This week Matt Eaton looks at how metadata can be used as part of knowledge management platforms and industry research. To help him explore this topic, he talks to Ben Dales, Head of Digital & Lorenzo Zanni, Head of Knowledge at the IABM.

The IABM’s use of GrayMeta’s Curio platform is a great example of how the same machine learning metadata can be used by different functions within a company. Lorenzo and Ben also share some practical advice on adopting machine learning technology.

PMH uses farmerswife as a collaboration tool for all freelancers, staff and third-party suppliers to provide their availability.

All the 300+ Web Users access farmerswife via the Web Client, iOS and/or the Mobile Web Client. They enter their monthly availability by using day and night shifts so the planners can easily see who’s available or not.

Location:
Brussels, Belgium
Type: Broadcasting
Web Site

Proximus Media House was created in 2005 with the launch of Proximus TV. PMH is an entity of the Proximus Group that deals with the creation, production, purchase, and exploitation of audiovisual content. This content is offered on Proximus TV and broadcast on its own channels, which are exclusive to the Proximus TV platform. Among other things, PMH produces and broadcasts Belgian and international football fixtures. The exploitation and promotion of content in the ‘Video on Demand’ catalogue is also one of the core tasks of this innovative and dynamic subsidiary of the Proximus group.

Meanwhile PMH televises more than 700 live sporting events per year and broadcasts on three linear TV channels (Proximus Zoom, Movies & Series and Proximus 11+). The Video on Demand catalogue of more than 2000 movies is also managed by SiA. All this is done in the two official languages.

THE CHALLENGE

Coming from a system of various Excel sheets and many manual operations we were looking to find one tool to handle all the staff but also manage project planning, budgets and follow up on costs.

THE SOLUTION

PMH uses farmerswife as a collaboration tool for all Freelancers, Staff and Third Party Suppliers (Interim) to log in, provide their availability, pull monthly reports on their bookings, time sheets for them to use as invoice basis to provide to the finance department.

All the 300+ Web Users access the system via the Web Client, iOS and/or the Mobile Web Client. They enter their monthly Availability by using Day and Night Shifts so the Planners can easily see who’s available or not. They will then allocate the available people to bookings for sports events, shifts and regular external productions.

We make use of the iOS and web clients so people can accept or decline those booking proposals. On a daily basis, all people also receive an email with all new, changed or deleted events.

On a month end we extract all validated (time reported) bookings into a special formatted CSV file which is the imported in our SAP to then link the information with the corresponding PO’s in SAP. We’ve some special report templates configured, which allow the planners to review the information before it is sent to SAP.

In today’s market customised products/ services are becoming more and more popular. Spanning across a majority of sectors, there is a growing need to stand out against your competitors and it seems that a custom offering is that lure.

Here at CP Cases Ltd, we pride ourselves on our customisation and more importantly on building that reliable bond between the business and our consumers. From our inception, the stand-out USP for us has been our customisation offering. We now have over 50 years of expertise in manufacturing and design to customer requirements; a badge we wear proudly.

This leaves us in a unique position against our competitors; with the added benefit of our designing and manufacturing all in-house. With customisation comes data, trends and most importantly buying habits which are always robust tools to have in your arsenal. Fitting to customers’ requirements builds that strong communication and helps us as a business not just understand the customer but also the markets they are based in.

Matching innovative design, patented technology and 50 years of expertise stand us in good stead. 

We believe with a bespoke order, there is flexibility for the product to evolve over time to match the changing customers’ requirements. That is why we work together with our customers so that any material changes, re-design features, rigidity testing, or any other processes can be reviewed in an instant with custom resolutions.

Customer loyalty is important, especially within the sectors we work in. Products need to be reliable, high-performance and ready to be used within the operation it was made for. Retention of clients helps businesses in many ways, through loyalty, word of mouth and customer promotion. A powerful tool that can open doors to new prospects.

We have a great track record of retained clients within all of the sectors we supply too. We are pleased to have worked and are still working with big names in their market. If you wish to read in more detail some of the exciting clients we have worked with and how we have helped them, take a look through our Case Studies page.

With the markets that we work within, especially Defence, Medical and Broadcast; customisation is a key component. The transportation of a vast range of items spanning from communication software, delegate equipment, to missiles… the list goes on. All of these components need customisation to create that perfect fit for ruggedised protection.

For more information on how we can help to discover any customisable high-performance, portability or storage solutions contact us directly on +44 (0) 20 8568 1881 or email info@cpcases.com

The TV production sector has had numerous challenges to overcome since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. High on the list of these is how to maintain audio quality when studios are closed and both contributors and audiences are remote. The CEDAR DNS 8D noise suppressor has proved to be a vital tool in this battle.

One flagship project that used a DNS 8D to overcome its audio problems was the BBC production, The Choir. The idea behind the series was to create “a choir out of all of us”, with the participants coming together virtually to sing a song that they had written.

Twelve households took part each week, each using an iPhone for the video plus additional microphones for the audio. According to Alex Wrigglesworth, Sound Supervisor at Tall Audio Sound Services, the audio production was incredibly challenging. While his team found that the iPhone 11 had a good camera, the audio was really tricky, often with equipment fans creating nearby noise, and the on-site crews even had to wrap some devices in tin foil to minimise interference. The audio was delivered to Alex ‘live’ and, in his own words, he used “a lot of CEDAR noise reduction” to treat it as it came in.

He told us, “We were dealing with a non-ideal situation with different locations using different mics and adapters and having different noise floors, and I had to process this on-the-spot using the DNS 8D and then decide whether each audio stream would be usable after noise reduction. In a normal situation you get the audio right in the first place and the rest is easy, but what we were doing wasn’t normal. Also, because of the way the show was structured, the crew would set up the gain structure on the iPhone while someone was talking and inevitably there would be quite a high noise floor. Then someone would start singing and everything changed, which created additional problems.”

We asked him how he used the DNS 8D and he continued, “If I’m using a CEDAR DNS 2, I can normally stick it across a group of mics in its auto mode and let it get on with the job. But for this one I had to single out problems on individual feeds, so I was using the detail mode in the DNS 8D to identify problems and pull them out. Sometimes, I could turn the system on and things would sound fine but, when all the locations were coming in, there would always be two or three that needed treating more than the others. I was able to set them up individually, but they all had to be CEDAR’d.”

“The hardest thing with CEDAR is not using too much noise reduction. It’s a balancing act between keeping the audio sounding natural – you don’t want things to sound too dry – and reducing the noise enough to make it usable. I tend to use CEDAR across most of the stuff that I do, whether it’s live or pre-recorded, but I don’t often use more than around two or three dBs of reduction. If I have to use more than that I start to get slightly worried about what I’m being given. But during this project I definitely had to use more. I couldn’t have done it without the DNS 8D.”

Other projects that Alex has worked upon include Morning Live (BBC), MotoGP (BT Sport), the Martin Lewis Money Show (ITV), and the Alternative Election Coverage (Channel 4).

Links:

Tall Audio Sound Services

CEDAR DNS 8D noise suppressor