NETGEAR – Bridging Broadcast and Pro AV: Using IPMX to Enable Smarter, Simpler IP Workflows

NETGEAR – Bridging Broadcast and Pro AV: Using IPMX to Enable Smarter, Simpler IP Workflows

Gus Marcondes, Global Technical Training Manager, NETGEAR

Media over IP has moved from concept to reality in both broadcast and Pro AV. This shift has been driven by vital benefits, including the flexibility to design around the needs of the application, the scalability to grow without replacing entire systems, and the cost efficiencies that come with running over standard network infrastructure rather than dedicated point-to-point cabling.

Despite both industries’ embrace of IP, interoperability remains a challenge, especially when systems rely on proprietary platforms that can’t talk to one another. Open standards directly address this problem, enabling devices from multiple vendors to work together and giving organizations long-term protection for their investments.

Adapting Broadcast Standards for Pro AV

The broadcast sector’s move to IP accelerated in 2017 with the publication of the first SMPTE ST 2110 standards for transporting professional media over managed IP networks. ST 2110 defines how video, audio, and ancillary data — “essences” — are carried in sync over IP. Robust, scalable, and extensible, ST 2110 has been widely adopted in broadcast plants around the world, and it forms the foundation for IPMX (the IP Media Experience).

IPMX is a growing set of technical recommendations based on ST 2110 but tailored for Pro AV. Developed by AIMS in collaboration with VSF, AMWA, SMPTE, and others, it retains the proven ST 2110 transport architecture and NMOS control plane while adding features essential to AV deployments. These include EDID handling and HDCP 2.3 for HDMI workflows, flexible codec options from uncompressed to high-compression, and the ability to operate with or without Precision Time Protocol (PTP).

Technically, IPMX supports multicast and unicast over UDP/RTP on links from 1 GbE to 100+ GbE, video resolutions from SD up to 32K, JPEG-XS or mezzanine inter- and intraframe CODECS as well as support for uncompressed video, USB/KVM, CEC, serial, and GPIO control extensions, and AES67-compliant audio alongside consumer formats. In certain scenarios, it produces less network overhead than ST 2110, easing integration into IT-managed networks.

By making PTP optional and offering lighter-weight configurations where appropriate, IPMX lowers the barrier to entry for AV teams. It allows them to deploy robust, standards-based transport without taking on the full complexity and cost of a broadcast-grade ST 2110 network while keeping the option to integrate with one when the need arises.

Bridging Broadcast and AV With Hybrid Workflows

Broadcast and Pro AV each have their own priorities and operational requirements. Broadcast engineers expect frame-accurate synchronization and uncompressed signal paths; Pro AV integrators often optimize for quick installation, flexibility, and mixed compression workflows. Full convergence of these domains is neither inevitable nor necessary. The more valuable goal is compatibility — the ability to connect systems where there’s a clear operational or business need.

IPMX is well suited to this role. Because it is based on ST 2110, it can integrate directly into a broadcast plant. At the same time, its simplified timing and flexible compression make it practical for AV environments where a pure ST 2110 deployment would be overkill.

Hybrid workflows that mix IPMX and ST 2110 are becoming more common in multipurpose venues, sports facilities, and corporate studios with broadcast capabilities. In these scenarios, IPMX can serve as a cost-effective bridge, reducing infrastructure duplication. A single network can support AV operations for in-venue displays and presentations while also linking into a broadcast chain for live event coverage.

This selective integration means infrastructure investments deliver more value. The same cabling and switching fabric can carry both worlds, with IPMX handling AV tasks efficiently and ST 2110 taking over when broadcast-grade performance is required.

Designing for Multiple Protocols

In real-world deployments, IPMX will rarely be the only protocol on the network. Many organizations also run proprietary formats such as NDI for video or Dante for audio, alongside open standards like AES67. A practical media network must be able to carry them all.

Designing for multi-protocol readiness starts with the fundamentals: VLAN segmentation, multicast filtering, QoS prioritization, and — where needed — the precision of PTP timing. IPMX-only networks can often operate with more relaxed timing requirements, while hybrid IPMX/ST 2110 networks will need synchronous and asynchronous domains to coexist. Configuration profiles can make this easier for engineers and integrators, allowing them to apply a tested set of parameters for each protocol rather than start from scratch.

Management software plays an important role here. The ability to configure VLANs, multicast behavior, PTP, QoS, and link aggregation through a centralized interface not only speeds deployment but also ensures consistency across devices and sites. This simplifies expansion and allows teams to add new protocols without major redesigns.

Technology alone isn’t enough. As AV and IT domains continue to overlap, cross-trained teams are essential. AV technicians now need an understanding of network architecture, while IT professionals benefit from familiarity with media transport standards. This convergence of skill sets improves troubleshooting, accelerates adaptation to new technology, and fosters collaboration across departments, all of which directly improve the reliability and efficiency of media-over-IP systems.

Ensuring Flexibility and Longevity

IPMX extends proven broadcast standards into Pro AV with features that make those standards easier to deploy, more adaptable, and more cost-effective. It can serve as a bridge to ST 2110 in hybrid environments, or as a stand-alone AV-over-IP approach in installations that don’t need a full broadcast infrastructure.

A well-designed network ideally can carry any IP-based media protocol, whether open or proprietary, without bias. This approach maximizes integration options, streamlines upgrades, and protects against disruptive shifts in technology or vendor strategy.

Media organizations and integrators don’t have to figure out AV over IP on their own. Vendors like NETGEAR offer switching platforms and profile-based management that support multiple protocols with equal ease, plus free pre-sales consulting and training to help teams design, deploy, and maintain these networks. With access to the right tools and expertise, engineers across broadcast and Pro AV can build networks to handle any IP-based media protocol, thereby positioning their organizations to adapt smoothly as their technical and business requirements evolve.

MASV – Who Is Troveo?

MASV – Who Is Troveo?

Troveo is a video licensing platform helping creators monetize unused footage: Content owners, creatives, basically anyone with unused video can license their content libraries for AI training. The company provides a new revenue stream for content owners, while enabling AI companies to develop high-quality, legally compliant content models.

