IDC goes deeper into automated data processing with AJA Diskover Media Edition

The IDC new automated data processing workflows are structured around AJA Diskover Media Edition data management software.

Post production company IDC, and more specifically its Los Angeles division, delivers more than 20,000 files per month to clients around the world. This large volume of work inevitably means deep asset management, a task that Rosanna Marino, director of operations, decided to drive into the realm of automation: “Our clients are our top priority, and a lot can happen in the render that might get missed in post, so our job is to spot those issues and fix them before the file reaches the client. This often translates to a massive volume of data processing, which is where technology like AJA Diskover Media Edition pays off.”

Once AJA Diskover Media Edition was chosen as the tool to manage these types of processes, Marino and his team began working to develop intelligent workflows with this solution and MediaPulse. These workflows “guarantee” that each file arrives in a designated folder and determine the initial path a file must follow until a team member intervenes to set up profiles, create files or complete quality control.

To speed up media processing and delivery of projects, especially those containing a lot of data, the team creates and accesses profiles from their Telestream Vantage system, similarly leveraging the Colorfront Transkoder tool. Diskover Media Edition is used in a variety of ways, depending on the client. Files usually arrive electronically and are sent to a destination area, where the appropriate team members are notified. Depending on where the files arrive, they can be automatically backed up to the cloud for disaster recovery. IDC producers then use Diskover Media Edition to tell the team that it is time to move the files to their next locations and notify the relevant team members of their arrival.

“We knew Diskover Media Edition would be a great fit with built-in automation tools and ties to MediaPulse, and it exceeded our expectations. The software has also made file scanning so quick and automatically indexes all our file systems every 30 minutes,” says Marino.

ElasticSearch at IDC

At the backend of IDC-LA’s AJA Diskover Media Edition index is the ElasticSearch engine, critical to the success of this deployment as Marino points out: “The ElasticSearch engine in AJA Diskover Media Edition is so powerful and lets us search for nearly anything, from tags to file names or parts of file names. We can even search for a client, and the software interface will present everything from that client, and we can then narrow the results. It also scans our cloud for disaster recovery, so our client service reps can search the index, easily find an asset they need, and send in a work order to pull it back down from the cloud when required.”

Standardising these automated workflows has enabled IDC-LA to streamline its operations, giving its customer service representatives more insight into the data they work with and presenting it in clear, concise reports that can be shared with relevant stakeholders. There is no need to ask the customer where the files are, because all the information is available in one centralised, easily accessible location, whereas before, finding the file, sending it to an operator, extracting it and digging out the necessary information “took a lot of back and forth,” Marino acknowledges.

Looking back, the operations manager is pleased to have integrated AJA Diskover into her workflows: “The ElasticSearch engine in AJA Diskover Media Edition is so powerful and lets us search for nearly anything, from tags to file names or parts of file names. We can even search for a client, and the software interface will present everything from that client, and we can then narrow the results. It also scans our cloud for disaster recovery, so our client service reps can search the index, easily find an asset they need, and send in a work order to pull it back down from the cloud when required.”