So, here we are, less than 30 days away from the Sochi Games, which promises to be another feast of sporting action attracting global viewing audiences that will be measured in many of millions:

The hosts have made every possible effort to provide world class TV production facilities – for both domestic and international viewing audiences. The goal is to create a modern broadcasting complex that will provide TV, radio, Internet and photographic coverage of the XXII Winter Games and the XI Winter Paralympic Games in Sochi.

In preparation for this event, Panorama has trained over 1,500 TV specialists from all over Russia in 27 TV specialties with TV production specialists from Russia and other countries working as instructors.

Fit for purpose – providing media as consumers want it 

Without doubt, the hosts have invested heavily to make sure that the best HDTV pictures are available from the Sochi Games and this strategy has been many years in the planning. However, recent years have witnessed the inexorable rise of multi-screen distribution. Without doubt, eyes will be fixed on Sochi for the duration of the Games but how people watch those pictures will vary greatly from HDTV in their homes to tablets and smartphones on the move.

The broadcasters that stand to benefit the most from this global event are those that have the best media distribution strategy. Who has the best platform for converting (or transcoding) the media into forms that are fit for purpose across the broadest range of viewing devices.

And who has the most secure means of checking that their media is of the highest quality from the moment it enters their file-based workflows. Since without this assurance, sooner or later toxic media files will enter their workflow and create serious damage to their production systems, maybe even knocking them off-line at critical viewing times.

And finally, who has woken up to the fact that all these facilities need not cost a King’s ransom? It is possible to create a platform which uses the same software and technologies and can be scaled up from an initial proof of concept to the most sophisticated and large-scale multi node network without the need for any external orchestration.

iCR – Intelligent Content Repurposing 

This is just what we have developed at AmberFin with our iCR (intelligent Content Re-Purposing) software platform – a file-based media ingest, transcoding and quality control solution. Our business is intelligent media conversion, solving file-based workflow challenges for broadcasters, sports organizations, post-production houses and other media content owners. Scalable, agile and efficient, the iCR Platform brings true innovation and cost-effectiveness to the demands of multi-platform delivery, enabling users to deal with high volumes and true-to-source high quality pictures at the same time, all with exclusive slim-file technology.

Unique to the iCR Platform, our approach to Quality Control, known as Unified Quality Control (UQC), introduces a QC mark that brings a new level of trust to media assets. UQC combines automated processes that integrate third party verification tools with a human touch, enabling more efficient and effective decision-making and new levels of confidence in the file creation and transformation processes.

At IBC last year, we introduced a series a new enterprise-class features and functions to iCR that mean that our solution is not only technically advanced but also represents the market’s most affordable and scalable solution. We’re proud that we have customers worldwide that will be using the iCR platform to support their sophisticated multi-platform distribution strategies at the Sochi Games.