TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2023 NAB Show?
GEOFF STEDMAN: I think we’re going to see some interesting new technologies that can help media companies accelerate the content versioning process to make content more relevant to different audiences and markets around the world. From subbing and dubbing, to captioning, to editing for different cultural standards, I expect to see new uses of intelligent automation and AI/ML techniques to assist human operators in a way that increases productivity and helps them meet the growing demand for customized versions of content. The integration of automated processes with manual workorders for content versioning and localization will improve efficiency and increase the speed and capacity of these media supply chains.
TVT: What will be your most important product news?
STEDMAN: As a SaaS platform, we release new software updates to the Rally platform every two weeks, meaning that our customers have access to a continuous stream of new features. Rolled up over time, these new capabilities extend the applicability of the platform to every step of the complete media supply chain, from content receipt through content processing and packaging to content distribution. Many of our recent developments on the Rally platform address the unique demands of studio content delivery, as major studios look to benefit from the agility and efficiency of Rally-optimized supply chains to transform content for 4K, HDR and IMF packaging. And, as in broadcast supply chains, integrating editing processes with automated processing enables creative professionals to gain productivity by using time-based metadata and a new Rally capability to spin up Adobe edit sessions in the cloud or new application services such as Colorfront and Cinecert. Finally, we are just about to release a new asset hierarchy capability in Rally, enabling users to use asset relationships to manage their content and metadata, including support for the Movielabs 2030 Vision and its Ontology for Media Creation.
TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?
STEDMAN: The SDVI Rally media supply chain platform is the only solution that optimizes every step of the supply chain from content receipt through content delivery. Rally uses intelligent automation and cloud-native resource management to provision the applications and infrastructure needed for each task, collecting metadata along the way to guide further optimization and downstream activities.
Rally also manages the manual workorders that are needed to complete many QC, compliance and versioning tasks by using time-based metadata harvested from upstream automated processing to point operators to specific points in a media file that need their attention, thereby making their work more efficient and increasing their productivity. Metadata and job information from every step in a supply chain is collected and normalized, enabling operators to gain unprecedented visibility into their media operations through our Rally Insight data visualization and dashboard service
TVT: NAB is celebrating its centennial this year. How many NAB Shows have you been to and do you have any particular standout memories of past shows?
STEDMAN: The 2023 NAB Show will be my 20th show, so I guess I’m also celebrating a milestone of sorts. I have lots of great memories from this show over the years, and one that will always standout to me is when (at a prior company) we hosted a press event in the Fashion Show Mall and the opening line delivered by our CEO was, “Attention Shoppers…” with our blue lights flashing on the front of our product.
