Features

Turn around content lightning-fast

The FastServe family of video servers is designed to accelerate today’s demanding HD and UHD production workflows, so you can get better content to air first. FastServe | Ingest provides low-latency Edit While Capture capabilities in Media Composer and MediaCentral for news and sports production teams, enabling greater craft editor creativity and faster story delivery. When rapid response is critical, FastServe | Live Edit offers ingest, editing, and playout capabilities in one box for breaking news and live sports productions that require instant turnaround. And FastServe | Playout offers the option to play directly from Avid NEXIS storage immediately, with no file rendering or transfer time required, maximizing production flexibility in fast-paced environments.

Experience a streamlined workflow with MediaCentral

FastServe fully integrates with the MediaCentral platform, accelerating and simplifying production workflows. FastServe | Ingest can be fully controlled by MediaCentral | Capture, enabling auto file check-in and instant availability for logging and Edit While Capture. With FastServe | Live Edit, any sports highlight or news segment created by the operator is automatically and instantly shared with the entire production environment, enabling immediate response while extending creative editorial opportunities. FastServe | Playout works with Maestro | News, offering graphics and video playout in a single solution.

Get more channel value

FastServe supports higher channel counts per video server, offering a lower overall cost per channel in a smaller footprint. Both FastServe | Ingest and FastServe | Live Edit can be flexibly configured to support up to four UHD channels in pristine Avid DNxHR, up to eight 1080p channels in Avid DNxHD, or up to eight channels of XDCAM HD or DNxHD for 1080i and 720p workflows. FastServe | Playout can be flexibly configured to provide up to two UHD channels or up to eight 1080p, 1080i, or 720p channels to support back-to-back video and graphics playout of different codecs and resolutions.

Gain great flexibility and scalability

FastServe offers total deployment flexibility, so you can start small and grow as needed. Its modular server architecture makes it easy to customize a configuration to support the smallest regional studios up to the largest multi-national media organizations. The servers also provide an easy transition from HD to UHD, as well as from SDI to video over IP with interchangeable interfaces. Its redundant 10GbE architecture integrates directly with Avid NEXIS, eliminating the need for any additional hardware.

Get reliable performance

The FastServe architecture is robustly built to address the most demanding news, sports, and entertainment production environments, with no single point of failure. The servers are equipped with hot-swappable dual power supplies, dual port network connections, and RAID-protected hard disks running the virus-free and stable Linux operating system, ensuring you can capture the media you need and keep content safe.

Boost your ROI

A versatile production environment offers a better return on investment, and FastServe provides the flexibility you need to meet every production demand. From classic news ingest and playout, to turning around breaking news stories and live sports coverage quickly, FastServe can handle the complex and ever-changing needs of modern broadcasters. It also reduces production costs with open support for IP, SDI, and mixed environments, providing a truly exceptional return on investment. Plus, only a single operator is required to orchestrate media for a multitude of workflows and needs, saving additional resources.

Capture HD and UHD media easily

FastServe | Ingest is designed to help live news, sports news, entertainment, and multi-camera productions overcome the challenges of baseband ingest. It can encode up to four UHD streams or up to eight HD streams simultaneously from in-studio cameras, satellite feeds, and other input sources. It also offers hundreds of hours of internal storage and a redundant 10 GbE interface that delivers real-time media transfer to Avid NEXIS storage, all in a compact 3U chassis.

Get pristine XAVC-I ingest—just added

Give your FastServe | Ingest new superpowers. Add the FastServe | Ingest XAVC-I option and you can extend your server’s codec support to enable eight high-quality XAVC-I Class 100 HD, 1080i, or 1080p ingest channels. With simultaneous dual ingest of high-res and proxy media directly to Avid NEXIS, plus Edit While Capture availability and multi-resolution dynamic relink for MediaCentral and Media Composer users, it’s ideal for fast-turnaround high-res and HDR workflows.

Make an impact with HDR—just added

FastServe | Ingest now offers HDR support for Avid DNxHR and XAVC-I 1080p formats, as well as DNxHR UHD. It captures the HDR media in pristine 10-bit quality, maintaining the user-defined color space as part of the media metadata and made available for later editing in MediaCentral and Media Composer.

Gain more flexibility—just added

FastServe | Ingest now offers support for more formats and technology standards, including support for 12G-SDI for DNxHR 50p and 59.94p formats, plus DNxHR HQX (UHD) 29.97 ingest, with instant OP-Atom availability in MediaCentral and Media Composer.