Head of Growth Sarah Barrick was employee No. 4.  “Before Troveo was called Troveo,” she says with a laugh. “We’re founded by a team of people who have been in the creator economy for a very long time, helping all kinds of creators monetize,” she explains. “That’s what we’ve based our entire careers on – how to get creators paid for their work. We entered the market with the goal of making sure that creators don’t get left out in the age of AI.”

 Troveo Highlights:

  • 2,400-plus licensors upload an average of 6,000 TBs every month.
  • With 350M+ clips uploaded, content owners have received more than $5M in payouts.
  • Founded in 2023 by former Vouch founder Marty Pesis, Troveo emerged from stealth in late 2024 with 20+ employees.

The Challenge: Ingesting thousands of TBs monthly

Troveo sells unused footage, from B-roll to home movies, to train AI models. It ingests a menagerie of content types, from 4K clips to celluloid reels from the late 1800s that need to be upscaled into high-resolution footage.

Fittingly, Troveo is now the world’s largest video network for AI training. “We ingest the data and process it to prepare it for AI training pipelines,” explains Head of Growth Sarah Barrick. “Then we deliver that to technology and AI companies.”

But as a technology startup, Troveo faced major challenges.

Challenge #1: Intuitive large-file transfer

Troveo required an intuitive upload solution for content owners with varying technical skills and language backgrounds. Complex tools like command line interfaces were not an option. With a lean team, managing numerous support queries in multiple languages about content ingestion was also infeasible.

Challenge #2: Fast, scalable, organized ingest

The breakneck pace of Troveo’s scale-up with both licensors and AI partners requires uploading a lot of content to the cloud fast to meet deal deadlines. Troveo also needed transparency along the data upload pipeline for users, and for all content to be organized by type once uploaded.

Challenge #3: Reliable transfers

A bad upload experience, failed transfers, or poor customer service could alienate licensors. The company needed a solution that could deliver a frictionless experience. “Many of these people had never had to do anything like this before,” says Barrick. “It was asking them to do something completely new.”

Challenge #4: Simple integrations and onboarding

Troveo needed easy integration with its Amazon S3 cloud storage bucket, so uploaded files would land in the right spot with minimal manual intervention. It also needed a fast, simple experience to onboard internal staff.

The Solution: MASV

After testing several solutions, Barrick says it soon became obvious that MASV was the missing piece. “When we found MASV, we knew it was something creators could use,” she says, adding that she and Troveo adviser and creator Peter Hollens initially helped research file transfer tools. “It was a no-brainer.”

Troveo ingests an average of 6,000 TB each month, typically file packages in the 300 to 500 gigabyte range, but sometimes more than a terabyte. Troveo now generates a private, secure MASV Portal for each content owner following contract signing; uploaders simply drag-and-drop files.

“The ultimate factor was the usability,” says Barrick. “It was just so easy for users – they didn’t even have to download a desktop client. They didn’t need any technical expertise, and could use a private, secure portal to begin uploading right away. ”

Troveo embedded browser-based Portal functionality into its proprietary user interface, ensuring a seamless upload experience:

  • Users don’t need to learn technical language, execute code, or even watch tutorials.
  • Users anywhere, even those with a significant language barrier, can leverage MASV’s simple user interface to start uploading right away.
  • Troveo ingests from users from South Africa, Jamaica, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Namibia, Algiers, Tunisia, Egypt, and more, including countries that only have power for a limited number of hours each day.

A fast, scalable way to receive and organize files

In speed tests, MASV is faster than Aspera, WeTransfer, Dropbox, and other platforms thanks in part to our accelerated network built on AWS infrastructure. Speed is crucial to meet deal deadlines with fast turnaround payouts.

Since Portals are unlimited and free to spin up, Troveo generates one MASV Portal per uploader. Content is automatically categorized based on a user’s contract.

“Their Portal link is already associated with their record as having cinematic footage or  consumer-grade footage,” adds Barrick. “So it’s easy for us to quickly identify: ‘OK, this is a YouTuber with lifestyle content. Or this is a film production house with cinematic footage.’”

The result is well-organized footage and a transparent uploading experience, a must when ingesting content from thousands of different creators.

Creators don’t want to waste time monitoring their file transfers. Barrick says MASV has been an invaluable tool:

  • A cloud buffer between sender and recipient ensures transfers won’t fail despite any problems on the recipient side (without impacting performance or speed).
  • If there is an interruption, MASV’s relentless retries and checkpoint restart ensure the transfer always completes without starting over.

The Result: Massively fast ingest

MASV immediately helped Troveo solve its primary problem: Ingesting boatloads of content from disparate users, quickly and reliably under strict deadlines.

As for the creators themselves? Some of them have already pulled down five-figure incomes from working with Troveo.

“We’ve had creators and filmmakers reach out and tell us that this changed their life – that they can now pay for their daughter’s college education, and that this allows them to pursue their dreams.”

Read the full story here: https://massive.io/customer-stories/troveo/

 

Magine Pro – Context not Content is King

Magine Pro – Content Context is King

What your IBC calendar can teach you about the hidden cost of inefficiency – and why preserving context is becoming critical for OTT growth.

You know that moment when someone says, “Let’s meet at IBC,” and your stomach sinks a little? What should be a simple, 30-second task rapidly becomes a multi-threaded puzzle. Which day? Which hall? Which meeting room? Who else is joining? Organizing one chat rapidly becomes a multi-day coordination of a dozen calendar checks and messages.

Sound familiar? That’s the hidden tax of context loss. It’s that invisible drag that turns simple decisions into logistical puzzles. And it’s not just an event planning problem. The same pattern quietly undermines efficiency across OTT operations every day.

The Cost of Context Collapse

Every handoff in your organization – between teams, tools, or systems – erodes context. What starts as a clear, detailed understanding becomes diluted as it moves through departments.

In the IBC example, a colleague says, “Can we move the Sunday morning catch-up?” But to reschedule it, someone has to untangle booth staffing, travel times, overlapping meetings, and speaker obligations. Each new person reinterprets the request based on partial information, losing context, compounding effort, and slowing decisions.

In OTT, this happens at scale. A customer reports “the stream isn’t working,” kicking off a multi-team investigation. Support, engineering, and content managers all scramble to reconstruct the situation from scratch. They pull disconnected data from a CRM, CDN, CMS, and analytics tools to understand what’s actually happening.

