Metaglue personnel will be at the HPA Technical Retreat for a first showing of new technology to help the automation of QC for file based material.

The new software will allow media companies to automate part of the QC process across the whole file based workflow to considerably cut costs and employ human resources more efficiently. It will be on public show for the first time in the HPA Demo Room.

Oliver plus Metaglue’s new West Coast representative, Julian Ramm, will be available each day to talk about the new technology. If you’re attending this event, you will find them at the scheduled presentations or during one of the many breaks for networking. If you’d like to arrange a personal demonstration please contact Julian prior to, or at the event.

Oliver will also be present at the Breakfast Roundtables, on Thursday morning (18th February) to discuss Program Versioning with AS-02, and on Friday morning discussing Program Distribution with AS-03.

As usual the HPA Tech Retreat will be held at Rancho Mirage, this year from16th -19th February 2010.

Julian Ramm is appointed as West Coast representative.

With a continuously expanding customer base on the West Coast, Metaglue has recruited Julian Ramm to provide local support for existing and future clients. With career experience stretching across the broadcast, post and film industries in the UK and USA, Julian will be the local sales contact and provide a hot link back to development teams.

Lexington, MA
12th January 2010 - Pioneering MXF and metadata company Metaglue Corporation has appointed Scene&Heard as its Western US Marketing Consultant. The L.A.-based PR and Marketing agency will also provide sales support to the Hollywood media community and across the western region ...

Read the Full Press Release

Managing Content Integrity for MXF

At the October SMPTE Technical Conference in Hollywood, Oliver Morgan presented a paper outlining a new standards based approach for managing Quality Control of file based content. This will allow media companies to automate part of the QC process to considerably cut costs and employ human resources more effectively.

Visit http://www.smpte.org/ for more about SMPTE.

Oliver Morgan presents a paper on the MXF Application Specification at the annual PBS Technology Conference.

MXF AS-03 is an Application Specification to optimise MXF file structure for program delivery. It is intended for direct playout via a video server, for example, and is based on a PBS profile for MXF program delivery to their member stations.

View the presentation.

MXF “Mit Out Essence”

Oliver Morgan's article apeared in the March 2009 issue of the SMPTE Journal magazine.

Visit http://www.smpte.org/ for more about SMPTE.

Ian Baker joined Broadcast magazine’s “Managing Digital Workflows” conference to lead a panel discussion on “Metadata solutions for fast, reliable and secure file-based transfer”.

The panel comprised James Weeks (Executive Producer, New Media, Sky News), Kevin Jones (Senior Research Scientist, DSTL) and George Luff (Director of Process Improvement, BPI Improve).

The topics discussed included:-

• Choosing the right metadata to facilitate tracking and finding the file you need
• Tackling interoperability issues in workflows –what can you do to minimise the pain of incompatibility?
• Practical steps you can take to ensure secure file-based transfer
• Maintaining quality control in your metadata to ensure the consistent performance of your digital workflow

Oliver Morgan was among the recipients to receive an Emmy Award for Development and Standardization of File Formats for Video and Audio at the January 7th awards ceremony.

Oliver was a principal architect of MXF and chair of SMPTE W25 throughout the development of MXF.

Visit http://www.smpte.org/ for more about SMPTE.

Systemwide QC Using MXF and Metadata As more and more assets are being managed and manipulated in the file domain, processes are becoming increasingly automated and thus invisible. Overall Quality Control of the asset is becoming a significant cost factor in the lifecycle of any audio visual production. Creating an audit trail of QC information and asset lifecycle information in MXF allows highly automated reliable systems to be built with a minimum number of human touch points. This session will illustrate the principals and technology involved.

The Technology Conference Website

Following Metaglue's continued support of the Advanced Media Workflow Association, Metaglue has now moved from Associate Member to Principal Member of this organisation.

Oliver Morgan was re-elected to the Board of Directors.

Please visit http://www.amwa.tv/ for further details.

Putting AAF and MXF to Work

The conference, Mastering Digital Workflows, organised by Broadcast magazine took place in London on 6th March. Neil Dunstan of Metaglue gave a presentation on behalf of the AMWA about "Setting Industry Standards for Digital Workflows" to the audience of senior production, operational and technical strategists.

With the increasing use of MXF across the industry, many manufacturers are working to include this as an interconnect standard for their products. With finite staff resources, companies often look for external support on an “ad hoc” basis for specific projects of this type – which allows their own engineers to concentrate on company specific developments.
 
