commercial
• Outstanding Editing-Feature Film
• Outstanding Editing-Television
• Outstanding Editing-Commercial
• Outstanding Sound-Feature Film
• Outstanding Sound-Television
• Outstanding Sound-Commercial
• Outstanding Visual Effects-Feature Film
• Outstanding Visual Effects-Television
• Outstanding Visual Effects-Commercial
• Engineering Excellence Award
• HPA Judges Award for Creativity and Innovation in Post Production

The period of eligibility for the HPA Awards is September 11, 2012 through September 3, 2013. To be considered eligible, work must have debuted domestically and or internationally during this period. Entrants need not be members of the Hollywood Post Alliance or working in the U.S. to submit work for consideration. Lists of previous years’ winners can be found by visiting www.hpaawards.net.

A notable difference in the 2013 competition is expansion in the visual effects categories, which have become more encompassing, focused on a broader section of the visual effects pipeline.

Complete rules, guidelines and entry information are available at: www.hpaawards.net. Submissions for the creative categories will be accepted May 15, 2013 through July 12, 2013 and Early Bird Entries (reduced fee for the creative categories) will be accepted through June 14, 2013. Submissions for the Engineering Excellence Award and the Creativity and Innovation Award will be accepted May 15, 2013 through June 21, 2013. Entrants for the Engineering Excellence Award will be invited to present at a special HPA judging event in early August.

Contact Eileen Kramer at 213-614-0860 or write to ekramer@hpaonline.com for information about sponsorship opportunities for the 2013 HPA Awards show. For more information about the HPA Awards, visit www.hpaawards.net or call 213.614.0860.

Over 440 members of the entertainment IT community gathered last week for the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) annual meeting.  The Hollywood IT Summit held at Pepperdine University in Malibu addressed key industry issues such as big data, cloud computing, mobile products strategy, production and distribution digital workflows, and the expanding ecosystem for metadata. Program highlights included all-star panels of movie industry Chief Information Officers (representing Fox, Warner, Lionsgate, CAA and RLJ Entertainment) and Chief Technology Officers (from Fox, Sony, Warner, Disney, and Dreamworks).

“The academic environment sparked a remarkable, creative AND collaborative spirit among the speakers and audience of esteemed qualified attendees.  This is the type of technology community gathering that will truly have a lasting impact on our industry direction as we digitize all our enterprise, production and distribution processes,” says HITS Executive Director Devendra Mishra.

The conference program also featured presentations by solutions providers and their studio partners, including sessions by: Belkin, Savvis, Scenechronize, WatchDox ,  Aspera, MarkLogic, OneScreen, Oracle, QlikView,  Rackspace, Rovi and Sony Media Cloud Services.  Additional sponsors of the Summit included HP, Information Builders, Signiant and Zaszou.

The Hollywood IT Summit is produced jointly by the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) and Variety magazine in collaboration with Pepperdine University.  The next HITS conference is its 2nd Annual Digital Marketing & Analytics Summit, which is scheduled for September 27 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Los Angeles.

The Hollywood IT Society facilitates discussions among information technology leaders in the movie industry, directed by an advisory board of representatives from all major studios and independents.  With events and initiatives supported by over 40 solutions providers, HITS committees and workgroups focus on vital issues such as metadata, digital workflows, content management, security, business intelligence, and digital marketing and analytics.

HITS is managed by the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA), a consortium of industry associations and member companies involved in IT, digital supply chain, content security and 2nd screen.

For more information about the Society and its events visit:  www.hollywoodITsociety.com

Last month CDSA had the pleasure of attending an Open House event thrown by Los Angeles Duplication & Broadcast (LADB) at their Burbank facility that is right across the street from Disney. It was a high-end affair with a tented red carpet entrance, exquisite hors d’oeuvres and a well-dressed army of servers and valets.

Eric Collins, LADB’s president and co-founder, was giving hands on demonstrations of their ultra-secure and monitored mobile delivery unit and their staff offered tours for VIPs of their first class facility that handles a multitude of “just-in-time” services for their studio and broadcast clientele. Robert Seidenglanz, LADB’s co-founder, also took time to guide guests through their facility showcasing its expanded capacity due to an efficient workflow strategy that helps new and existing customers take advantage of their companywide customer service culture of being reliable, fast and cutting edge to deliver on just about any need proposed by a content creator or production unit.

It was a lovely evening but looking back on the event it is their business culture around quality and content security that keeps resonating. In the tented area outside of the front entrance their consultant on security, Tom Carlson, gave an overview presentation throughout the event on the strategy that he helped LADB create where a commitment to both quality work and security is a cornerstone to their value proposition to customers.

In addition to being a CDSA certified facility, LADB has dual ISO certifications (9001 and 27001) and an obvious strict adherence to the MPAA’s best practices for facilities working with their member companies. LADB is one of the only small companies committed to this comprehensive, 3-pronged security approach that have been validated by third party oversight. What’s so impressive is how the structured process created around these industry standards/initiatives drives their entire business from the drivers and front desk staff all the way up to the senior management team.