At Magine Pro, we repeatedly hear this from OTT companies as a reason why they’re looking to streamline their OTT operations. Whether troubleshooting playback, managing content workflows, or resolving billing queries, they’re tired of rebuilding context that should never have been lost.

Three Hidden Inefficiencies That Undermine OTT Operations

1. The Handoff Tax

When someone on your team says, “This episode needs to go live,” what exactly do they mean? The content team may think about artwork and descriptions. The technical team thinks about encoding. The publishing team checks licensing windows and platform restrictions. Every department filters the message through its own lens, and that filtering process adds latency.

Each step strips away clarity, stalling workflows as teams chase clarification or act on outdated assumptions. The result: missed deadlines, duplicated effort, and frustration that compounds over time.

2. The Translation Penalty

Any trip to IBC is a minefield of codes – booth numbers, and separate booking references for hotels, airlines and airport shuttles. Each link in the chain has its own language. Your OTT tool stack likely contains systems that operate in similar silos, each with their own terminology.

Your CDN talks about edge latency and cache efficiency. Your CMS uses asset hierarchies and versioning. Your analytics dashboards measure abandonment rates and funnels. Your customer support team logs tickets by topic and resolution codes.

Each team is “right” within their own domain, but when they collaborate, someone always has to translate. Decisions are based on interpretation, not insight.

3. The Reconstruction Cost

Perhaps the most damaging inefficiency is the need to constantly rebuild context from scratch. Take the customer service rep that’s investigating a user’s login problem: They pull account data from the CRM, cross-reference payment status and device registrations, review playback logs. All the information is there, but it’s scattered across tabs, screens, and systems. Nothing is connected. So instead of resolving the issue in 30 seconds, the agent plays detective for 10 minutes.

This pattern repeats everywhere: content teams re-validate metadata before delivery; product managers double-check licensing terms; technical teams ping others to confirm which configuration was deployed last week. The time lost isn’t visible, but it adds up fast.

How Platforms Can (and Should) Preserve Context

A good OTT platform should actively reduce this kind of friction. At Magine Pro, we’ve seen firsthand that preserving context across the content lifecycle is one of the most effective ways to drive operational efficiency.

Centralizing data shouldn’t be the goal itself. The priority is ensuring every team receives the right context at the right moment, in an easy-to-digest form. This means designing systems where information flows intact through the supply chain, rather than needing reassembly from fragments.

Where AI Fits In, and Where It Shouldn’t

There’s no shortage of AI hype in media tech right now. But in my view, the real opportunity for AI isn’t in flashy features, it’s in solving practical problems like context loss.

Imagine an AI assistant that sees the same playback error reported by multiple users, automatically connects it to a spike in edge latency from a specific CDN node, during a specific episode rollout, on a particular device model. That’s not magic. That’s just good use of structured context, enriched and carried forward intelligently.

A modern OTT platform should increasingly be able to do this. I’m not advocating replacing all human decision-making, but we can certainly reduce manual effort. At Magine Pro, we’re focused on introducing tools that reduce noise, highlight signals, and help our customers work more efficiently. That’s got to be a better investment than automating for automation’s sake.

Context as Competitive Advantage

Companies that master context preservation move faster, reduce churn more effectively, and make smarter decisions with less effort. Crucially, they free up teams to focus on innovation not inbox archaeology and context reconstruction.

The lesson from IBC planning is this: efficiency doesn’t come only by increasing speed. It comes when you create clarity. It’s about preserving intent across conversations, systems, and time zones. It’s about understanding that context loss isn’t a system side-effect, but a design flaw.

The faster OTT services solve these challenges, the more efficient, effective and profitable they become. Because in a world full of operational complexity, context isn’t just king. It’s your competitive edge.

 

 

LucidLink – Cutting Carbon, Not Creativity: The Role Of Cloud-Native Workflows in Media’s Future

LucidLink – Cutting Carbon, Not Creativity: The Role Of Cloud-Native Workflows in Media’s Future

Michael Maimone, Chief Revenue Officer, LucidLink

Media never sits still. In the past decade, we’ve swapped tape for digital, cable for streaming and edit bays for global remote workflows. Every shift opens new doors for creativity and new challenges for how we work.

But behind every blockbuster, ad campaign or streaming series lies a cost the industry has often swept under the rug: the carbon footprint of media production. Terabytes of footage are duplicated, stored and transferred across multiple facilities and networks.

Hard drives are shipped around the world, and servers spin endlessly to store the same files in multiple places. Each of these actions consumes energy, generates emissions and quietly adds to a growing environmental burden.

Cloud-native solutions, particularly those that enable real-time data streaming, are emerging as a way to balance efficiency, speed and environmental responsibility. The real measure of tomorrow’s media production will be the balance between creative brilliance and environmental impact.

The Hidden Cost of Data

Consider how traditional media supply chains function. Large productions can generate hundreds of terabytes of high-resolution footage. To make content accessible, files are downloaded, duplicated and transferred multiple times across teams.

Every transfer consumes bandwidth and energy. Every duplication requires more storage, which means extra power for cooling, redundancy and maintenance. Even virtual production, often hailed as a greener alternative, can rack up hidden emissions thanks to its enormous data and rendering demands. Applied across thousands of projects, the energy footprint of the industry adds up quickly

It’s not just digital workflows. Physical drives are still couriered across borders and teams fly to production hubs just to collaborate. These practices slow production cycles and add heavy carbon costs. What was once considered the cost of doing business is now a liability in a world focused on efficiency, accountability and sustainability.

The Shift Toward Streaming Workflows

Instead of moving and duplicating data endlessly, streaming workflows allow teams to work directly in the cloud. With solutions like LucidLink, editors can access footage instantly, on demand, as if the data were stored locally even when their teams are spread across continents.

With one version of the truth, everyone sees the same files, in real time, maintaining consistency and accuracy across the production pipeline.

The sustainability benefits are immediate and measurable:

  • Less duplication means fewer servers running and less storage capacity consumed.
  • Fewer transfers translate into lower bandwidth usage and reduced energy draw.
  • Remote collaboration eliminates the need for shipping physical drives or unnecessary travel.

Streaming workflows shrink the environmental footprint of media production without sacrificing speed, reliability or creative performance. Teams can collaborate seamlessly across time zones while minimizing the behind-the-scenes energy costs that would otherwise pile up.

