Customer Stories - Radio Televisyen Malaysia - Avid Interplay | MAM

For over 50 years, Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) has been the national broadcaster of Malaysia, with 36 radio stations and three television stations. Recently, RTM followed a national master plan to transform itself into a premier broadcaster of leading-edge digital television for audiences across Asia.

To better monetize its media assets and take advantage of emerging opportunities, RTM needed an advanced media asset management system with tightly integrated workflows. RTM implemented an Avid Interplay | MAM media asset management system (based upon the MediaCentral platform), which enabled the broadcaster to integrate its entire workflow, streamline production processes, and create and distribute high-quality content to an ever-growing array of platforms.

Taking advantage of new business opportunities

With Interplay | MAM, content across the RTM network can now be quickly found, repurposed, and disseminated through a variety of channels. This not only lowers production costs, but enables RTM to quickly respond to new business opportunities.

The broadcaster recently enhanced its established television stations RTM1 and RTM2 with the introduction of interactive services. RTM has also captured wider audiences across Malaysia with the launch of new interactive channels such as RTMi and Music Active.

Workflows designed for flexibility and expandability

The workflow begins with ingest powered by Amberfin’s iCR system, which executes and manages quality control by detecting any defects on the tape, such as black or still frames. When discrepancies are identified, a report is generated and embedded within the Interplay metadata field.

Providing central control and administration for the facility, Interplay | MAM manages both the Production Operations Center (POC) and the Technical Operations Center (TOC).In this role, the system tracks and manages the material flow between Avid editing suites, Omneon video servers, and the physical archive via SGL FlashNet.

Using MXF OP1A 30 Mb/sec as the high-resolution format, and MPEG1 as the browse resolution format, massive amounts of media have been ingested into the Interplay archive. The Rhozet Carbon Coder transcoding engine currently handles the transcoding process between the POC and off-site production facilities working with ancillary formats.

When media needs to be transcoded, Interplay | MAM interfaces seamlessly with the Rhozet system. Interplay also functions as both the facility’s central integration layer and as a GUI for users accessing material and placing orders from the order management interface.

The complete end-to-end production solution not only vaults RTM to the forefront of Malaysian TV development, it lays a powerful production foundation that the broadcaster can rely on for years to come.