Having spent the last several years deeply involved in the broadcast video server market, I have heard more questions asked than answers readily available. This is not to say that my particular corner of the broadcast market is a quagmire of uncertainty. It can however, be more accurately described as being in a state of evolution. Ten years ago, moving video for playout was a relatively simple concept. Cameras recorded to tape, tape was carried to VTR’s. If content had to be moved across equipment it was a simple, but lengthy process of baseband playout and ingest.
Then came disk- and file- based video servers, which also brought along the complexities of file wrappers, encoders, decoders, interleaved versus non-interleaved audio, closed captioning and metadata. Add in a healthy dose of competition and you end with a muddle of proprietary codecs, wrappers, formats and data stores. While the SoftMetal video servers provide a great many solutions to these issues, I cannot claim for a minute that we have all the answers. In fact, in some cases we have yet to even be asked all of the questions.
As a vendor how do we work in the best interests of our customers? How do we ensure that the purchaser and the end-user are communicating needs? How do we ensure the contents on the glossy brochure match real use requirements?
These are all tough questions, but the real question, IMHO, the only question, is always… What is your workflow? This in reality is a series of questions:
Where does your media come from? Which graphics product produces it? Do you need to transfer content off the server for post editing? Do you need to record closed captioning? Does that close captioning need to go to other servers for playout?
One simple solution is to precede every sale with a simple workflow analysis in the form of a conference call. This provides an opportunity to ask the above questions, but more importantly it opens a dialogue, which can often lead topics that no one had previously considered.
Our second approach was to implement a Try/Buy program:
As a company, Ross Video learned long ago that a great demo is worth the cost when gaining a customer. As the Video Server Product Manager I learned that a server demo is not worth the cost of the taxi to an airport. Showing up on site with pre-rendered footage and a couple of video monitors to demonstrate cue, play, rewind and fast forward is moot at best.
The Try/Buy program provides the customer with a new factory built, to spec, video server. Then the customer can rack the server, wire the control cables, move content from graphics and test it in their workflow. Provide support and ensure that the requirements meet the deliverables.
The bottom line is that the workflow and the product have to match. You need to understand and define the workflow in order to ensure the client has the right product fit. You need to have a dialogue, not just with the people paying for the product, but with the people using the product.
The reality of making a sale and providing a solution that is in the best interest of the customer is having a real product fit. If that fit does not exist, then it is best to walk away and suggest alternatives, even if those alternatives do not exist at Ross Video.
My workflow solution, is to understand your workflow.
