Typically the Show runs down by the afternoon of Wednesday (Day 3), but the PFT stand was positively humming until the last minutes before the close on Thursday (Day 4).

It was clear that – in what Wired magazine has dubbed ‘The Year of the Hybrid Cloud’ – our powerful claim as the world’s most established hybrid cloud platform already managing over 150,000 hours of content, 40,500 new TV episodes, syndication and VoD fulfillment of 5 million files every year and 10,500 hours of TV/Film subtitling was getting the attention of the broadcast industry.

The impressive list of PFT’s existing clients – amongst which Newscorp’s Star TV, ESPN Star Sports, Viacom, Associated Press, AETN , Sony Music, Netflix, WPP, Procter & Gamble – provided sterling credentials for those companies prospecting for Content Management solutions at NAB 2012.

In between sales meetings, Ramki Sankaranarayanan (Founder, President & CEO, Prime Focus Technologies) and our other spokespersons were busy fielding interviews with the industry Press and Online media, including editors and correspondents representing Broadcast Engineering, TV Technology, ProSound News, Telerevista, CE Online News, Creative Cow and New Bay Media. There were live-streamed webcast video interviews with Actors Reporter and Digital Production Buzz.

This was capped off just before the close of the Show with Ramki being interviewed live on screen by Tyler Pyburn of ‘The Pulse Network’ as one of a series of top-level sessions with industry thought leaders. (Link: http://tpn.thepulsenetwork.com/nab-show/videos)

Prime Focus Founder and Global CEO Namit Malhotra took the opportunity to showcase the company’s VFX (Visual Effects) and 3D Services in closed sessions – demonstrating PF’s latest innovative solution 2D to 3D conversion of content for Home Entertainment.

As the Show closed and the Prime Focus team headed off back to Los Angeles, New York, London, Mumbai and Bangalore, PFT’s President expressed his firm commitment to NAB 2013 by confirming that PFT would return to Las Vegas next year with an even bigger presence – doubling the size of the PFT stand.

NAB 2012 has kicked off what we predict will be a signature year for Prime Focus Technologies and CLEAR™.

See you at the HENRY STEWART DAM Conference in New York on May 10th and 11th 2012 and at IBC 2012 in Amsterdam in September.

A full schedule of client/prospect meetings and press interest had the PFT CLEAR booth busy with client meetings, demos and interviews all day. Under the new rallying cry of “CLEAR – Managing the Business of Content”, PFT’s persuasive positioning and proven track record is attracting much interest from the Broadcast industry, keen to find out more about how CLEAR allowed Asian broadcasting giant Star India to take its entire broadcast operations into the cloud.

This message was further reiterated in the NAB Cloud Computing panel session, in which PFT’s Ajay Malhotra participated as a panelist speaker.
With Day One of the Convention over, the next few days promise to be intensive and fruitful as the industry embraces the needs and undeniable benefits of our unified multi-screen content operations platform and supporting services.

Watch this space for further daily updates on NAB 2012.

Mumbai - Sony Music, a global music giant, has commissioned global digital content services specialist Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) to deploy CLEAR™- its Hybrid Cloud based Multi-screen Content Operations platform. With the deployment of CLEAR, Sony Music India moves its entire video content operations to the cloud, creating an eco-system for the supply, preparation and delivery of content. This will help Sony Music manage their video business by increasing agility, unlocking new revenue streams, enabling creativity and cutting costs.

In addition, PFT provides a full slate of services to Sony Music such as metadata creation, archival and digital delivery across multiple platforms delivered through CLEAR, its award-winning platform. This enables Sony Music to both monetize its video content, aided by data modeling and cataloguing, and to quickly customize content for distribution across different platforms.

Ramki Sankaranarayanan, Founder and CEO, PFT said, “We are delighted to take Sony Music’s video operations to the cloud through CLEAR. So whilst Sony Music focuses their energies on acquisition, distribution & marketing content, we can focus on enabling their video business of content with our proven capabilities. It is extremely gratifying to work with a customer of the caliber of Sony Music and to help them set a precedent in the music industry.”