Sustainability As a Business Driver

The case for cloud-first production is stronger than ever. Media leaders face rising energy costs, tighter budgets and increasing pressure from investors, regulators and audiences around carbon accountability. Studios and broadcasters are expected to report emissions and meet ambitious ESG goals.

Smarter workflows mean smaller footprints. Reducing redundant file copies and logistics delays saves time, money and resources. Decisions happen faster. Global teams operate in real time. Productions can scale without increasing their carbon impact.

This dual benefit drives adoption. Too often, sustainability initiatives are framed as sacrifices — “green choices” that cost more or slow processes. Real-time cloud collaboration flips that narrative: delivering efficiency gains creative teams crave, while reducing the industry’s environmental burden.

From CAPEX to OPEX: Building Resilient Media Supply Chains

Cloud-native solutions also shift how media companies manage costs and resources. Traditional workflows rely on heavy upfront capital expenditure (CAPEX): buying, maintaining and cooling racks of on-premise storage that are rigid, costly and energy intensive.

Cloud workflows turn CAPEX into operational expenditure (OPEX), flexible, scalable and demand-driven. Studios pay for what they need, when they need it, aligning with fluctuating production schedules and helping companies manage budgets while avoiding waste.

At the same time, cloud-first collaboration strengthens the media supply chain. No more bottlenecks waiting for files to arrive. No more risk of delays from hardware failures. Streaming data enables end-to-end workflows that are faster, more resilient and more sustainable.

Where Creativity Meets Sustainability

Adopting cloud-native workflows is no longer a “nice to have.” It is essential for balancing creativity with responsibility, for meeting both business and sustainability goals and for building an industry resilient for the future.

The next era of media production will be cloud-first, intelligent and sustainability-conscious. Streaming workflows will be both a competitive advantage and a necessity as businesses adapt to economic and environmental realities.

By rethinking how data is stored, moved and accessed, we can cut carbon without cutting corners. Every terabyte saved, every transfer avoided and every remote collaboration enabled is a step toward greener, smarter storytelling.

Media companies now have the chance to lead by example, proving that creative excellence and environmental responsibility can go hand in hand.

Limecraft – Turning Ambition into Action: Limecraft’s No-Nonsense Approach to Sustainability

Limecraft – Turning Ambition into Action: Limecraft’s No-Nonsense Approach to Sustainability

Maarten Verwaest, Limecraft

In media technology, sustainability is often treated as a glossy feature — a paragraph in an annual report, a promise about “future targets,” or a thin coat of greenwashing. At Limecraft, we don’t believe in that. For us, sustainability is not about appearances. It’s about measurable, verifiable action that changes how we operate as a business and how we help our customers reduce their own footprint.

That mindset has recently been recognised on several fronts. Limecraft is proud to be a finalist in the Corporate Star Awards in the category Game Changer: Sustainable Product Innovation. We’ve also been nominated for the IABM Impact Award, which celebrates real-world progress toward a more sustainable industry. And last year, the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) renewed our certification as Committed to Sustainability, formally acknowledging that we walk the talk.

Together, these recognitions are not trophies to polish, but validation of a deliberate strategy: embed sustainability into the core of our technology, our operations, and our partnerships.

Beyond Carbon Offsets: Operational Sustainability

We became carbon neutral as of 2023, not by buying our way out with offsets, but by systematically reducing our emissions and use of resources. From office management to data centre usage, each decision is measured against its environmental impact.

For example, we have consolidated our cloud infrastructure to eliminate wasteful duplication. Instead of maintaining idle capacity “just in case,” we optimised our workloads, reducing energy consumption while improving performance. On the supply side, we’ve ensured that our hosting partners are powered by renewable energy.

Within our own teams, we apply the same discipline. Business travel has been cut to the minimum, replaced by effective remote collaboration. Even our product roadmap is designed with sustainability in mind: rather than adding features for the sake of appearances, we focus on automation and workflow efficiency — because making processes leaner and smarter means using fewer resources across the board.

Building Sustainability Into the Product

Where Limecraft truly makes a difference, however, is in how the technology enables customers to reduce their environmental impact.

Take our Delivery Workspaces, for example. Traditionally, programme delivery has relied on FTP transfers, endless emails, repeated QC, and redundant copies of the same assets. That process isn’t just slow and expensive — it’s environmentally wasteful. Every unnecessary transfer means additional storage, compute cycles, and energy.

By standardising the content delivery process in a shared workspace, we eliminate duplication and avoid errors before they happen. Assets are uploaded once, verified automatically, and distributed directly to where they need to be. The result: faster turnaround, lower costs, and a leaner footprint. In many cases, we’ve demonstrated a reduction of up to 80% in resource use per asset. That’s sustainability in action.

The same principle applies to subtitling and localisation workflows. Instead of bouncing files back and forth between producers, language vendors, and broadcasters, Limecraft enables integrated collaboration on a single platform. That saves time, but it also cuts down on redundant encoding, storage, and transfer — small efficiencies that add up to a big difference when scaled across an entire industry.

We apply the same “fit for purpose” philosophy when it comes to AI. Too often, AI is positioned as the default solution to every problem, but in practice it is excessively resource-hungry and unsustainable if used indiscriminately. At Limecraft, we believe the most responsible use of AI is often to not use it at all. If a process can be automated or streamlined more effectively through proper metadata management and structured workflows, that is the better route — more accurate, less wasteful, and more sustainable. In our experience, this foundation often delivers better results than AI applied as a blanket fix — while avoiding unnecessary computational overhead.

No Nonsense, No Greenwashing

It’s easy to talk about sustainability; harder to prove it. That’s why we embrace external validation.

The DPP Committed to Sustainability programme provides an independent framework for measuring progress, from energy use to supply chain policies. Achieving that recognition wasn’t a marketing exercise — it required evidence, data, and ongoing reporting.

Similarly, the Corporate Star Awards and IABM Impact Award don’t reward vague promises. They require demonstrable action. Being recognised by these bodies shows that our approach stands up to scrutiny.

Our stance on AI is another example of our no-nonsense approach. Rather than chasing hype, we adopt AI responsibly. Where structured metadata and workflow discipline provide a better solution, we don’t hesitate to say: “AI isn’t needed here.” That’s not the easiest message in a market driven by buzzwords, but it is the most honest — and the most sustainable.

