We’ve got some exciting new developments in the Rally platform to showcase at this year’s NAB Show, innovations that help media ops teams meet the demand for high-volume processing and escalating deliveries.
We’ll be showcasing many new enhancements to the Rally platform since last NAB (over 100!) including new centralized metadata management that simplifies how Rally captures and organizes content metadata. Read more about it in the Rally section below.
We’ll also be highlighting new technical integrations including:
EIKON-iQ – create work orders for EIKON jobs like scripting, mixing, localization, mastering, and QC, and send them to EIKON-iQ for routing to the appropriate EIKON service or system.
Meet the EIKON team at a reception on our booth Monday, April 7 from 4:30 – 6:30 to learn more.
Media-Anywhere AirFrame – edit high-resolution content directly from S3 buckets without waiting for content transfers or having to work with proxies.
Meet the Media-Anywhere team and see it in action at a reception on our booth, Tuesday, April 8 from 4:30 – 6:30.
Spectra Vail – access on-premises storage for Rally-managed media supply chains that need to work with content stored on local archives.
Every few months it seems another vendor enters the media technology conversation with a grand declaration: They’ve built the industry’s first truly end-to-end platform. It’s a fully integrated, all-in-one solution that can handle everything from production to global distribution.
Sounds great. Until you take a closer look at what “end to end” really means.
Because single-vendor end-to-end solutions are designed to account for every stage of the media supply chain, they often get the job done using the lowest common denominator. Maybe that’s good enough. But maybe it’s not. And in an industry where content quality, speed to market, and operational efficiency are competitive differentiators, “good enough” rarely gets the job done.
No single vendor excels at every step of the media supply chain. It’s just not a realistic expectation of any one technology supplier. Content operations are too complex, and the tools required are too specialized. When a vendor says they offer everything from end to end, what they’re really offering is a closed system that limits users’ flexibility and their opportunities for workflow and operational optimization.
Fortunately, there is a practical and proven alternative to this fantasy. It’s a well-orchestrated ecosystem of tools, each chosen because it’s the best at what it does, not because it happened to be bundled together by a single provider.
Some vendors sell “end to end” as a means to reducing complexity. But simplifying the problem by shrinking the scope doesn’t actually solve anything. With access to the best technology for any job, modern media companies get the performance, scalability, and visibility they need.
Editor’s note: “What was your favorite problem you helped solve in the past year?” This is the question we posed to our Technical Solutions team at the start of the year. Their answers reveal some of the best problem-solving taking place on Rally media supply chains today. This is the third in their series of answers.
The Problem
The Marketing team at one major media company was producing high volumes of promo content for social media: stills and video to go out on Facebook, Instagram, X, etc. They needed to ensure that the added text and logos overlaying the media would fit into the unique formatting requirements of each platform. Since many platforms use different media sizes and place their own text over social posts in different ways, a promo that looked great on X, for example, might look wrong in the context of a Facebook post.
Operators had to vet or check each piece of promo material before it was delivered. They needed to open each of the images or videos, manually verify the image aspect ratios, and determine whether logos and text were placed within “safe areas” that wouldn’t conflict with each platform’s formatting.
Manually reviewing each promo to ensure conformity across all social platforms was tedious and time-consuming. Could Rally automation capabilities be used to streamline a marketing workflow, making it more efficient and scalable?
The Rally Approach:
The Rally workflow we developed automatically identifies the placement of text and logos in the media, then compares them against the defined “safe areas”. Any content that has problems is flagged for manual review. The solution allows teams to manage by exception, focusing on the content that needs their review, rather than the manual review of the entire promo library, as this Rally user had done.
This Rally workflow significantly streamlines operations and reduces costs for Marketing teams trying to get content in front of more viewers.
New in Rally
Centralized Management of Metadata Forms and Lists
Whether enhancing searchability or enabling workflow automation, metadata is the backbone of modern media workflows. And now, in a fresh update to the Rally media supply chain management platform, metadata management has become significantly more efficient. We’ve improved management of JSON forms and lists to streamline metadata handling across workflows, in turn reducing redundancy and making updates easier than ever.
Why it matters:
Now, with more centralized metadata form and list management, teams can define a single reference that is reused across various workflows. Any modifications made to the fields or forms automatically propagate wherever they are used, eliminating the need for manual updates across multiple Gateways and enabling greater efficiency with lower risk of error or inconsistency.
This capability is especially beneficial for organizations managing high volumes of media assets, where consistency in metadata is critical for efficient search, retrieval, and automation.
Partner Spotlight
Media-Anywhere AirFrame
SDVI has integrated the Rally platform with Media-Anywhere AirFrame, enabling edit operations directly on Amazon S3 storage. Rally users who use Adobe Premiere Pro for manual review and editing operations can now access high-resolution content directly from their S3 buckets without waiting for content transfers or having to work with proxies.
Remote editing with media stored in the cloud currently requires time-consuming copying of files between locations or the use of proxies to speed workflows, adding time and cost as well as the added complexity of managing what becomes duplicate versions of media. AirFrame enables instant access to high-resolution media stored in an S3 storage bucket. Editors can begin working frame-accurately on the original media files without needing a local copy or a proxy.
This new integration means that workorders being completed using Premiere Pro can be performed on the original media, eliminating the time and cost of moving copies between S3 storage and the edit workstation — a game changer for many Rally users.
You can read more details about the integration and about Media-Anywhere AirFrame in our recent announcement.
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