Commenting on the collaboration, Shridhar Subramaniam, President, Sony Music India said, “With the emergence of digital video platforms and increasing channels of music video discovery, video consumption continues to grow at an accelerated pace. We are glad to have partnered with PFT as their platform CLEAR will help us digitize our video content quickly, meet the ever-growing demand of our customers, and open up monetization opportunities.”

CLEAR is handling a large volume of content for the music giant – an enviable collection of music videos, documentaries/promos, full length movies and an enormous artwork library.

Los Angeles, 2 April 2012 – Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), the global digital content operations specialist, has joined the EIDR [ENTERTAINMENT IDENTIFIER REGISTRY], the global B2B registry for unique identification of content. PFT, with its world-leading Hybrid Cloud technology platform CLEAR™, provides technology and services to major media players including The Associated Press (AP), News Corporation’s Star TV, A&E, EROS International, British Movietone Library, British Film Institute, Colors TV, Multi Screen Media (MSM) and Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

With a strong domain knowledge of the entertainment and media industry, and excellent technology credentials, PFT offers an enterprise-wide solution to leading broadcasters, sports federations, news agencies, entertainment giants and music companies, to manage their content, workflows and enterprise processes in the cloud.

Already managing over 150,000 hours of content, and adding over 40,500 new episodes of TV content, and the creation of over 5 million files for syndication and Video on Demand fulfillment every year, not to mention the 10,500 hours of subtitling for TV and Film content that PFT produces on a yearly basis, CLEAR pushes a huge volume of digital content with enriched metadata into the eco-system. This participation with EIDR will add value to PFT’s processes, enhancing the metadata for universal consumption.

The Entertainment Identifier Registry is an industry body established with the goal of creating a single ID system for every piece of movie and TV content, in order to streamline and facilitate smart searches, improve personal recommendations and streamline the digital supply chain workflow. Since EIDR manages the allocation of unique identifiers to TV shows and movies, it will enable PFT to enhance its usage tracking and integration of systems and data sets related to those programmes.

The registry has been set up as an industry resource to help streamline digital commerce and simplify consumer transactions, and is built on the International Digital Object Identifier (DOI) ISO approved standard. It tracks all commercial content down to the product and SKU level, as well as edits, clips, composites, and encodings. The system includes an SDK and APIs for integrated and consistent browse, filter, and search for unique content.

This participation with EIDR will help Prime Focus Technologies to deliver rich metadata to customers across multiple platforms, while easily linking that data to content and applications from studios, broadcasters, other content creators and distributors.

Ganesh Sankaran, COO of PFT commented, “As a leading provider of unified content operations to the entertainment and media industry, we are pleased to join EIDR. The market is showing a steady migration to digital formats, and initiatives such as EIDR are essential in enabling standardization and collaboration across the media industry. Participating in EIDR resonates with our objective of enabling a sustainable eco-system for all, from content owners to distributors to consumers, facilitating maximum benefits for everyone in the industry.”

“EIDR is excited to have innovative companies such as Prime Focus Technologies join in the growing commercial use of the registry. With PFT’s diverse service offerings to many companies in the digital content supply chain, we believe EIDR can play an important role in streamlining work flows, increasing quality, and reducing costs,” added Kip Welch, President of EIDR.

Los Angeles, March, 2012 – Since debuting its award-winning content operations platform, CLEAR™, for the first time in the United States at 2011 NAB Show, Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) has added to its client roster a series of industry-leading global organizations and completed major advancements to CLEAR that allow it to better meet the needs of broadcasters today. Designed to support global businesses that need to manage their entire content operations from a single interface, CLEAR now works with one of the world’s largest news syndicators that reaches more than half of the world’s population each day, The Associated Press, as well as News Corporation’s Star India, A&E and LaserNet. Prime Focus Technologies will be located at Booth SL10805 at 2012 NAB Show in Las Vegas from April 16-19.

