Telestream Spotlights Remote Working Capabilities as Business Driver Post-Pandemic

Nevada City, California, August 26^th, 2020 — “Working remotely has been key to the broadcast and media industry during the pandemic. While we’re still learning the new normal, it’s clear that remote work will significantly change the M&E landscape going forward,” so said Scott Murray, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Telestream, a global leader in file-based media workflow orchestration, media streaming and delivery technologies.

Murray was speaking at the company’s virtual press and analyst briefing, where Telestream announced a strategic development focus on remote working capabilities within enterprise-scale broadcast and media operations.

Telestream’s remote working initiative targets certain audiences, specifically media professionals working on live and file-based production and post-production workflows. This includes editors, post-production engineering and operations, production engineers and technicians. Also, they include video quality assurance personnel working at content producers and engineering/operations personnel working for linear and OTT distribution companies. 

What differentiates Telestream from other broadcast technology vendors is the breadth of capabilities that can be leveraged by media professionals. These include running media processing workflows on remote workstations and in the cloud, being able to view mezzanine and professional-grade files in a browser, operating production measurement and analysis tools remotely, and monitoring video quality assurance over distribution networks at small and large scale.

“We have done our homework during lockdown and it’s clear that no other vendor can duplicate what Telestream offers with GLIM, remote access to PRISM, inherent monitoring capabilities in the linear and OTT IQ solutions, and, in many ways, the extension of Vantage media processing to the cloud with Vantage Cloud Port,” commented Scott Murray. 

GLIM is a new product, introduced by Telestream in July with the aim of ‘playing the unplayable.’ It is designed for ingest QC, engineering, master control, news, post-production, and more. GLIM enables media professionals to play full resolution, mezzanine grade media files from their centralized storage over the Internet in a web browser.  

GLIM was developed to solve well known remote work challenges where remote employees waste hours every day downloading mezzanine grade media files just so they can be played back. Many collaborative video production applications require transcoding prior to uploading to the site. GLIM allows users to play files immediately, from a browser interface, without any delays caused by transcoding and uploading. It supports playback, frame scrubbing & stepping and display of file properties and metadata. The GLIM playback experience is vastly superior to remote and virtual desktop techniques.

Telestream’s PRISM waveform monitor can be optioned to provide both SDI and IP-based Waveform Monitoring tools required in operations, compliance, quality control and post- production workflows up to 8K resolution. The PRISM user interface and API are remotely accessible, enabling remote work and social distancing production environments, which are especially relevant in the current pandemic. PRISM enables multi-user flexibility, where the operators do not need to be at the same physical location as the device. The PRISM user interface can be accessed remotely for testing, so in today’s COVID-restricted world, projects can be kept on track by remote socially distanced staff.

In addition to remote working, touchscreen and dual-screen options are supported, enabling the user to adapt to their preferred working environment. Through software options, the system can easily be featured for production, engineering, quality control, IP measurement, IP generator, 4K, 8K and more. All functionality is available on the same user interface whether working remotely or using a touch screen.

IQ Video Quality Assurance monitoring help operators find and fix faults fast, even while staff work remotely. OTT services and bandwidth have experienced explosive growth during the pandemic, often straining parts of the network. Operators who have deployed IQ monitoring systems can ensure highest quality operation even during the surge in demand. All of this is done remote from the monitoring points and collected onto a central management system for rapid issue discovery, isolation, and resolution. 

The Vantage Media Processing Platform offers several options for remote working from simple remote login to fully hosted, cloud-based workflows. Using Vantage Cloud Port and the Cloud Port Designer, entire Vantage workflows can be hosted in the cloud without needing any Vantage systems running on premises. This technique can be used for remote access to powerful Vantage workflows and can be part of a disaster recovery plan since the workflows are running in the cloud and are not susceptible to events preventing access to on-prem equipment. 

“In 2020, remote working has taken on new importance for broadcast and media facilities of many different sizes and scales. It is being driven by external forces, such as COVID-19, new production tools from basic to sophisticated, and new policies and processes which encompass remote working and disaster recovery for media companies of all sizes and scales,” concluded Scott Murray. “This is a key strategic issue for our customers, so it is a key issue for Telestream too.”