ION Media Networks Deploys EditShare

EditShare, the pioneer of cross platform collaborative editing and shared media storage systems, have announced that ION Media Networks has deployed EditShare to manage media sharing and simplify downstream transmission workflows for their creative services department.
ION, formerly Paxson Communications, owns and operates the largest television station group with 60 broadcast stations reaching over 92 million homes in the U.S.
The ION creative services team utilizes Apple Final Cut Pros, Avid Adrenalines, Maya and Graphics/Web design stations to create graphics and promotions for group stations. The various content creation systems did not seamlessly integrate with one other; creating an awkward media sharing process and downstream transmission workflow. The creative team had to first put their promotions to tape; then ingest; then transcode and deliver media files via Telestream downstream to an Omneon video server located at ION’s Network Operations Center in another city.
“EditShare solved all the pain points associated with working on cross-platform, proprietary systems,” commented Robert Cummings, chief engineer for ION Media Networks in West Palm Beach. “Not only were we able to share media files across systems, we were able to eliminate tapes and maintain a high-quality transmission process. All of this at third of the cost of other comparable solutions.”
EditShare technology allowed all of the ION content creation applications to share a common pool of media files thus establishing a file based workflow that removed the need for tape. Unlike typical SANs, EditShare systems support File Level Sharing - allowing multiple editors to write to the same volume simultaneously. Further, the system’s unique Avid Project Sharing feature allows multiple Avid editors to open up and work from the same Avid Project simultaneously, gaining instant read-only access to each others' bins and sequences.
“These super charged content creation systems have typically been islands of proprietary technology that offered limited project sharing or required expensive Fibre network solutions to manage media assets. EditShare changes all this by enabling editors, graphic artists and sound mixers to work collaboratively, giving them access to a common, automatically protected pool of media files leveraging inexpensive Gigabit Ethernet technologies,” said Andy Liebman, CEO, EditShare.
The EditShare installation has had an enormous impact on cost savings for ION. Tapes, tape handling, and storage are no longer needed. Engineers need only to support one solution instead of several. EditShare’s cross platform media management capabilities negates the need for costly proprietary hardware to facilitate media sharing and delivery. The bottom line benefits are optimized workflows, higher quality results, and reduced costs.
(DS)