But most importantly, we don’t treat sustainability as a side project. It’s part of how we design our software, how we serve our customers, and how we run the company.

Driving Change Across the Industry

The media industry is characterised by complex supply chains. Producers, broadcasters, distributors, and service providers are all interconnected, and inefficiency in one part ripples across the whole. That’s why sustainability isn’t just be a singular initiative — it has to be embedded across the ecosystem.

By offering shared infrastructure, Limecraft reduces duplication not only within one company, but between companies. By integrating online collaboration, localisation, and QC into a single workflow, we reduce the need for multiple third parties to copy files and repeat the same tasks. By providing transparency through metadata, we reduce the risk of errors that lead to rework.

The knock-on result is impressive: less wasted storage, fewer redundant file transfers, and a smoother path from production to audience. In short, we have been able to demonstrate that efficiency and sustainability are closely intertwined.

Looking Ahead

Sustainability doesn’t have a finish line; it’s an act of continuous improvement. Standards will tighten, customer expectations will rise, and the cost of negligence will grow. For Limecraft, that’s not a threat but an opportunity. Every regulation — from the European Accessibility Act to upcoming carbon reporting requirements — pushes the industry toward smarter, more efficient workflows. That’s exactly what we build.

Our mission is simple: help content teams do more with less. Less manual work, less duplication, less energy wasted. More collaboration, more automation, more value extracted from every minute of human creativity.

In a sector that often hides behind buzzwords, Limecraft stands for measurable action. Sustainability isn’t a slogan on a website. It’s built into the way we work, the tools we provide, and the results our customers achieve.

Awards are nice. Recognition is appreciated. But what matters is impact. At Limecraft, sustainability is not about polishing credentials — it’s about making the media supply chain smarter, leaner, and greener.

Knox Media Hub – Navigating Metadata Complexity in the Modern Media Landscape

Knox Media Hub – Navigating Metadata Complexity in the Modern Media Landscape

Clara Aler, Marketing & Communication, Knox Media Hub

Metadata is the nervous system of media operations. From discoverability and rights management to triggering automations, it’s the foundation of any scalable and future-proof media supply chain.

Yet, managing metadata has never been more complex.

In today’s media industry landscape, libraries are growing, workflows are increasingly automated, and AI is generating more data than ever. Still, stagnant systems and lack of universal standards are creating inefficiencies throughout the media supply chain. Spreadsheet chaos, never-ending XMLs, and delivery requirements that are continuously evolving and vary per partner or platform are creating bottlenecks.

Through a recent client use case, we gained valuable insight into metadata governance, identifying key industry challenges and transforming them into business accelerators.

Why Metadata is a Critical Asset

Media Management cannot be understood without Metadata Management. Usually, operations teams do not care so much about the video content itself, but about everything surrounding it.

Being able to search for and find your assets is the primary reason companies focus on good metadata governance. Nowadays, it seems that everyone is working hard to enrich their asset metadata in order to locate content quickly and prevent it from being lost and forgotten.

But metadata also powers automation. It’s what enables trigger-based workflows, batch processing, and smart delivery pipelines. A bad tag is a missing file in your automated processes. This is why modern media workflows depend on clean metadata models through your assets library. And ultimately, automation is key to scalability, which translates into doing more with less effort, driving more business.

In short, the more structured and accessible your metadata is, the more you can leverage your media throughout the entire pipeline.

The Challenges in Media & Entertainment

As vendors, we observe that spreadsheets are still heavily used across the media industry, from acquisitions and licensing to sales and delivery.

CSV and XLSX are standards that do the job, but when manually handled at a big scale… it smells as a shouting need for efficiency. So what’s happening?

Assets Move A LOT, and Go Through Many Hands

The media landscape is complex, and sometimes tools haven’t quite caught up to it. Media assets simply don’t sit in a single repository. Outsourced services, localization teams, mergers and acquisitions leading to changing infrastructures and data models, and the sheer proliferation of channels and platforms: every touchpoint pulls or pushes metadata.

Also, every stage in the content lifecycle introduces new layers of data: rights management teams add data related to contracts or copyrights, quality control processes add crucial technical specifications that add up to manual entries, and so on.

In short, media companies are accumulating huge datasets that are often heterogeneous and may lack uniformity if not managed with caution and rigor.

There are Standards, But…

Added to that, every broadcaster, platform, or content aggregator has its own specs: its own way of formatting a release date, categorizing genres, or naming assets. Even if you build the perfect internal metadata structure, chances are it won’t match what Netflix, Prime Video, or what your local distributor requires, and that those requirements will be different the next year.

There are standards and naming conventions: EIDR, MEC, ISO, EBU classifications, and so on, all with extensive documentation and best practices. But first, we haven’t reached the point where there is a universal one. Secondly, with so many agents working on a single asset, as mentioned above, you might end up with a release date formatted as YYYY-MM-DD on one end and DD/MM/YYYY on another. Genre classifications vary. Required fields change. The industry  innovates and shifts and standards evolve over time.

As a result, media operations are slowed down by teams spending countless hours adjusting formats, checking delivery rules, and reconciling discrepancies. And at scale, it becomes a bottleneck.

 Future Proofing Metadata Also Means Finding Scalable Strategies For the Ai Era

 AI is also accelerating the need for companies to handle massive amounts of new data and scale quickly.

New AI tools that read video content are tagging virtually anything imaginable (actors, objects, and even sentiments). This represents a huge amount of time-coded metadata, and is even making the industry consider sourcing metadata (“is this tag AI-generated?”).

And it also goes the other way around; AI systems are increasingly relying on structured metadata for content discovery, much like web search engines now use AI overviews. Strategically exposing metadata will likely improve visibility on streaming platforms.

As these trends gain relevance, the creation and management of metadata becomes more critical than ever.

Good Metadata Governance: From Bottleneck to Business Driver

 At Knox Media Hub, we’ve recently been immersed on a major media company business case to tackle the growing complexity of their metadata operations. They recognized early on the importance of future-proofing metadata management tools, if only because it’s the backbone of any media library.