CLEAR is a game-changer in the digitization of business content operations, having been designed to encourage cross-departmental collaboration, provide time and cost efficiencies, and unlock new revenue streams. Addressing the three key challenges faced by broadcasters – the transition to file-based workflows, the switch to HD broadcasting and delivery to multiple platforms – its operational model enables not only digitization of content but also digitized workflows in one integrated, enterprise-wide solution. This platform simultaneously increases the agility and profitability of an organization.

The Associated Press, the world’s largest news-gathering organization, chose CLEAR and its supporting services earlier this year to digitize, manage and monetize the most valuable content in its huge archive of priceless news footage. CLEAR is being used to create nearly four million new assets from 32,000 hours of film and video content in just 18 months, opening the archive to a new audience across a new set of platforms, and subsequently creating new revenue streams for the organization.

Similarly, News Corporation-owned Star India, which reaches 400 million people every week across India and more than 100 countries across the globe, is now deploying CLEAR to move its entire broadcast operations into the cloud, facilitate its transition to HD and to create an eco-system for the supply and delivery of content.

Supported by volume metrics and a full range of SLA driven services, CLEAR is managing over 150,000 hours of content for its clients in the entertainment and media industry: on a yearly basis, this includes the management of 40,500 new episodes of TV content; syndication and Video on Demand fulfillment of 5 million files; and subtitling services for over 10,500 hours of TV and Film content.

CLEAR’s innovative hybrid-cloud model has been further extended this year across Prime Focus Technologies’ global network into South Africa through a strategic alliance with South African internet service provider, LaserNet.

Addressing the new needs of today’s broadcasters, CLEAR has been enhanced to include iPad integration, increased-functionality of dashboards, adaptive streaming, automated fulfillment and HTML5 integration. CLEAR’s iPad application lets users take advantage of the functionality of CLEAR on-the-go, including asset library access with advanced search, enabling the user to review assets, annotate, send for review and publish while away from their desk.

Additional broadcast-centric product enhancements include:

• Customer-friendly dashboards and automation
Automated concurrent high-speed content delivery to new media platforms allows broadcasters to leverage web and mobile for new revenues and additional promotion. User-role specific workflows, backed up by separate views of CLEAR for Programming, S&P, Operations, Traffic and OAP users, with custom notifications for each user role, provide further clarity and functionality.

• New automated fulfillment system for syndication and delivery
Users are able to schedule advance delivery of content by creating orders with delivery specifications, and to customize workflows through an order management system with customizable approval steps. Fulfilling prioritized delivery is the ‘workflow tracker’, that dynamically allows users to change the priority of a fulfillment request.

• Adaptive streaming
An integrated technology that seamlessly throttles content quality based on the available network bandwidth, compensating for the latency in transmission. The highest quality is streamed to the user when network bandwidth is good, and quality is progressively lowered based on network latency, improving the user’s browsing experience.

• An integrated HTML5 video player
This player provides multiple features including frame accurate playback of video, support for dynamic subtitles and dynamic audio based language selection, allowing for seamless delivery of content.

For additional information, visit primefocustechnologies.com.

Mumbai, March 2012 – Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), the global Digital Content Specialist, has entered into a strategic alliance with South African ISP giant LaserNet. The agreement will see LaserNet bringing PFT’s CLEAR™ unified content operations platform and supporting services to its substantial Media & Entertainment sector client-base in the region.

This alliance reflects a synergy between PFT’s technological innovation and content operations expertise, and LaserNet’s established client relationships and network infrastructure. The merging of these complementary strengths will accelerate the already growing pace of digital transformation in the South African marketplace.

PFT’s CLEAR™ platform will allow content owners in South Africa to add new revenue streams, drive efficiencies, reduce cost and exploit content by enabling them to migrate to file-based workflows and capitalize effectively on new multi-platform opportunities. With the dynamic combination of PFT’s technology and experience and LaserNet’s strong local foothold and infrastructure, the strategic alliance will result in new growth and development opportunities for the media and entertainment industry in South Africa.