Instantly start logging and editing

FastServe | Ingest can now create high-quality proxies in parallel with the XDCAM HD codec, enabling teams to immediately begin logging and editing footage as it’s being ingested. Instead of waiting for the ingest to finish before it can be checked, FastServe | Ingest makes the multi-resolution clip instantly available to MediaCentral | Production Management and Media Composer, speeding up workflows.

Turn around content faster

FastServe | Ingest fully integrates with MediaCentral, delivering maximum collaborative efficiency. It enables dispersed creative teams to access and edit incoming media as it’s being captured—even demanding UHD resolutions—from anywhere, using any device. Streamline workflows by automating ingest with MediaCentral | Capture. And because media can be written to both the internal and Avid NEXIS storage at the same time, fresh material is instantly available to contributors across your entire organization, with a backup ready for peace of mind.

Edit media while capturing it

No need to wait for material to finish being captured. FastServe | Ingest supports Edit While Capture workflows, so editors can get a jumpstart on fresh footage for faster turnaround. It can also now ingest eight channels of XDCAM material while simultaneously generating eight high-quality proxy streams, providing a smooth transition from high-res to proxy and vice-versa. And it offers dual ingest of high-res and proxy media directly to Avid NEXIS, with immediate Edit While Capture functionality available for journalists and craft editors.

Gain greater workflow efficiency

FastServe | Ingest can extract ancillary data and write it into Avid NEXIS, making the information available across your MediaCentral production environment as an additional data track (D-track) essence, along with the video and audio. This is ideal for extracting Closed Captioning, timecode, and other metadata to support a variety of workflow needs. Ancillary information is kept tied to the recorded feed, so it can be easily exported again as needed. It also now supports more languages, including Latin and Japanese, enabling you to set file names, keywords, and more in the local production language.

Streamline multicam workflows

With FastServe | Ingest remote console, you can now easily sync multiple channels over multiple servers to start and stop recording and transfers, using common file names, with only a single button press. This extension provides easy file management in post production and reduces the effort around synchronizing multiple streams for multicam editing.

Protect investments while reducing costs

FastServe | Ingest is built on a modular design that handles both HD and UHD ingest. It not only provides an easy transition from HD to 1080p or UHD, it also makes it easy to migrate to IP infrastructures, offering interchangeable SDI and IP I/O interfaces (supporting the SMPTE 2110 standard) to lower overall costs and streamline operations. You can also mix HD-SDI with video over IP interfaces to support hybrid infrastructures and optimize production workflows, making FastServe | Ingest an easy fit into any broadcast environment.

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Accelerate production

When timing is critical, FastServe | Live Edit kicks in as your storytelling first response tool, offering media ingest, editing, and playout capabilities in a single versatile solution. Designed to accelerate news, live sports, and sports news production, it can capture up to four simultaneous UHD feeds or eight simultaneous HD sources—24/7 if needed—through SDI or IP. With on-the-fly real-time editing on the video server itself, you can turn around content in seconds, speeding your time to air—ideal for press conferences, political debates, sports highlights, replays, and other live events. It also now supports more languages, including Latin and Japanese, enabling you to set file names, keywords, and more in the local production language.

Streamline collaboration across MediaCentral

With sports coverage driving the transition to UHD, teams are tasked with ingesting multiple UHD feeds and quickly cutting together highlights for immediate playback. FastServe | Live Edit makes it easy to tag game highlights and other video with descriptive keyword metadata and automatically share content across your entire MediaCentral production environment, making media easier to find and monetize across multiple delivery platforms. This streamlined collaboration provides the best of both worlds—instant-response capabilities while simultaneously extending creative editorial to others using Media Composer | Ultimate or MediaCentral. Not only does this improve your end results, it significantly reduces turnaround time and costs.

Put better control in your operator’s hands

FastServe | Live Edit’s intelligent hardware controller makes it easy to control and edit breaking news stories, game highlights, and deliver replays instantly. Get fast access to clips, playlists, server controls, and configuration tools through its intuitive touchscreen and tactile controls. Scroll, navigate, select, edit, assign, present, and export clips through user-customizable buttons, a configurable jog wheel, and T-bar. And access a variety of functions using user-programmable LCD keys that change according to the server’s status.

