What’s new in Avid | Stream IO 2026.6

For a newsroom or live event, the feed that matters most is the one you only get once. A live shot, a press conference, a breaking event: there is no second take. So the question every operation’s leader and chief engineer eventually asks is a simple one: If a storage system or a whole site goes down mid-capture, what happens to the content? With Avid | Stream IO 2026.6, the answer is that you keep working. The release centers on two outcomes: resilience and faster turnaround.

Protect every feed, from a single drive to a whole site

The headline of this release is Dual Ingest. As one feed comes in, Avid | Stream IO simultaneously writes two copies to two separate destinations. If one of those destinations fails, you keep editing and broadcasting from the other, with nothing to re-ingest and no gap in your content. This protection accounts for the full range of possible failures: A single storage target dropping offline, an asset manager going down, or even the loss of an entire facility.

That last case is the disaster-recovery workflow large broadcasters have asked for: A complete second copy, checked in to a second system, so an entire site can go dark and the operation continues from the other. Because the redundancy is built into the normal ingest path, it costs you no extra operator steps and no second proprietary system to rack and maintain.

Dual Ingest is configurable to the level of protection each workflow needs:

• Two asset-management systems with check-in: In any combination of MediaCentral Production Management and Avid Production Management (PM and PM, APM and APM, or PM and APM), for full editorial redundancy across two managed systems.
• Storage with no check-in: Written to Avid NEXIS, third-party storage, or a remote or cloud target, for environments that do not run an asset manager.
• Three configurable tiers: Dual check-in for full redundancy, single check-in, or no check-in.

Turn the breaking story around without giving up a channel

The second outcome is speed under deadline. With Review Channels, operators can review and create sub-clips from footage while it’s still being recorded on a dedicated deck, allowing ingest and review to happen simultaneously. Breaking stories can then get to air faster without consuming one of your licensed playout channels to do it.

Technically, a Review Channel is a playout-only media deck in the Remote Console used for sub-clipping growing or recorded media. Typically there are one or two available per server depending on hardware and load. Review Channels are a continuation of the sub-clipping introduced in 2026.3, sharpening it into a concrete, channel-efficient workflow for fast-turnaround production.

Also in this release

Selectable timecode on ingest. Choose the timecode source at record (time-of-day, LTC, ATC, absolute, or PTP) rather than accepting a fixed channel setting, so quality-control and closed-captioning teams can match and verify against the encoded video before air.

SDR and HDR profile tags in ingest templates. Set the color profile in the ingest template to switch a channel between SDR and HDR—no per-channel reconfiguration required. Broadcasters running both formats can simplify operations, reduce setup time, and minimize the total number of channels needed.

Remote Console improvements. Channel locks now name the operator who holds the lock, and operators can set their own default template for new recordings, so a recording no longer starts on the wrong frame rate or codec.

Already on FastServe? A clear path forward, on your timeline

If you run FastServe today, this release matters to you for a specific reason. FastServe Gen 1 reaches end of support on March 31, 2028, and Avid | Stream IO is the upgrade path. It is not a feature-for-feature clone; it is a more capable, software-defined successor that brings ingest and playout into a single product. Every release that strengthens Avid | Stream IO (this one included) makes that path more compelling. You can move on your own schedule while the existing platform stays supported to its dates—all without forced migration.

Avid | Stream IO: software-defined ingest and playout

Avid | Stream IO is Avid's software-based ingest and playout platform: One engine that brings live and file-based media in and plays finished media back out. Ingest from anywhere, playout to everywhere—SDI, SMPTE ST 2110, SRT, and RTMP in one product, so you run SDI now and bring IP in when you're ready.

Two things set it apart. First, Avid | Stream IO is software that runs on standard commodity hardware—not a proprietary box—so you own the servers and can replace aging hardware without replacing the platform. Second, it's native to Avid. Ingest, NEXIS, MediaCentral, Media Composer, and playout connect as one first-party path, with no integration layer to buy, certify, or troubleshoot.

Proven in news, sports, entertainment, and post production, Avid | Stream IO modernizes your ingest and playout later at your pace. The ingest decision you make now is also a platform decision.

Existing customers can read the full release notes and download the latest installers on MyAvid. FastServe customers should talk to your Avid account team about Avid | Stream IO 2026.6 and to scope an upgrade from FastServe on a timeline that suits your operation.