Telestream and Interra

BEST PRACTICES: Automated Syndication with Telestream and Interra

Customer Challenge

A significant portion of Discovery's digital media business revenue is dependent on repurposing their existing content. The digital content must be efficiently repackaged for distribution to a variety of media outlets worldwide including playout, VOD, mobile and web. In addition to speed, the end product must meet Discovery's quality standards in order to protect their brand.

Signiant Solution

Discovery had a variety of technologies and manual processes in place to prepare the content packages, transcode it and check the package quality. The individual technologies were fairly well understood but they required manual tasks and were prone to error - so Discovery chose Signiant to automate their digital media workflow. In addition to Signiant's well known file transfer technology, Discovery took advantage of Signiant's workflow tools and extensible product line to automate their workflow and monetize their media assets quickly and cost effectively. As part of the workflow, Discovery required status checks along the way and needed instant notification if there were any issues. The end solution resulted in Discovery capturing revenue faster and more efficiently (less errors and manual process) by implementing a highly automated and scale-able process.

Primary Solution Components

The solution required a combination of the following technologies:

  • Signiant software and APIs for file transport, central management and workflow
  • Discovery's custom DNE XML application for defining the content package for each workflow job
  • Telestream Flip Factory to conform and transcode the digital content into the specified formats
  • Interra Baton QC application software to ensure the end product met Discovery's quality standards

Solution Details

Using Signiant's Central Media Manager (CMM) the workflows were built with a series of components including transcoders and QC applications available from Telestream and Interra. The CMM initiated the workflow and monitored the status for errors or success from beginning to end through each component. Each job was initiated and controlled through a series of programmable Signiant components which moved the media packages through the workflow and ultimately to Discovery's business partners.

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Discovery

"We had an extensive proof of concept review of several vendors to find a solution that could take full advantage of available bandwidth and deal with the specifications appropriately. Signiant not only integrated seamlessly with our existing technologies but they also had all the right relationships with key channel partners and common tool sets that we use to manage a lot of our workflows. They know the media industry and what it needs."

-Bart Palmer, SVP Media Engineering, Discovery Communications