Get breaking stories on air fast

When news breaks, video from satellite feeds, cameras, mobile devices, and other sources come in fast and furious. Footage needs to be encoded and organized quickly. FastServe | Live Edit enables a single operator to trim and package studio monitor loops, visuals for voiceovers, and audio syncs quickly, as well as create playlists and add or remove segments from playlists while on air. Clips can be tagged and sorted live while transferring to Avid NEXIS, making content immediately available and easy to find for MediaCentral and Media Composer | Ultimate editors.

Safeguard your live broadcast

When covering live events and breaking news scenarios, the possibility of airing offensive or controversial content in your live broadcast is a risk. To prevent this, FastServe | Live Edit offers a delayed broadcast option that allows you to set a short time delay to prevent inappropriate content from getting to air.

Enable 24/7 ingest

FastServe | Live Edit combines a huge storage capacity of over 200 hours in DNxHD (120 mbps) with “first in, first out” loop recording, enabling a continuous capture cycle. When loop recording is enabled, FastServe | Live Edit runs ongoing recordings, with each clipped item automatically protected. Any parts that are not required are overwritten automatically. This is extremely valuable in fast-paced news workflows, where broadcasters need to record and monitor different baseband sources, and need the option to roll back and create a segment from the ongoing recording.

Speed up sports highlight editing

FastServe | Live Edit makes it easy for a single operator to simultaneously edit highlights from several downstream game feeds in a studio environment. The studio work mode enables you to edit up to six separate feeds, while the server manages each input with its own clips list and playlists. Not only does this significantly boost productivity, it protects you from human errors that might end up as on-air mistakes.

Any clipped highlight can be instantly shared across your production environment. With embedded touchscreen keywords tagging, journalists can easily search for and find specific game highlights, as all keywords are checked in to MediaCentral | Production Management.

Streamline your workflow on location

FastServe | Live Edit is ideal for on-location live sports or any remote live production. It can handle everything from pregame shows and instant replays, to highlight packages and full game recaps. And it offers a streamlined workflow for creating melts while maintaining all keywords and metadata across your production environment. Content can later be made available across your entire MediaCentral environment. Depending on your workflow requirements, loop recording can be disabled for manual start and stop recording, with the option to protect segments from deletion.

Protect investments while reducing costs

FastServe | Live Edit greatly streamlines the studio workflow, requiring fewer servers and fewer operators while providing better results and reduced operational costs. It protects your capital investment by supporting both today’s and tomorrow’s technologies, so you can be “future-ready” right now. Designed to handle both HD and UHD ingest and playout, it not only provides an easy transition from HD to 1080p or UHD, it also makes it easy to migrate to IP infrastructures, offering interchangeable SDI and IP I/O interfaces (supporting the SMPTE 2110 standard) to lower overall costs and streamline operations. You can also mix HD-SDI with video over IP interfaces to support hybrid infrastructures and optimize production workflows, making FastServe | Live Edit an easy fit into any broadcast environment.

Download the datasheet

Turn around content faster

FastServe | Playout has been completely redesigned, now offering flexible UHD and HD playout channels—with support for a wide range of codecs and wrappers—enabling back-to-back video and graphics playout in fast-paced news environments. It provides two channels of UHD playback in DNxHR, XAVC, and H.264 formats, or up to eight HD/3G playout channels. It also offers 8 TB of RAID-protected internal storage, as well as direct media playback from Avid NEXIS, decreasing response time and minimizing network traffic during production.

Consolidate video, image, and graphics playout

FastServe | Playout significantly increases efficiency and cost effectiveness by consolidating all media playout through one system—run by a single operator—without compromising on quality. When paired with Maestro | News, it provides fully integrated video, image, and motion graphics playout. It also tightly integrates with MediaCentral, offering a holistic and streamlined workflow for end-to-end UHD/HD playback. This unique capability sets FastServe | Playout apart from every other playout server on the market.

Play out multiformat sequences

FastServe | Playout enhances efficiency and decreases time to air, enabling fast and easy content playout. With a growing number of codecs supported, FastServe | Playout enables you to play multiple sequences made up of different wrappers and codecs back to back from the same playlist, without transcoding in advance. In addition, it supports playback of static images and image sequences, as well as media with an alpha channel.

Accelerate playback

With support for Send to Playback (STP) functionality, you can seamlessly integrate FastServe | Playout into any existing AirSpeed environment, enabling editorial teams to send content directly from their edit stations to up to six FastServe | Playout servers with a single command. STP ensures that all playback systems receive the same content and provides complete redundancy in multi-server environments.

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