Since it started in 2002, Metaglue has provided bespoke MXF consultancy to many organisations in many markets. However, we are aware that an “off the shelf”, cost effective, service is more appropriate in many cases. So employing Metaglue’s past experience, we can now offer an MXFplus package to help organisations implement MXF in their products and systems.
 
MXFplus is a software development kit (SDK) which builds on the standard MXFLib and provides extra libraries to simplify MXF developments. At Metaglue we never like to make things more difficult or expensive than necessary. So our aim is to provide a service which:-

• Can be scaled to exactly satisfy the customer’s needs
• Is commercially straightforward and easy to administer
• Has no hidden or retrospective costs
• Includes all source code to the libraries
• Delivers what you want, when you want it

If you feel that your organisation could benefit from this type of service, please so we can explore your requirements!

Putting AAF and MXF to Work

Metaglue is proud to announce its involvement with the MXF Mastering Format Project. At NAB 2007, the Advanced Media Workflow Association – AMWA (formerly The Advanced Authoring Format Association - AAFA) sponsored the first public demonstration of this long-term initiative.

The aim of this project is to bring a fresh approach to MXF and to provide proposed, real-world solutions for key workflows, focusing on creating a single MXF master file from which multiple versions of a program may be created.

This rationalization project currently includes two key strands: MXF Mastering Format and the MXF Processor API. The work, which was started two years ago by Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., was demonstrated at the show and was open to comment and scrutiny. The Advanced Media Workflow Association welcomes input on this technical proposal.

The full list of manufacturers which took a leading role in this MXF rationalization work is:
EMC, Marquis Broadcast; Metaglue; Omneon; Open Cube Technologies; Pro-Bel; Quantum; Snell & Wilcox; Softel; TMD.

Please visit http://www.amwa.tv/ for further details.

Once again, We at Metaglue enjoyed an insightful and successful IBC. As metadata devotes, we are gratified to know that so many of you are now engaged in in projects utilising this exciting new technology, and we are excited to be in a position to contribute to your projects with our knowledge and tools.

We look forward to seeing all of you at IBC 2007!

As a special offer for new orders on Diffuser and MXFixer, taken before October 2006, we are giving the first year's maintenance free of charge. This applies regardless of whether they are bought separately or together.

July 11th & 12th in Burbank.
Download the event brochure.

The AAF Association will be holding its Technical Awareness Event & Conference on 11th & 12th July in Burbank. Again we are pleased to support this event where visitors will be able to see MXFixer and MXFactory in action.
 
Visit the AAF Association website for full details about this event.

On Thursday July 15 at 6:32pm Pacific Time, Oliver and Brad Glimer of the Advanced Authoring Format Association join Philip Hodgetts and Michael Horton to discuss AAF, MXF and the upcoming AAF Technical Awareness Event.

Listen to the Podcast

If your organization has to manage MXF files, you probably have a requirement to check the metadata. MXFixer has been described as "the waveform monitor for metadata". It enables you to unwrap the file and check that the metadata is present and correct before rewrapping.

Learn more

Broadcast Engineering published this white paper piece by Neil Dunstan in their May 2006 edition.
Download a pdf of the white paper.

Read the article in the Broadcast Engineering online edition.

Metaglue is pleased to announce that the Ascent Media Group has extended the provision of their Hosted Service of Diffuser by a further year and added a package of MXFixer and AAFixer to complement it.

Read the full press release.

Find us at SL1513C in the Avid Developer Community.

Once again our booth will be staffed by Oliver Morgan, Ian Baker, Lisa Coen and Neil Dunstan.

We will be demonstrating the integrated operation of MXFixer and Diffuser to provide a full package to extract and analyze metadata whilst comparing it to a custom metadata dictionary before rewrapping it.

As always, we would be very pleased to see you at the exhibition and invite you to contact us to set up a time to meet. The dates for the show this year are: April 24-27.

MXFactory is a family of products which creates MXF files. Launched in a version that creates high quality proxies from ultra-high resolution telecine outputs, the range is expanding to include other combinations.

Oliver Morgan participated in the Hollywood Post Alliance Technology Retreat.

Once again, Oliver lead several breakfast roundtable discussions:
•  "Metadata and Workflows"
•  "MXF in Production, Post-production, and Archives"

Visit the Hollywood Post Alliance Website to learn more about the Hollywood Post Alliance.

MXFixer 30-day trial
If your organization has to manage MXF files, you probably have a requirement to check the metadata. MXFixer has been described as "the waveform monitor for metadata". It enables you to unwrap the file and check that the metadata is present and correct before rewrapping.

Obtain your copy or learn more.