Speaking about the alliance, Ramki Sankaranarayanan, Founder & CEO, PFT commented, “Since LaserNet as an ISP has deep relationships with all the major media and entertainment players in South Africa, and shares our vision of the Digital future, they were our natural choice of partner for this region. We are really excited about this strategic alliance. Bringing the CLEAR™ platform to South Africa – a gateway to Africa – will have a profound effect on how organizations in the region are able to manage the business of content.”

LaserNet Founder Ivan Bridgens said, “The South African Media and Entertainment industry is ready for digital migration, and a transformation in the way it operates. After a thorough evaluation of the solutions available globally, we chose to bring CLEAR™, Prime Focus Technologies’s Hybrid Cloud Technology platform, to South Africa. Having already established a network linking all the major media players in South Africa, LaserNet will now mount the CLEAR™ Hybrid Cloud based technology platform on its network, to manage the content and workflows of its customers.”

London, February 2012 - The Associated Press is working with Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) to digitize its unique video archive, making it available to a whole new audience across digital platforms. AP’s film and tape archive contains around 70,000 hours’ worth of footage, including more than 1.3 million global news and entertainment stories, in 16mm film and videotape, dating back to the beginning of the 20th Century.

The project is part of AP’s multimillion-dollar upgrade to its video business which will see AP switch its entire newsgathering, production and distribution systems to HD to continue to meet the technical, editorial and business needs of its customers in the digital age.

AP Director of International Archives Alwyn Lindsey said: “A legacy of being on the frontline of breaking news for more than 160 years is a fantastic archive. Ours is one of the finest visual documents of the events and people that have shaped the modern era. Today’s market is driven by giving customers breadth of content, ease of access, and value for money. While we have already digitized around 10% of our archive, it has been a top priority to get all of our most saleable archive footage online and make it available to our customers, wherever in the world they may be. To make this happen, we needed a partner who could handle our global business needs and a project of this scale, and for that reason, we chose Prime Focus Technologies.”

PFT will use the unique skillsets of its global organization to digitize AP’s film and tape archive, then catalogue, manage, transcode and deliver AP’s content to a multi-media audience. PFT has decades of experience in digitizing archive content, partnering with organisations such as the British Movietone Library, British Film Institute, Imperial War Museum, IMG, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Eros International.

The project will be driven by CLEAR™, PFT’s award-winning content operations platform and supporting services. PFT has a large team of developers writing bespoke scripts to support the innovative workflows required by this project, and utilizes its own cloud technology for supporting services.

PFT is delivering this project in an unprecedented timescale, creating nearly 4 million new assets in just 18 months, including:

• 3,000 hours of film with an average of 60 news stories per hour – creating a total of 900,000 files

• 29,000 hours of video with an average of 20 news stories per hour – creating a total of 2,900,000 files

Newly digitized content will appear every day on AP Archive’s website, thanks to dedicated connectivity between PFT and AP.

Vice President and Head of PFT UK Aine Healy said: “PFT is delighted to be working closely with AP to make its valuable archive of footage available to the world, and to preserve it for generations to come.”

To find out about this groundbreaking project in more detail, read the AP Archive – Technical Case Study.

London, 9th February 2012 – Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), the global digital content services group, has been chosen by the BFI (British Film Institute) as a preferred supplier for the provision of Digital Services for its Film and Television archives including scanning and digital restoration services. Following a highly competitive tender process that saw bids from 35 suppliers both from the UK and abroad, PFT was selected as one of the specialist companies that the BFI will work with to help preserve and present its unique and priceless material within the archive.