And metadata governance isn’t just an internal issue. Delivering content today also means complying with a wide range of external standards and partner specifications. Our approach addressed both fronts: we built a framework that structures metadata from ingestion to delivery, ensuring each asset could seamlessly travel across systems, teams, and distribution platforms. The result is a holistic, end-to-end solution. From the initial sourcing of content through to the final XML or spreadsheet output, every step in the supply chain is streamlined, automated, and compliant, freeing teams from manual adjustments and redundant checks. And most importantly, it’s a fully configurable solution, adaptable and flexible for an increasingly digital and ever-changing media ecosystem, designed to be truly future-proof.

While we can’t enforce a single universal standard across the industry, we can (and do) equip our users with the flexibility and tools to manage this complexity. Clean, consistent, and automated metadata workflows don’t only just fix operational pain points; they are key accelerators of speed, scalability, and strategic growth.

 

How Haivision is Powering the Next Phase of Media Efficiency

How Haivision is Powering the Next Phase of Media Efficiency

Marcus Schioler, VP of Marketing, Haivision

In today’s fast paced media landscape, efficiency is no longer optional, it is essential to staying competitive. From contribution to cloud-based workflows, broadcast and media organizations are under constant pressure to deliver content faster, smarter, and more cost effectively. Tried, field-tested, and trusted by the world’s leading broadcasters, Haivision’s comprehensive portfolio of live video solutions power the highest quality, lowest latency broadcast workflows with maximum reliability. Haivision’s pioneering video transmitters, encoders, receivers, and cloud solutions enable broadcasters to deliver pristine quality live sports, news, and events over any network from any location to productions on premises or in the cloud.

Speed is the New Currency in Live Production

Whether covering live sports, breaking news, or major entertainment events, broadcasters must move quickly while keeping operations lean. Success depends on simplifying workflows, streamlining production, and maintaining high quality without increasing costs. In an era where real-time engagement and immediacy are essential, the ability to deliver seamless, low-latency streams across multiple platforms can make all the difference.

Haivision’s live video contribution portfolio combines ultra-low latency video transport with intelligent cloud-based stream management, empowering teams to move in real time while staying agile. By leveraging innovative and future proof technology, broadcasters can reduce latency, enhance reliability, and respond swiftly to evolving coverage demands, ensuring they stay ahead in the competitive landscape of live production.

Haivision Hub 360: Centralized Stream Management in the Cloud

At the center of this approach is Haivision Hub 360, a cloud-based stream routing and management solution that gives production teams complete visibility and control over live video contribution workflows from anywhere.

Haivision Hub 360 connects mobile journalists, field encoders, and remote studios into a unified workflow, reducing manual processes and accelerating time to air. Its browser-based interface enables real-time stream switching, monitoring, and diagnostics, helping teams maintain operational efficiency across distributed locations. By removing the complexity of managing multiple contribution sources, Hub 360 simplifies coordination between crews in the field and operators in the control room. This allows broadcasters to react quickly to developing stories, spin up new workflows in minutes, and scale productions without adding significant overhead.

Lowering Operational Costs with SRT

Reliability is essential for live contribution, and that is where the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol plays a critical role. Developed and open sourced by Haivision, SRT enables the secure, low latency delivery of high quality video over unpredictable networks, including the public internet.

The SRT protocol helps ensure video integrity, while maintaining the lowest latency possible given network conditions, without the need for costly proprietray infrastructure. This helps broadcasters reduce operational expenses while increasing flexibility and speed of deployment. With a global community of thousands of developers and technology partners supporting SRT, the protocol has become a trusted industry tool. Broadcasters not only benefit from its resilience and reliability, but also from the interoperability it enables across a wide ecosystem of hardware, software, and cloud services, further driving efficiency across live production workflows.

MoJoPro: Mobile Contribution Without Barriers

Haivision MoJoPro is our mobile journalism camera application for iOS and Android that allows reporters and field crews to capture and stream professional-grade live video using only a smartphone.

With MoJoPro, encrypted, low latency HD video can be sent directly into broadcast or cloud workflows. When combined with Haivision Hub 360, it creates a seamless pipeline from the field to playout. Adaptive bitrate control and smart bandwidth management ensure smooth, high-quality video even in challenging network conditions.

Customer Spotlight: SkyRace® des Matheysins

The SkyRace® des Matheysins, part of the prestigious Skyrunner® World Series, is one of the most technically challenging mountain races in the French Alps. Spanning steep ascents, rugged terrain, and rapidly changing weather conditions, the event demands not only peak athletic performance but also innovative broadcast solutions capable of delivering reliable live coverage from extreme environments.

To bring the excitement of the race to a global audience, the organizers relied on Haivision’s live video contribution technology. Using Haivision Pro mobile transmitters, drone feeds, and cameras positioned along the course, the production team captured every critical angle of the race. These feeds were seamlessly managed through Haivision Hub 360 and transported using the SRT protocol over a 4G cellular network.

This combination of mobile, cloud, and adaptive video transport technology enabled the team to deliver a dynamic, multi-camera live production without the need for heavy infrastructure or large on-site crews. The result was a cost-effective, high-quality broadcast that brought viewers closer to the athletes and the breathtaking alpine environment.

By leveraging Haivision’s solutions, the SkyRace® des Matheysins demonstrated how even the most remote and logistically challenging events can be produced with speed, agility, and efficiency.

A Future Ready Ecosystem

Haivision solutions are built for scalability and performance. Whether supporting small remote events or large-scale international productions, our technology enables customers to manage capital and operational expenses, accelerate workflows, and adapt quickly to changing demands.

By combining cloud native control, adaptive video transport, and mobile first contribution tools, Haivision gives media organizations the power to do more with less while maintaining the quality and reliability their audiences expect. Broadcasters can confidently expand coverage, engage audiences in new ways, and respond to the ever-growing demand for live content across platforms.

As the industry advances toward greater automation and cloud adoption, Haivision continues to empower customers with the technology they need to produce live content with speed, agility, and reliability. Our vision is to help broadcasters reimagine what is possible: workflows that are more efficient, production teams that are more connected, and live experiences that are more immersive for audiences everywhere.

Haivision remains committed to innovating alongside our customers, ensuring they are prepared not only for today’s challenges but also for the opportunities of tomorrow. By delivering trusted solutions that combine proven reliability with forward looking innovation, Haivision is powering the next phase of media efficiency.

