NAB Perspectives: Front Porch Digital Targets Sports Market With Cloud-Based MAM
Story Highlights
Wanting to grab a stronger hold on the sports market, Front Porch Digital knew it needed a more cost-effective media-asset–management (MAM) system to offer prospective clients. So it went to the cloud.
At the NAB Show last week, Front Porch rolled out its LYNX cloud-based system and introduced the latest version of DIVAdirector, a Web-based MAM platform. Both attracted attention from visitors at the North Hall booth.
“One of the key target markets for us is the sports marketplace,” noted Chief Marketing Officer Phil Jackson during the show. “And we’ve already had several positive reactions from teams and other entities at the show.”
Front Porch Digital’s LYNX is an integrated environment for managing assets on a global scale, from any device at any location. The LYNX project represents the company’s largest R&D investment in more than a decade and offers media organizations a newer approach to asset management.
LYNX applications and services are integrated with the company’s DIVA technology and are designed to fit the needs of media organizations facing not only the traditional pressures involved in managing mission-critical assets securely and flexibly but also the many additional challenges of operation today.
Meanwhile, DIVAdirector is a MAM system that enables operators to search, locate, and retrieve stored media assets directly from their desktops using a Web browser. DIVAdirector V5.0 offers a host of new features.
For example, it boasts HTTP-based adaptive-streaming support, whereby client Internet browsers can switch between video and audio bitrates depending on available network conditions and CPU power. In addition, DIVAdirector V5.0 offers portability across operating systems (Windows 7, Mac OS), browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Firefox), proxy formats (WMV, H.264), and an increased number of concurrent users.
“Especially on the coaching side of sports, it’s a new offering,” said Fred Vint, director of sports sales at Front Porch Digital. “Teams have been stacking up videotapes since 1986 in some cases, and now they are starting to understand that they have to do something with it or they are going to lose it. So, by offering some services around the migration piece as well as offering the cloud services and some other workflow-flexibility options they haven’t had before, it’s really starting to ring a bell with them that they need to move forward outside of their traditional workflows.”