Al Kass Selects Avid to Power State-of-the-Art Broadcast Facility

Burlington, MA, 2013/09/16

One of the most innovative sports TV channels in the Middle East, Al Kass continues to rely on Avid’s proven and trusted solutions to streamline workflows and accelerate content delivery

Avid® (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced that Qatar-based Al Kass, one of the most innovative sports TV channels in the Middle East, will power its new state-of-the-art headquarters with a complete end-to-end Avid workflow—enabling the media organization to streamline production, achieve operational efficiencies, and accelerate content creation and delivery around the world.

This selection represents Al Kass' continuing investment in Avid's proven and trusted solutions. Building upon its current Avid-based news creation and asset management systems, Al Kass will now be able to quickly and efficiently create, access, and distribute compelling sports content to its growing international customer base. Al Kass' streamlined broadcast infrastructure will also enable the sports channel to take advantage of future content monetisation opportunities.

Al Kass will speed the delivery of the local sports content it captures from Qatar and the Gulf region to broadcasters around the globe, with a tightly integrated, efficient workflow including Avid ingest servers, shared storage solutions, remote collaboration capabilities, and the latest versions of Avid's industry-standard audio and video editing tools.

Samer Younes, technical advisor at Al Kass, said: "Avid is proven and trusted in sports video production, and our additional investment will give us considerable operational efficiencies. In addition, Avid's openness to third-party applications means we don't have to worry about handling multiple file formats. We can concentrate on what we're best at—delivering compelling content to audiences both in Qatar and to international broadcasters."

Tom Cordiner, vice president of international sales at Avid, added: "As one of the most innovative sports channels in the Middle East, Al Kass has put its continuing trust in Avid to become the technical foundation of its new state-of-the-art broadcast facility. With this most recent decision to select Avid, Al Kass is positioned not only to streamline workflows and speed content delivery today; it also now has built-in flexibility to prepare for the demands of tomorrow's rapidly changing competitive media landscape."

The new investment comprises ten Avid ISIS®  7000 32TB shared storage solutions – including the upgrade of four existing ISIS systems; one Avid ISIS 2000 storage solution; eight Avid AirSpeed®  5000 DNxHD 120 ingest servers; licenses of Avid Interplay®  Central for remote working; licenses of the industry-standard pro video editing solution, Avid Media Composer® 7; a System 5-MC 24-fader mixing control surface and an Avid Pro Tools® | HDX audio mixing and editing system.

The Avid Professional Services team consulted extensively with Al Kass to plan, design and roll out its end-to-end Avid media workflow. The installation will be completed in September 2013.