 

Imagine Communications – The Need for Video-Aware Monitoring Solutions With End-to-End Network Visibility

Imagine Communications – The Need for Video-Aware Monitoring Solutions With End-to-End Network Visibility

 

Dan Walsh, Senior Vice President, Product Management, at Imagine Communications

For the media and entertainment industry, the introduction of SMPTE ST 2110 marked the beginning of the transition from legacy SDI to IP-based video networks. While this shift has unlocked unprecedented flexibility and scalability, it has also introduced a new level of operational complexity.

In IP environments, there are far more variables at play than in SDI networks. Switchers, routers, firewalls, and video processing equipment all have the potential to affect video quality in ways never seen in traditional workflows. Even small disruptions can cause visible degradation that impacts the viewer experience.

Despite this, most monitoring tools used today were designed for general-purpose IT networks, not the unforgiving demands of real-time video. Here, we look at how these tools come up short, creating gaps that only video-aware monitoring solutions can fill.

 

The Current State of Video Network Monitoring

For today’s video providers, network monitoring often relies on a mix of high-end IT applications and homegrown systems built on freeware, each covering only part of the workflow. And critical components, such as video processing equipment, may not be supported at all.

General-purpose IT tools require APIs, drivers, or other interfaces for every device in the network. Because these solutions are built for the broader IT market, vendors focus on products from major networking companies, leaving specialized video devices without coverage. The result is a patchwork approach with blind spots that make diagnosing and resolving problems far more difficult.

Managing a video network is also fundamentally different from managing a standard IP data network and calls for a different set of capabilities from monitoring solutions. IT networks are typically resilient by design, and the primary concern is whether devices are online and if applications are running. If data packets are moving, all is well.

Video networks, however, demand more. Maintaining peak performance at every stage in the workflow is essential to ensuring content is delivered successfully and with the highest quality. A monitoring solution must be able to analyze devices and applications based on how effectively they process content, not just whether they’re operational.

To achieve this, monitoring must be video-aware, understanding the network’s nuances and measuring the right indicators to confirm optimal performance. And those indicators go far beyond standard IT metrics. They include video processing buffers, lip sync analysis, bridge router saturation levels, service availability — not just for the service itself but for the individual programs within it — and more.

 

The Need for a Video-Specific Solution

As viewer expectations for video quality continue to rise, the media and entertainment industry needs monitoring solutions designed by video engineers specifically for video networks. A critical capability these solutions must provide is true end-to-end visibility — the ability to see the complete path content takes through the network and correlating data from all the devices along that path.

In video workflows, an alert from a specific device doesn’t always mean the fault lies there; the root cause may be upstream. So, without end-to-end visibility, it takes longer to detect problems and even more time to troubleshoot and isolate their source. This can lead to complete service outages or quality degradation that harms the viewer experience. And when performance problems disrupt ad delivery, the impact extends beyond audience satisfaction, directly affecting revenue growth.

Another essential capability is configurable monitoring sensitivity. Operators require the ability to focus resources where they’re most needed. A broadcaster confident in an overbuilt switch infrastructure might concentrate monitoring on edge devices or streaming applications, where problems are more likely to arise. Conversely, another operator facing the risk of switch oversubscription — a common IT issue, but far more disruptive in video — might increase visibility and alerting on switch performance.

Finally, smart alerting is critical. Operators can be overwhelmed by floods of low-priority notifications, which can bury the alerts that matter most. Purpose-built solutions should filter and prioritize notifications so operators see only the most urgent, actionable information.

Media and Entertainment OEMs Must Lead the Way

For many operators transitioning to IP, the shift has been eye-opening. Networks are more complex than expected, and their current tools aren’t giving them the visibility they need. Some have tried to fill the gaps themselves using freeware. But then they face the burden of developing and maintaining that software to make it work effectively alongside other products in their network. They often give up, realizing the effort costs too much and still doesn’t deliver complete coverage.

Media and entertainment OEMs know video networks better than anyone. They are the experts in the unique challenges, workflows, and performance demands of these environments, which puts them in the best position to solve the problem. By designing interoperable, video-aware monitoring solutions that integrate seamlessly into mixed environments, OEMs can eliminate costly workarounds, restore full visibility, and protect both content quality and revenue in an increasingly IP-driven world.

Imagine Products: Automating Camera to Edit Workflows

Imagine Products: Automating Camera to Edit Workflows

Luke Erny, Marketing Coordinator, Imagine Products, Inc

Solving the Modern Pain Points of On Set Media Management

When it comes to on-set media management, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Every production, from short-form commercial shoots to large-scale projects, faces its own unique challenges. Despite differences in scale, crew structure, camera types, delivery formats, and timelines, there is always a critical need to offload your camera originals safely and get them to your post team as quickly and efficiently as possible.

And yet, this seemingly straightforward goal is often a source of stress, friction, and delay.

In an ideal world, there’s a dedicated media manager on set whose sole job is to oversee this process, ensuring footage is verified, labeled, transcoded, and delivered according to the production’s specs. But as industry pressures mount and crew sizes shrink, it’s increasingly common to see this role absorbed by already extended team members such as camera assistants, digital imaging technicians (DITs), or even the cinematographer themself.

The reality is most productions are running leaner than ever, relying on multitasking individuals to uphold an ever-growing technical pipeline.

In these environments, offloading and organizing footage becomes a chore which can delay more urgent tasks. And the stakes are high. Improperly managed media can lead to misnamed files, broken folder structures, missing clips, or corrupt data. The manual nature of the process leaves room for error at every stage, particularly when juggling multiple tools to handle copy, verification, transcoding, and reporting operations.

This is the landscape that led to the development of Automation Pipelines in ShotPut Studio. While software solutions for offloading have existed for years, they’ve often required users to string together multiple tools or navigate steep learning curves just to match their desired workflows. Automation Pipelines aims to change that by offering a flexible, user-friendly approach to chaining together tasks like copying, transcoding, and report generation into a single automated process.

But this is not a replacement for skilled media professionals. Rather, it’s a support system built to handle the routine workload so that those professionals can focus on what matters most.

A Flexible Framework for Real-World Workflows

One of the biggest pain points in offloading workflows is the lack of standardization from job to job. Even experienced media managers are often handed incomplete or inconsistent specifications at the start of a shoot, leaving them to make decisions about folder structures, file naming conventions, and delivery formats. And when multiple people are involved in handling footage across multiple days, miscommunication becomes a major risk.

