At IBC 2016, Aspera, an IBM company and creator of technologies that move the world’s data at maximum speed, will demonstrate the new FASP 3.7 core transport platform for its high-speed file transfer software and workflow automation solutions used by the broadcast and media industries including new joint solutions powered by Aspera FASP®.
Aspera pioneered high speed, secure file transfer over commodity Internet WANs for the media and entertainment industry at IBC 2004. Since then, the media supply chain has come to depend upon high-speed transfer in virtually every workflow. Cloud computing and storage are now ubiquitous, and the pace of production now demands instant-on transfer services.
To meet the needs of the evolving media landscape, 12 years later at IBC 2016 Aspera launches a second era of innovation with significant new capabilities in the FASP 3.7 platform:
•FASPStream for Live Event Streaming– A new open turnkey video transport solution and winner of this year’s HPA Engineering Excellence award, FASPStream enables broadcast-quality live streaming over commodity Internet networks, allowing users to stream media globally with glitch-free playout and negligible start-up time. Building on the efficiency of the FASP protocol, the solution out performs forward error correction over UDP and CDNs by maintaining stream quality over distance without start-up delay. An ideal solution to eliminate expensive and limited satellite-based backhaul, transport, and distribution, FASPStream allows video from anywhere to everywhere using low cost Internet.
•Streams over WAN directly to Object Storage – FASP 3.7 expands object storage support enabling stream to object store ingest over WANs at high-speed. Users can now receive streams and write directly to object/persistent storage (Hadoop, Swift, S3, etc.) and to real time message queue platforms (e.g. Kafka) simultaneously.
•High-Performance Clustered Transfers – The multi-node transfer capability in Aspera transfer servers and Point-to-Point Client software enables mass data transfers to cloud storage clusters (e.g. 120 Terabytes migrated per day). Replicate mass data sets including large directories and individual large files using multiple computers in a cluster (or multiple cores), including Direct-to-Cloud storage.
•Enhanced Autoscale Transfer Cluster Management for Cloud – Aspera’s popular auto-scaling and auto-provisioning clusters for cloud based transfer management now includes cluster nodes upgraded for enhanced networking on cloud infrastructure enabling 2 Gigabit per second transfer capacity per node, and provides seamless automatic provisioning in VPC clusters, custom auto-boot scripts, and running upgrades. Now fully integrated in the latest version of Aspera Console, Autoscale cluster transfers can be monitored in real-time and are included in Console historical reports.
•Massively Parallel I/O and Small File Performance with ascp4 – The new ascp4 achieves breakthrough performance for file transfers by taking advantage of parallel I/O (e.g., lots of small files over 10 Gbps, clustered file systems). This new binary now ships with all transfer server and Point-to-Point Client products and has the ability to transfer 1 million files per minute, which equates to 10 Gigabits per second for DPX files around the world. The latest features support transfer with object storage (10 – 100X HTTP multi-part for small files) and file skip, resume, and attribute preservation.
•Super Scalable Watchfolder – The new Aspera Watchfolder brings sought after capabilities to group files and directories and order their arrival based on a manifest, automatically transfer growing files, and scales up to monitor changes in even very large file systems with speed and fast snapshot updates using the new Asperawatchd file system notification service.
•Aspera Sync & Proxy – Aspera Sync, a powerful bi-directional synchronization software now supports cloud storage and has new capabilities for faster performance, distributed file watching, and improved reporting, and is now fully supported by Aspera Proxy, the high-speed forward and reverse proxy software for Aspera transfers. Now available in version 1.4, Proxy supports chained proxies and HA deployments.
•The FASP 3.7 platform makes possible new capabilities in Collaborative File Exchange, including the new Aspera Files SaaS and the latest generations of Aspera Faspex and Aspera Shares:
•Aspera Files SaaS – Aspera’s new groundbreaking multi-tenant SaaS solution for sharing large files and data sets directly from cloud and on premise storage launched in late 2015 and now has over 1000 organizations on boarded. Since its launch, Aspera has introduced over 20 new features and APIs across the platform for 3rd party Collaboration, fine-grained privacy controls, Enterprise Single Sign-on, Media Preview Carousels for managing large numbers of videos and photos and instant provisioning of shared folders on any 3rd party cloud or on premises storage.
Usage Portal
At IBC 2016 Aspera is introducing a new flexible Pay-as-you-go option in addition to pre-committed volume annual plans that can be purchased directly from the new Aspera Store online. Users can view all transfer usage for Aspera Files and On Demand plans in the new Aspera Usage Portal to display all transfer usage for your Files and On Demand plans. It is now available with:
•Aspera Faspex and Shares – Aspera’s suite of single-tenant high speed, secure file sharing applications for on-premises and on cloud, Aspera Faspex and Shares have a large number of new features such as unified SAML, directory and local authentication, expanded metadata handling, recipient management, email notifications, and custom branding. Dramatically expanded APIs enable distributed package relay, delayed package publishing, share authorization, and local, directory and SAML user management. Aspera will demonstrate all capabilities and will also preview Shares 2.0, a new generation designed for delegated management of collections of Shares and Projects across distributed enterprises.
