Dubai’s Genomedia Pushes UHD Content Forward With Avid MediaCentral | Editorial Management

Dubai-based production company Genomedia has transformed the way it produces and edits UHD content with Avid. Faced with delivering high-quality content within tight deadlines, Genomedia deployed an end-to-end Avid post-production workflow with MediaCentral | Editorial Management to empower its editors and significantly accelerate the production of its first ever drama series.

Genomedia’s content is viewed by audiences across the Arab world. With its roots in documentary production, Genomedia needed a way to streamline the post-production process and enable collaboration between its editorial teams as it looked to expand its TV genre capabilities and meet business demand for UHD content.

An end-to-end workflow consisting of MediaCentral | Editorial Management interoperating with Media Composer, Pro Tools, and three tiers of Avid NEXIS storage gave Genomedia’s on-site editors and off-site producers the ability to boost production output, particularly UHD content. By enabling Genomedia’s editorial teams to collaborate efficiently, multiple editors could easily select and work on the best shots collected from multiple cameras and approve footage simultaneously using just a web browser. With faster turnaround times, review processes are simplified – allowing Genomedia to focus more on the creative process.

“Our previous workflow was incumbered by decentralized production islands and content maintained in numerous storage silos,” said Khaled Ben Younes, Head of Post Production at Genomedia. “For a project of this magnitude, we needed a scalable, cost-effective and easy-to-integrate platform that would let our post-production teams find our assets fast, collaborate seamlessly and create the best story possible under intense time pressures. The usability and performance of Avid’s workflow exceeded all our expectations. This type of post-production environment is still unique in the Middle East, but we’re hugely excited about the opportunities it will unlock in the future.”

The solution needed to be robust enough to handle the huge amount of data involved. The show – which tells the story of the 16th century conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Egyptian Empire – saw a minimum of 6-8 terabytes of raw footage collected every day. Genomedia’s Avid workflow ensured that this footage could be stored, searched and exchanged between editors without a drop in performance.

“Transforming Genomedia’s post-production workflow was necessary for this demanding project,” said David Colantuoni, Vice President Product Management at Avid. “With its state-of-the-art Avid infrastructure in place, driven by the intuitive MediaCentral | Editorial Management platform, Genomedia will be able to continue making content to the highest production standards while also setting an example for the region in terms of growth and creativity for many years to come.”