Aframe announced that by implementing its cloud-based video collaboration platform, Australia’s Nine Network has transformed the review and approval process for hundreds of promos daily, significantly improving productivity and quality. Aframe transcoded Nine’s promos off of existing systems, automated processes, enabling same-day, after-hours review of high-quality files by executives on a range of devices.
Nine Network chief information officer, Mat Yelavich, noted, “What first attracted us to Aframe was its flexibility and ease of use; we needed to get multiple formats to staff for review and approval, wherever they were, as quickly as possible. Aframe has presented productivity gains across multiple business units. We only expect our reliance on Aframe to grow.”
Nine is the network Australia tunes in to watch The Voice, The Block, National Rugby League and Cricket Australia broadcasts, along with locally produced programs and exclusive international news, sports, entertainment and lifestyle programs. Its promo team produces an average of 300 promos daily, many of them requiring after-hours approval by producers and network executives.
“Prior to adopting Aframe, our process was to export QuickTime reference files of finished promos from our postproduction system manually and have an edit coordinator park on a system to transcode them to H.264.mp4 and WMV files that were small enough to email, then send them out to each reviewer,” explained Dylan Van Dyke, Nine technology operations support manager. “The impact on our transcoders was becoming a problem. We ingest a terabyte of data daily just to work on the content. Using transcoders to compress promos for review put pressure on that.”
On the other side, upon receiving emails after they’d left the facility, executives and producers found video files that sometimes weren’t of adequate quality to pick up detail, and struggled to make meaningful notes without having accurate timecode references. If they were on a device that didn’t support the file format, they had to make their way to something that did, or wait until the morning when they were back in the office.
“The editorial team would leave at night not knowing what would come back, and get in the next day having to re-make promos that had been rejected overnight. We made it work, but it was frustrating for everyone, and it was keeping people in the office a lot longer than they had to be,” Van Dyke said.
To address these challenges, Nine Network implemented Aframe’s video Review & Approval solution, setting up a workflow in which editors can export OP1a MXF files that are placed automatically into a shared folder that both Aframe and Nine’s transcode system watch. Aframe picks up the high res export and creates an h.264 proxy that is playable on a wide variety of devices – PC, Android, Mac, etc., and creates a collection of promos or a single promo for review. Reviewers can play the file and approve or reject the promo and provide feedback no matter where they are or what device they’re on, securely and efficiently. Since the file is an exact proxy of the original, it is timecode accurate. Changing to a cloud-based Aframe review workflow has transformed Nine’s workflow, delivering:
Faster turnaround: Automated transcoding and a one-to-many workflow get links to reviewers fast. Promos are approved or come back with notes on the spot – not the next day.
Better promos: Anywhere/anytime access lets executives and editors react to competitive content and improve promos with faster iterations
Van Dyke noted one more benefit. “In my group our motto is ‘Get People Home.’ We apply that to everything we do. If a piece of kit goes down or a process takes longer than it should, we try to fix it. If something can be done at home after hours vs. having to sit in the office we try to make that happen. Aframe has helped us keep people connected to the internal process wherever they are. This has made things easier.”
