MediaCentral Top Tips – What you need to know

Workflows for breaking news. Collaborative sharing for sports coverage. Options for archivists and librarians. Publishing to social media. Craft editing. Support for hundreds of connected clients in high pressure situations. AI-enabled integrations for metadata enrichment. Automation to streamline processes. Security considerations and detailed permission management. And more.

MediaCentral tips: What you need to know

All of these needs and varied workflows are addressed by MediaCentral. From news and sports to broadcast production and social media publication, to archive and restore, MediaCentral offers a ton of capabilities and opportunities.

“MediaCentral is designed to support a wide range of workflows, enabling customers to maximize the value of their solution as they can use it across their production pipeline,” Diana Sanchez, MediaCentral Product Manager says.

Diana Sanchez, MediaCentral Product Manager

“News is central, of course, but is just one of many productions our customers are using MediaCentral for, with sports, documentaries, entertainment shows, and many others also being created using our tools.”

Here are our top 10 big-ticket items that set MediaCentral apart.

A journalist at CNBC Arabia edits her story for publication

1. Workflows for Breaking News: News is at the heart of so many MediaCentral workflows. From the production of shows and writing of broadcast stories with MediaCentral | Newsroom Management (formerly known as iNEWS), to the publication of breaking news on any platform with MediaCentral | Publisher, journalists and producers have a platform they can trust to perform when it counts.

2. Collaborative Sharing: For teams working together, collaboration is key when it comes to the efficient creation of stories, packages, features, and shows. The sharing capabilities of MediaCentral, backed by the industry-leading media storage solution, Avid NEXIS, means that hundreds of users can simultaneously work together to craft their work. For planning, project tracking, notifications, and content sharing, MediaCentral | Collaborate takes those workflows to the next level.

3. AI-Powered: What about AI-enabled workflows to assist those editorial teams? MediaCentral has had AI-enabled metadata enrichment for years, and AI-powered phonetic search to help users find that soundbite fast. With new options for transcription and summarization and more already demonstrated at major trade shows, expect additional AI capabilities soon, powered by Avid Ada, and driven by Avid’s commitment to responsible AI.

New AI-enabled capabilities are coming soon

4. Security at the Forefront: Security is inescapable these days and is factored in by design with MediaCentral. From multi-factor authentication in the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX to continuous testing through our development processes, security is one area where Avid focuses investment to meet constantly changing threats.

5. Edit Your Way: Some editors want to work in Media Composer. Some want to work in Adobe Premiere Pro. Some journalists prefer to edit in a web browser. MediaCentral enables all of these teams to work seamlessly together. From the MediaCentral panel in Media Composer to the MediaCentral | 3rd Party Panel for Creative Tools in Adobe Premiere Pro, editors have access to the media they need. In the browser-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX, members of the extended editorial team can put together their rough cuts or packages, including voiceover, either for finishing in a craft edit client or for direct distribution.

6. Flexible Workflows: Talking of MediaCentral | Cloud UX, which runs in a web-browser on PC, laptop, or Mac, with shortcuts to folders, customized layouts, dedicated user permissions, personalized settings, access to all MediaCentral systems (including remote sites) and powerful search capabilities, it is the Swiss Army knife of editorial workflows where stories can be written and videos edited. From journalists to producers to researchers to archivists and librarians, MediaCentral addresses their needs.

MediaCentral | Cloud UX has a wide range of capabilities

7. Support for Hundreds of Connected Clients in High Pressure Situations: MediaCentral is a modular solution comprising multiple products, delivering from ingest to playout. From the tightest integration with Avid’s software-based next generation video server solution, Avid | Stream IO, to the rock solid reliability of the iNEWS client, to playout controllers like MediaCentral | Command and shared storage with no compromises with Avid NEXIS, and from the edit client of choice, to an archive provider, MediaCentral has the flexibility to meet any workflow need.

8. Customizable and Flexible: But what if your solution of choice involves ingest and playout from another provider? Or you need to integrate the solution with a third-party graphics company? Or you want to develop and integrate your own solution to address a specific workflow need? The openness of MediaCentral, with a well-established set of APIs and SDKs, means you can achieve your goals.

9. Options for Archivists and Librarians: Metadata is the most important word in media production – and the good news is that with MediaCentral, metadata entry is easy, and the best news? All of that metadata is searchable so none of the hard work of the logger, archivist, or librarian is going unnoticed, helping users find their valuable media assets faster than ever before. And with AI-enrichment already possible and new capabilities coming, you can rest assured the importance of metadata isn’t going away anytime soon.

10. Remote Options: A final point – though we could go on – is that we all know that today, collaboration, news gathering, general production does not just happen in the office, edit bay, or the studio. It happens on location, on the scene of a story, or in someone’s home office. With options for remote workflows from anywhere, MediaCentral truly helps teams work together regardless of their location.

Why not check out how MediaCentral can transform your media organization?