Switzerland’s Oldest Private Broadcaster Gets a Modern Media Makeover
Today’s content creation landscape is complicated. Media producers have to embrace new production workflows and increasingly diverse options for viewing video. In addition to traditional cable and satellite, streaming services (OTT) are claiming an ever-increasing share of viewers’ attention, often in new formats like HDR and 4K. There is no “one size fits all” solution. The best approach is an open solution that splits workflows into different layers, weaving best of breed technology to create an agile platform that simplifies and facilitates media creation, management and distribution while providing flexibility for growth.
This approach is exemplified by the solution chosen for a complete overhaul at Telebasel, the oldest private broadcaster in Switzerland. The broadcaster’s goal was to create a future-proof infrastructure that would lead to dramatic improvements in cross-department collaboration and overall productivity. Importantly, Telebasel wanted to offer its Adobe Premiere Pro users a familiar experience while boosting efficiency across the media enterprise.
Interchangeable Media Content for Traditional, Social, & Digital Channels
A key component of Telebasel’s programming is the “Newsblock,” a live news format show where news stories are developed and moderated in-house. News packages need to be visually engaging and contain the latest information. In addition to live news, Telebasel produces lifestyle shows and entertainment programs that run on a 24/7 loop as well as digital and social channels that need to keep sync with programs while promoting deeper engagement with audiences.
“Our material needs to remain flexible and adaptable, right up to the point of broadcast,” said Pascal Jacot, head of technology at Telebasel. “It’s important for us to be able to exchange content between our channels and react quickly to developing stories. We also need to include reaction from the audience in the form of video clips.”
Telebasel required a solution that would integrate its digital, social and linear channels under one seamless media production and distribution workflow. Off the shelf products were not suitable. What was needed were deeper level integrations that simplified complex tasks, enabling Telebasel to interact with audiences, customers, and external media outlets.
Open Solutions Integrate Channels and Remove Complexities for Storytellers
To connect its channels and simplify its enterprise workflows, Telebasel opted for open solutions from EditShare and MoovIT. Based on Adobe Premiere Pro, the new workflow is centralized around EditShare’s high performance, media optimized storage environment. With centralized storage in place, EditShare’s asset management platform, FLOW, and MoovIT’s workgroup administration tools, Helmut, combined to optimize the media creation process. They automated, simplified, or made unnecessary manual steps or complex procedures that were common during the sharing, creation, and distribution of content at Telebasel.
Open APIs, from EditShare and MoovIT, enabled Telebasel to not only integrate its channel workflows but customize them as well. The unique assignments and administrative structures are clearly defined while their finely tuned collaborative and technical processes are seamlessly automated, yielding powerful results.
The Adobe editing process is more open, collaborative, and interchangeable. With content centralized, Telebasel editors can view and edit video directly from their desks or remote external locations. Material is processed in real time, with editors accessing proxies in FLOW and Helmut, synchronizing the data for the high-res cuts in the background. Once editing is complete, Helmut automatically renders and adds clips to the channel’s schedule. All the media is stored centrally with rich metadata on EFS enabling control and administration of media assets at scale.
“The centralized management capabilities were crucial to the entire system,” Telebasel’s Jacot added. “The new workflows have helped us to quickly integrate live reports and news reports into the newly adapted transmission formats.”
The Telebasel rollout is a perfect template for other organizations, of any size, looking to deploy integrated centralized storage, “under the hood” administration and orchestration, and highly collaborative media and project management for Adobe enterprise workflows.
