Crawford Media Systems Adds Front Porch Digital’s SAMMAsolo HD System

Front Porch Digital announced that Crawford Media Services has added to its existing complement of SAMMA installations with five new SAMMAsolo HD systems. The Atlanta-based media management and postproduction company will use the new systems to streamline and accelerate its HD up-conversion and cross-conversion services to commercial and institutional clients.

“As a longtime customer of Front Porch Digital and with 12 SAMMA systems already installed, we took a logical step by adding these SAMMAsolo HD systems to our fleet,” said Steve Davis, SVP and COO, media management for Crawford Media Services. “Their increased processing power and HD capabilities mean we can now generate in a single pass all the formats our clients typically require.”

With the increasing demand for up-conversion of SD assets for use in HD workflows, a variety of file formats is usually generated as part of the process. As well as a high-quality preservation file, customers typically require a proxy file and a mezzanine format used for making other proxies or short-term deliverables. The most popular codec for these is the efficient but computationally intensive H.264.

“When you are trying to create a high bit rate preservation file, plus a proxy and a mezzanine file in H.264, and sometimes even a second proxy in a different codec, that puts a big load on the encoding processors,” Davis added. “The SAMMAsolo HD has the muscle to do all that in a single pass, and when you are migrating thousands of pieces of content, that saves a lot of time and cost.”

SAMMAsolo HD’s ability to generate an MXF-wrapped lossless JPEG2000 file is another important advantage for Crawford Media Services, allowing the company to provide archiving in an efficient long-term format especially popular with non-profit and institutional customers.

SAMMAsolo HD delivers the most flexible video format conversion for digitization of video and audio available, providing 10-bit broadcast-quality picture scaling from SD to HD, and 20-point vertical and temporal aperture. The motion-compensated SAMMAsolo HD provides high broadcast quality standards conversion using phase correlation techniques, enabling the smoothest frame-rate conversion possible.

“Front Porch Digital has had a long and fruitful association with Crawford Media Services, and their input and feedback has been invaluable to us,” said Phil Jackson, chief marketing officer for Front Porch Digital. “As one the foremost providers of conversion and archiving services, Crawford’s in-depth experience with a very wide range of scenarios is second to none, so we are particularly pleased that the SAMMAsolo HD is so valued by their team.”

Also available in SD, Front Porch Digital’s SAMMAsolo combines newly redesigned hardware and software to move archive-quality content from videotape to multiple file formats in a single pass. Because SAMMAsolo automates repetitive steps and uses advanced signal analysis to evaluate the quality of the videotape and to monitor and document the migration itself, the work can be accomplished with minimal staff training or staff time. The process preserves source timecode and also associates indexing and technical metadata.

Designed for maximum flexibility, SAMMAsolo HD enables users to customize their own output migration templates by specifying formats to meet their storage and usage goals as well as the quality control requirements of their tape library. Output files, stored locally on the SAMMAsolo cache disk, can be passed to any destination using the FTP gateway or transferred to Front Porch Digital’s DIVArchive content storage management (CSM) system for facilitated storage, access, and repurposing.

Front Porch Digital’s SAMMAsolo HD and SAMMAsolo HD with Motion Compensation are part of the fourth generation of SAMMA technology under the DIVASolutions banner of products to migrate, manage, and market media content securely, efficiently, and cost-effectively.

SAMMAsolo HD will be demonstrated in Front Porch Digital’s booth, N5806, at the 2012 NAB Show.

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