Believe it or not, we have only weeks to go before IBC 2025 kicks off in Amsterdam.
SDVI will arrive at the show highlighting new technologies that streamline content deliveries and enhance the ability to integrate manual operations into automated supply chains.
Rally Connect
Rally Connect is a template-driven module within Rally that automates the preparation and delivery of content to distribution partners such as Amazon Prime, Hulu, Pluto, YouTubeTV, and more. The latest update to Rally Connect provides a new operational UI that tracks delivery status for both packages and metadata updates — a fast way to see which deliveries and updates have been successful and which might need attention.
The Power of Technology Integrations
Almost every supply chain requires some work that must be performed manually, like editing, dubbing, or QC decisions. For the first time at IBC, SDVI will show new functionality in Rally based on integrations with technology from Media-Anywhere for high-resolution editing, EIKON Group for external job management, and Spectra Logic for on-premises storage management. These integrations further optimize the media supply chains for Rally users by bringing in capabilities that previously existed only separately. The result: increased visibility and management of these activities.
Over the past 5+ years, I’ve seen numerous media organizations take on — and succeed in — building smarter, more efficient content factories. Each transformation looks different, but all reflect the benefits of investment in workflow optimization, automated processing, and resource orchestration, realizing shared goals of increased speed, agility, and efficiency.
Even after all that noteworthy progress, however, many media organizations still face a significant bottleneck: the preparation and distribution of their content to multiple platforms, often relying on third-party providers to manage the last mile of content preparation.
Delivering content to a broad set of global platforms requires adapting to a host of differing technical requirements. So, what if media organizations (as well as external providers) could take care of this vital step differently, in a more cost-effective, automated manner? What if they brought external processes under the umbrella of their own media supply chain optimization?
While we most often talk about the media supply chain as something that starts at ingest and ends at distribution or delivery, in reality, there are two supply chains: one inside your organization, where content is transformed and processed, and another outside, where content gets packaged and delivered to specific platforms.
In the blog, we discuss the implications of extending media supply chains — for organizations that have undergone a shift to cloud-enabled content preparation, and for those that have not. We introduce the notion of a content recipe, and its instrumental role in automating content handoff.
If you’re already using a platform like Rally to automate your media factory, then you’ve laid the foundation for further automation. Next step? You go outside, extending your supply chain automation to the content handoff … and beyond.
Alex Popa observes, when building a Rally media supply chain, you’re not locked into a single tool for each task – you have the freedom to choose the best tool for the job. The Rally Application Services Market offers a wide range of third-party integrations, allowing users to tailor their workflows to the specific uses cases. Different parts of a supply chain may call for different tools, whether due to complexity, content type, or simply the preference of the operator or engineer. Whether those are transcoders, QC, or AI tools, Rally users can spin tools up or down as needed without rebuilding the supply chain from scratch.
Our newest Rally updates improve the experience of operators by introducing features that make navigation, reporting, and content handling simpler and more intuitive.
PDF Files Preview in the Access Panel
PDF files can now be previewed from within the Access panel, allowing operators to look at QC reports or other PDF files without downloading them to their computer. As a result, it’s easier for QC operators to look at details only present in the report PDF and for editors to look at scripts, cut lists, and other useful information stored in PDF within the asset.
Rally also now fetches the PDF report from Telestream Cloud – Qualify jobs when using Qualify directly, allowing Rally users to also view the report information in the native PDF form, as well as in Rally Access.
Scheduled Usage Report UI
Rally users can now configure scheduled usage reports directly in the Rally UI. Previously, users could configure these reports only in the back end. Now, they can configure Rally to drop usage data periodically for both job usage and asset usage into a Rally storage location, thereby implementing their own data lakes and enabling detailed data analytics.
These are just a few of the recent updates made to the Rally platform. Read more in our latest Rally Updates blog.
Partner Spotlight
Colorfront Transkoder
Transkoder from Colorfront is a powerful, dedicated 2K/4K transcoding application that automates fast, high-quality digital file conversion at the highest performance for studios and VFX facilities involved in motion picture and high-end TV production. Transkoder is specialized for DCP and IMF mastering and includes high-performance JPEG2000 encoding and decoding, 32-bit floating point processing on multiple GPUs, MXF wrapping, accelerated checksums and AES encryption and decryption, IMF/IMP and DCI/DCP package authoring, editing, and transwrapping.
Learn more about the full spectrum of best-in-class tools in the Rally Application Services Market.
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