•Aspera Drive 2.0– This major new version for Windows and Mac desktops is fully integrated with Aspera Files, as well as supporting Faspex and Shares. Users can send packages with drag and drop, preview the contents of remote folders and packages including thumbnail and video previews, and synchronize both remote files and folders and automatically download packages from Files Workspaces.
•Aspera Files Mobile – This mobile application for iOS and Android sports tight integration with the camera, photo gallery and 3rd party editing application to allow users to seamlessly transfer video and images directly to Files. The major new Faspex Mobile app for iOS and Android expands metadata handling and support for single sign-on. A newly released Mobile Uploader for Android complements the popular iOS version for sending video and files to Aspera servers. A state-of-the-art FASP mobile SDK simplifies integration of Aspera capability in mobile apps for iOS and Android developers.
•Aspera Orchestrator 2.6 – Now with over 150 third party plug-ins, Orchestrator 2.6, Aspera’s comprehensive workflow orchestration platform, adds new plugins for Dalet, Xytech, SGL FlashNet, Marquis, Emotion, ShowMgr, ARRIS CMM, DATDV, Snell, Fortium, Ateme, Minnetonka, MOG, and Baton. Many exciting new features enhance the Designer, provide step-wise versioning, and yield faster execution, and new Activity and Statistics screens show visual progress of every executing workflow and historical analytics.
•Aspera Analytics – Aspera will debut a beta platform of the Aspera Analytics software for fast analysis and visualization of Aspera transfer log data for performance troubleshooting and usage analysis.
The entire suite of Aspera products, On Demand Offerings and Aspera SDK will be on display at the Aspera Booth in Hall 7, Booth #G20.
Powered by FASP
Leading media technology providers have directly integrated Aspera FASP into their solutions for media asset management, processing and distribution, to achieve fast, distance-neutral transfer of digital media content.
Avid now offers an Aspera FASP® API level integration with Avid Media Composer, the software solution used by professional editors in film, television, broadcast, and streaming media. This integrated offering quickly and reliably ingests and delivers media files into and out of Media Composer over global wide area networks. The benefits are a faster, more reliable high-res and HD editorial process, real-time collaboration, and powerful media management. FASP helps eliminate time-consuming tasks so customers can focus on telling a great story.
EditShare has partnered with Aspera to tightly integrate the patented Aspera FASP® technology into its Flow Automation solution to ensures the fastest and most reliable performance of time critical workflows that include the ingest and delivery of large high resolution media content to or from disparate locations across countries and continents. Flow users can now access and distribute all their high resolution content at line speed over any distance using their existing WAN.
Telestream has integrated Aspera FASP into its Telestream Cloud encoding cloud service for content creators and video producers that is easy to use, scales quickly, and allows you to collocate your video files with your other cloud services across multiple cloud storage options. With Aspera, users can quickly move large media files to and from its cloud service to offset your work load during peak demand times and enable easy collaboration of projects across multiple sites or remote locations.
AutoDCP integrates cloud encoding workflows seamlessly using Aspera Faspex, allowing users to send large video files at high speed worldwide using Aspera’s FASP transport technology that fully utilizes their available bandwidth. AutoDCP customers can quickly ingest and encode media in the cloud using AutoDCP and then deliver it back to users via an Aspera faspex package.
Automate-IT is now integrated with Aspera Orchestrator to streamline promo and trailer creation workflows for major broadcasters. The single system enables customers to automate, manage and monitor sophisticated Adobe® After Effects workflows, and process and distribute complex trailers automatically.
Firefly will showcase its new Cinema integration with Aspera that enables seamless, automated transfers of rushes and proxies to different locations. Combined with Aspera high-speed transfer technology, its FireDAY, FirePOST and FirePLAY modules deliver lean motion picture production workflows from set to post.
WCPMedia Services with Aspera FASP has embedded Aspera’s FASP high-speed file transfer technology in WCPMedia Services for ingest and delivery of rich-media assets.
IBC sessions
Aspera co-founder and CEO Michelle Munson will discuss this summer’s dramatic use cases in world sport that exploited file and stream workflows at record levels and the latest trends in cloud transport architectures driving new OTT services at the following events:
Online Platforms Evolve, Becoming (Closer to) TV: What’s the USP, Now?
Thursday, 8 September, 2:20-3pm
IBC Leader’s Summit (Forum Theatre)
Euro 2016 Case Study: How UEFA Connects Sites, Production Teams and Fans for an Enhanced Viewing Experience with EVS and Aspera
Thursday, 8 September, 4-4:30pm
Stream: Content & Production (RAI Amsterdam, Room: E102)