Automation Pipelines helps address this by allowing users to take their Presets, saved configurations for copying, transcoding, and reporting tasks, and use them as the building blocks of a pipeline. And by collaborating on the creation of these during prep meetings, all stakeholders can agree on the process before the first card is ever even offloaded.

Once presets are finalized, the Pipeline Builder provides a drag-and-drop interface for combining them into a complete, start-to-finish workflow. Here users can specify the order of operations, review settings, and make any last-minute adjustments, all in one unified view. When ready, the pipeline can be launched with a single click, executing the entire sequence automatically.

The power of this tool lies in its ease of use. For instance, complex folder structures, multi-destination copies, custom reports, and professional grade transcoding can all be handled without requiring scripting or external tools. The automation is robust enough to support large-scale productions but intuitive enough for smaller teams who might not have a dedicated post supervisor on set.

Bridging the Gap Between Set and Post

Perhaps the most overlooked pain point in this process lies in the handoff between production and post. Even when media is safely offloaded and transcoded, post-production teams often encounter issues when footage doesn’t match expected naming conventions or organizational structures. This results in time-consuming troubleshooting delays that often ripple through the entire pipeline.

Automation Pipelines helps tackle this issue by encouraging early alignment between departments. Because presets are both reusable and transparent, post teams can review the exact settings used on set, ensuring consistency from ingest to edit. ShotPut Studio’s media reports provide further verification that every file was accounted for and processed as intended.

For productions without a dedicated DIT or media manager, the benefits are even more pronounced. A camera operator or assistant can launch a pre-built pipeline, knowing the process will follow the set specs without requiring their full attention.

Reducing Risk, Increasing Focus

At its core, this feature is about freeing up your time and attention. Every minute spent dragging files between folders or triple-checking transcode settings is a minute not spent collaborating or preparing for the next setup. And while the stakes may differ between a short commercial and a feature film, the underlying stress remains the same.

With Automation Pipelines, productions of all sizes gain a tool that brings structure, speed, and reliability to a task that is too often rushed or improvised. And while the technology is evolving, the goal remains timeless, to make sure that what was captured on set arrives in post safely, quickly, and exactly as expected.

About Imagine Products, Inc.

Imagine Products is dedicated to empowering storytellers through intuitive, professional-grade workflow tools, including ShotPut Pro, ShotPut Studio, and myLTO. With over 30 years in the industry and more than 50,000 users worldwide, we continue to develop solutions that simplify production from ingest to archive.

GrayMeta’s Compar Pro: Revolutionizing Video Comparison & Validation

GrayMeta’s Compar Pro: Revolutionizing Video Comparison & Validation

In today’s fast-evolving media landscape, where content is constantly repurposed, localized, and distributed across linear and non-linear platforms, the ability to manage, validate, and orchestrate content workflows with precision is more critical than ever. GrayMeta’s latest innovation, Compar Pro, directly addresses this challenge—offering a transformative approach to video comparison and content validation at scale.

The New Complexity of Content Management

As broadcasters, studios, and content distributors navigate increasingly complex delivery pipelines, they face a common challenge: managing multiple versions of the same asset. Whether it’s regional edits, promotional cuts, or platform-specific variants, traditional file-level metadata—such as duration, codec, or file size—often fails to explain how or why these versions differ. Manual review processes are no longer sustainable. They are time-consuming, error-prone, and ill-suited to the demands of modern playout and publication workflows.

Introducing Compar: Frame-Accurate, Pixel-Level Video Analysis

Launched in 2025, Compar is the first purpose-built video comparison application designed for the media and entertainment industry. Available as both a desktop solution (Compar Pro) and a web-based platform (Compar Online), it enables frame-accurate, pixel-level analysis of video assets—empowering teams to validate content with unprecedented precision. Unlike checksum or metadata-based tools, Compar performs deep visual analysis to detect even the most subtle differences—such as color grading shifts, overlays, editorial changes, or compression artifacts. It can confirm whether two files are visually identical, even if they differ in codec, resolution, or container format.

Optimizing Workflows for Linear and Non-Linear Playout

Compar is engineered to support the orchestration of complex content workflows, ensuring that every version of an asset is validated before playout—whether for traditional broadcast or OTT platforms. Key features include:

  • Three-Panel Comparison Interface: Displays reference asset player, comparison asset player, and difference views side-by-side, with deviations from visual identity clearly highlighted.
  • Grid-Based Analysis: Each frame is divided into a configurable grid (default: 16×9), with pixel-level differences analyzed per cell. Thresholds can be adjusted to detect even the most minute changes.
  • Timeline-Based Tracking: Automatically places markers at points of visual difference, recording timecodes, frame numbers, and durations. This data can be exported in XML or CSV formats for integration into QC reports or MAM systems.
  • Metadata Panels: (Compar Pro only) Provide detailed technical insights—resolution, codec, bitrate—enabling format-level comparison across proxies or variants.
  • Playback and Navigation: Full playback and frame-by-frame navigation in Compar Pro; thumbnail-based navigation in Compar Online.


Use Cases Across the Content Lifecycle

Compar supports a wide range of use cases critical to content preparation and playout:

  • Detecting compression or resolution differences beyond customizable thresholds
  • Identifying color grading or aesthetic changes
  • Spotting visual discrepancies such as:
    • Subtitles, overlays, watermarks, bugs
    • Alternate product placements or shot replacements
    • Missing scenes or AI-generated extensions
    • Enhanced effects or editorial alterations
  • Verifying visual identity across different formats and delivery specifications

 Future-Ready: Roadmap Features

GrayMeta is actively expanding Compar’s capabilities to support even more sophisticated workflows. Upcoming features include:

  • Audio and language track comparison
  • In/out point selection for partial asset analysis
  • Region-of-interest (ROI) tools for targeted frame inspection

 Conclusion: A New Era of Confidence in Content Readiness

As the industry continues to shift toward automated, scalable, and intelligent content operations, Compar represents a significant leap forward. It eliminates the guesswork of manual review, accelerates validation workflows, and ensures that every asset—regardless of format or platform—is ready for playout with confidence. For media organizations seeking to streamline operations and uphold the highest standards of content integrity, Compar is not just a tool—it’s a strategic advantage.