Telestream Streamlines News Workflow for Azteca America
Telestream, the leading provider of transcoding workflow automation solutions, announced that its FlipFactory and Launch products were selected by Azteca America to provide fast, efficient delivery of news content between the network's California-based operations center and affiliate stations in the United States. Azteca America is the fastest growing Hispanic network in the United States, providing programming to 60 affiliates in major Hispanic markets across the country.
"We chose Telestream because of their experience in Internet media delivery and their flexibility to cost-effectively meet our exact workflow needs," said Marco Rivera, CTO and Jakob Nielsen, Engineering Manager at Azteca America. "Important selection criteria included the ability to automatically integrate with our news systems, provide important SMPTE VC-1 and MPEG-2 format support and meet our tight delivery deadlines."
Azteca America supplies Hispanic-language programming for the affiliate stations. Last year, they were approached by one of the owners who asked Azteca America to produce local news stories for some of the affiliates in Texas and Nevada. Azteca America already had the production facilities but needed a solution to quickly and efficiently move content between locations for news gathering as well as news delivery back to the local stations.
After looking at expensive satellite and fiber solutions, they turned to Telestream and local reseller, Key Code Media, who tailored an Internet delivery solution to meet the company's exact needs at a fraction of the cost. Azteca America purchased Telestream's FlipFactory enterprise-class transcoding workflow automation application and multiple Launch personal IP media delivery software applications to provide the workflow solution they needed.
Local reporters now capture and edit news stories on laptop computer systems outfitted with a wireless card, Avid editing software and Telestream's Launch software. News stories are simply dragged to a Launch folder which automatically transcodes the content to VC-1 at 2 Mbps and transmits the media via the Internet to a FlipFactory server at the network operations center. A full 2-minute story takes about 10-12 minutes to send to the broadcast server ready for air.
"Azteca America's need to quickly and easily move content in and out of their network operations center is a perfect match for our products," said Dan Castles, President & CEO at Telestream. "Using laptops with wireless cards and Launch software provides ultimate flexibility in terms of being able to send reporters anywhere they need to go. FlipFactory provides the same level of flexibility at the operations center. We're pleased that Azteca America is taking full advantage of our products to save time and money for their clients."
FlipFactory is the glue between the outside world and the inside world at Azteca America's network operations center. Everything that is delivered to the station via the Internet automatically goes through FlipFactory because it is completely wide open and cross-platform, supporting file transfer between virtually any format and device.
FlipFactory is also used to deliver material out from the network operations center. Once local news stories are produced, FlipFactory encodes and delivers material back to the affiliates, ready to air. Higher-speed Internet lines are used for delivery back to the affiliates to avoid bottlenecks. A 22-minute program encoded to MPEG-2 file at 5 Mbps is delivered in just 16 minutes.
Nielsen adds, "FlipFactory is a workhorse. It is seriously rock-solid, and we've never had to power it down."
