ITN takes on Sony Ci media cloud platform
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Editor
| 14 June 2019

The London-based bespoke content production hub of the UK’s leading commercial broadcaster, ITN Productions, has been revealed as one of the early adopters of Sony's Ci Media Cloud Platform.

Built on Amazon Web Services, Sony’s media collaboration and content sharing platform is designed to automate professional media such as transcoding, automatic quality control and speech-to-text transcription. Adopted by Hollywood studios, indie filmmakers, television shows, sports and news companies, Ci’s browser-based Workspace application connects people, content, and devices to streamline the creative process. Ci’s portfolio of REST APIs also enables integration with existing workflows to advantage of the scalability and resiliency of the cloud.

According to Olly Strous, ITN’s head of post-production, adoption of Sony's Ci Media Cloud Platform has increased ‘dramatically’ flexibility across all the operations of the company. Before this time, the company had tried a number of solutions such as file transfer sites and video content hosts, but they proved to be either inefficient, insecure or unnecessarily restrictive. The cloud platform offered the immediate advantage of being attuned to a media production workflow, having grown out of development at Sony Pictures.

A key driver for ITN Productions’ was mobility and Ci is designed to give users access via a web browser to customised workspaces, where all activity such as file transfers and content review takes place. Assets for projects are shared and transported in a dedicated MediaBox, which act as smart containers within each workspace. File transfers of full resolution content and proxies are supported by both Aspera (directly built into Ci) and Sony’s own accelerated HTTPS based solution.

“We use Ci all the way from acquisition through to review and approval and then delivery, as well as secondary distribution,” Strous said. “From our long-form TV broadcasts, short-form broadcasts, advertising production, branded content, corporate, digital news syndication and sport, to industry news, they all use Ci in slightly different ways. Being able to access the footage anywhere in the world and open it in a browser has really sped up how we work...It means that somebody can sit at home and do a paper edit rather than spend time in an edit suite with an editor trawling through the rushes. Everything is at their fingertips, they can make decisions on the go, before they get into an expensive room.”