Due to the important nature of this prestigious contract, it was vital that the BFI partner with an organisation with specialist expertise and experience in this area. PFT has an excellent working relationship with the BFI, having collaborated on many high profile projects in the past, and has provided its services to other important archives, including the Imperial War Museum, British Movietone News, IMG, Huntley Archives and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). This heritage, combined with PFT’s innovative use of technology, a global footprint that incorporates teams in the UK, North America and India, and its ability to provide a safe, secure and high quality service on time and within budget, made PFT the ideal partner.

Commenting on the announcement, Aine Healy, PFT’s Vice President and UK Head said “This is just one of many exciting projects that the BFI is working on and we hope that we can continue to grow this relationship. We feel we have the perfect skillset, infrastructure and technology to ensure that the BFI’s archive is readily available for people to enjoy both today and in the future.”

“The BFI is charged with the preservation and accessibility of the UK’s film and television heritage,” said BFI’s Head of Conservation, Charles Fairall. “We’re very pleased to be partnering with Prime Focus Technologies, and our other chosen suppliers, to preserve and open up our archive to new audiences.”

Four years ago today, an innovative idea became reality as Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) was launched to help organizations manage their digital content, and the activities that take place around that content. Much like parent company Prime Focus, PFT’s story began in a garage. Through hard work, technical foresight and a highly skilled and dedicated team, the company was grown quickly from three people with a vision into a 500-strong technology leader, in a field so new and advanced it is still being defined.

PFT has come a long way in a short space, below are some of the key milestones in this incredible journey:

• The first contract win – a project for Indian public service broadcaster Doordarshan.
• The development of cricket’s first Taxonomy for a major archive and digitisation project, for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
• The production, live streaming and creation of Video on Demand (VoD) packages for the Indian Premier League (IPL) for delivery to both YouTube and IPL’s Mobile Internet platform.
• CLEAR™, the groundbreaking hybrid cloud platform for content operations from PFT, was named as the ‘Best of IBC2010’, and was praised for its innovation and cost efficiency by the editorial team of the IBC Daily magazine.
• The deployment of the world’s first integrated, multi-platform content operations infrastructure specifically for broadcasters at STAR TV, one of Asia’s largest broadcasters, to manage their end-to-end digital HD workflows.
• Enabling Indian broadcasters to create same day playlists for their international feeds for the first time as part of an anti-piracy initiative.
• The launch of the world’s first Domain Centric Cloud (DCC) to connect broadcasters with content suppliers and playout origination centres.

PFT would like to thank its entire staff for their dedication and hard work, and its clients for their support, and looks forward to achieving many more milestones in the next four years.

Below are some of the key points Ajay made during the session…

“Content owners are naturally protective of their property and it’s a big jump for them to trust cloud technology. At PFT we’ve incorporated recognized security tools such as enterprise-level encryption and active directory authentication to overcome this. However we’ve also gone one step further with the pioneering of a unique hybrid-cloud solution which enables the hi-res files to remain securely stored at the customer locations while content operations are carried out through the cloud. All aspects are tracked within the ecosystem, with changes made to the content also recorded.

The most attractive aspect of cloud media storage is that cost savings, alternate means of distribution, the ability to exploit a greater depth of catalog and library content and the opportunity to deliver new business models run alongside the faster, scalable computing that a cloud-based architecture provides. CLEAR, PFT’s award-winning unified multi-platform content operations solution is designed to run concurrent digital workflows. Such a system offers dramatic time and cost savings as well as providing organizations with the ability to monetize their content to new audiences globally.

Cloud-based computing is becoming a key player in the execution of digital business processes. One of the major advancements is the solution PFT implemented for Newscorp’s STAR TV network, where we handle their ‘content and broadcast operations’. This has enabled them to switch to concurrent operations and go HD at the same time. We have also digitized the entire TV media supply chain, linking the Indian broadcaster with content suppliers and playout origination centers via a secure fiber connection. Serving 8 channels, the managing of STAR’s end-to-end digital workflows by PFT has resulted in the processing of 60 shows a day, which are then distributed in 27 different formats.”