And, the idea that LADB understands the importance of risk and accept the stewardship role/responsibility against all risk threats with their customers content whether internal or external, deliberate or accidental demonstrates that LADB is a thought leader for smaller companies in the production chain.

What is also notable about their formal program and commitment around security is not only their internal practices on client satisfaction, quality management and education it is the idea that they have processes in place to continually improve both quality and security service delivery.

By having a mechanism for monitoring and measuring each internal department (IT, HR, Operations, Purchasing, Sales) activity with client’s content, through both internal and external oversight and a commitment to change management, they are exemplary in approach with an eye to the future. This is critical for any business working in our industry – a commitment to continually evolve with the technologies that help the creative community make the best content in the most efficient and secure workflow possible.

For additional information on Los Angeles Duplication & Broadcast you can visit their website at http://www.ladb.com/

Testronic Labs, the global leader in quality assurance, localization, and certification services for consumer electronics, film and television, games, enterprise, and publishing, has been named an Authorized Test Center for the HTC Connect™ testing and compliance program. HTC created the HTC Connect program to offer consumer electronics manufacturers the opportunity to create an improved sound and visual standard when connecting HTC® devices with their consumer electronics.

Successfully tested consumer electronics from HTC Connect participating manufacturers become eligible to display the HTC Connect logo. For the consumer, this logo will indicate that wireless audio and video may be sent through their HTC smartphones to in-home and in-car electronics displaying the logo.  Testronic is the first testing center in Europe to become certified by HTC for this program.

Johan Craeybeckx, CTO of Testronic, stated, “At Testronic, we are fully engaged in supporting the evolution of the consumer experience, as it changes and expands. Smartphones are changing the way end-users experience entertainment content, and they can now enjoy rich-media content in almost any environment.  We are delighted to work with our colleagues at HTC in verifying that high levels of connectivity standards are being met with their products.”

Nicklas Jonsson, vice president, global partner management at HTC, commented, “Our vision is for our customers to easily stream their favorite high-quality video and audio from their smartphone into their home or car. The HTC Connect program builds upon our innovation in smartphones with leading consumer electronics brands. We rely upon our authorized test centers, like Testronic, to help us maintain an outstanding level of quality, integration and performance.”

Testronic’s HTC Connect testing and compliance operations will be headquartered out of their Belgium facility.

Signiant, the market leader in intelligent file movement software for media and entertainment, today announced that the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, which celebrates the world’s best mountain and adventure themed films and books, has standardized on Signiant’s Media Shuttle file sharing solution for digital film submission and distribution at its annual festival and world tour. Requiring fast, reliable delivery of massive HD files with security, acceleration and tracking, the Festival selected Media Shuttle to easily upload, download and transfer large files from a shared file system, providing significant time and cost savings for festival organizers and contributors.

A flagship program of The Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival is a nine-day event that continues throughout the year as an international film tour featuring about 740 film screenings across every continent, including Antarctica. Banff will rely on Media Shuttle to receive more than 300 film entries from filmmakers worldwide, as well as promotional content from partners to be used throughout the Festival program.

Media Shuttle defines a new class of file sharing solutions tuned for the movement of large files – high-value digital assets that are tens or hundreds of gigabytes in size – and provides simple interfaces delivered from the cloud, enterprise-class security, acceleration and storage control.  Media Shuttle portals can be quickly configured in one of three modes – Send, Share or Submit – to flexibly support the needs of any project, team or media enterprise in a single, multi-purpose solution. By combining the best attributes of online file sharing and accelerated file transfer software, Media Shuttle offers a viable, next-generation alternative to FTP servers.

“We have filmmakers in far-flung locales around the world submitting content on-the-fly, and we need to make the submission process as easy as possible for them. Past delivery solutions could not support the file size and transfer speeds required to deliver films of this complexity and quality,” said Woody MacPhail, Producer of the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival and World Tour at The Banff Centre. “With Media Shuttle, we’re able to transfer large files quickly in any form, access them anywhere and not limit the type of content received.  We want our filmmakers focused on creating their content, and not file delivery. Media Shuttle lets them really embrace the lifestyle they are filming – last-minute deadlines, living in the instant, capturing the moment.”

Following the Festival, Media Shuttle will be used to distribute files to broadcast partners such as National Geographic, and to support the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, which screens films in approximately 40 countries around the world.  Many locations receive unique master file uploads – typically a terabyte of HD film – often with regional dialect.

“The host organization in each tour location chooses a program that reflects the interests of their local audiences and exchanging digital assets of this size, frequency and specification can be complex,” added MacPhail. “We needed a delivery solution that is reliable and effortless for our host organizations. Media Shuttle gives us the flexibility to work with a wide range of global partners regardless of those elements.”

The Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival will be held October 26 to November 3, 2013.  It is accepting film submissions from May 7 through August 6, 2013.

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