Why Customers are Choosing Avid | Stream IO

Avid | Stream IO has proved to be a popular ingest and playout software addition to the Avid video servers family since its launch in August 2023, solving customer challenges and delivering a flexible approach to ingest and playout today and in the future.

The software-only solution is available through subscription and deployable on COTS hardware, in data centers or in the cloud. It has clearly struck a chord in the industry with broadcasters looking for a cost effective, efficient ingest solution which neatly fits into MediaCentral video production workflows with no disruption to the downstream production process.

Avid | Stream IO supports ingest and playout workflows, including building playlists

Avid | Stream IO has a flexible set of configurations to enable two, four, or eight channels of ingest and/or playout in a single device and a wide range of supported formats and codecs from proxy resolutions all the way to UHD.

But what are the types of use cases which are being addressed by Avid | Stream IO, and how are those early adopters using it in their workflows? Here we are going to discuss three different use cases.

Regional Sports Customer

This regional sports customer in the Americas was seeking a replacement for their existing Avid AirSpeed video servers, which had been the workhorse of their ingest and playout workflows for many years. Providing a solid and reliable SDI workflow – very much the key component of the AirSpeed product line – they were looking to maintain their existing content creation workflows with as little disruption as possible to the production team.

As users of Avid’s control applications for ingest and playout – MediaCentral | Capture and MediaCentral | Command – this customer also wanted an ingest and playout server which would work seamlessly with these applications. In a future upgrade, the customer is also planning to move their ingest control to MediaCentral | Acquire, an app in the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX.

This was where Avid | Stream IO slotted right in, meeting the necessary format requirements for the production and the tightest integration with the wider Avid infrastructure to ensure this sports broadcaster could continue producing and delivering high quality output at all times.

David Frasco, Avid Enterprise Account Manager for North America, says that the customer used an existing Avid solution and for them, the ease of introduction of Avid | Stream IO ingest and playout software to the workflow was central to the decision.

“They're comfortable with MediaCentral | Capture, they're comfortable with MediaCentral | Command, and of course, one of the things about introducing Avid | Stream IO into the workflow is that from a downstream perspective there's really no change for the users,” Frasco explains.

Station Network

This customer is part of a network of stations in western Europe, again looking to replace AirSpeed servers which were heading towards their end of life. While this customer had considered other ingest and playout servers on the market, they had not found what they needed, which was a solution with a cost-effective price per channel and a seamless, non-disruptive way of integrating into their MediaCentral production environment.

Their main focus is on producing news, so they needed an ingest and playout workhorse that they can rely on to easily and effectively get media from the field into the hands of their newsroom teams to create, produce, and then deliver back for playout on-air.

“It was really fulfilling their need and what they were used to, like in their previous setup with AirSpeed which really does the job,” says Hans Klein Roseboom, Avid Sales Manager in the Benelux region. That’s why they wanted to continue also with an AirSpeed-like workflow from a functionality perspective.”

Free-to-Air Channel

The final customer is a free-to-air channel in southeastern Europe which was looking for eight channels of ingest and eight channels of playout, but crucially also wanted to shift their financial model. They were keen to move from a traditional CapEx model of purchase plus support, to a more flexible subscription model with maintenance costs factored in over the agreement term.

With Avid | Stream IO being available through an annual subscription and deployable on COTS hardware, this also gave the customer flexibility to procure their own hardware – meeting Avid specifications – further emphasizing the overall agreement value.

In addition, MediaCentral is available through subscription with a wide variety of options to address every production’s needs, so this was a win-win all round.

Gonzalo Del Val, Senior Avid Sales Manager in the EMEA region, said it was not just the technical flexibility of Avid | Stream IO which was beneficial, the financial flexibility which subscription offered the customer was also significant.

“They have seen a continuity with the workflows that they were using with AirSpeed, MediaCentral | Command, and MediaCentral | Capture that my colleagues have mentioned before,” Del Val explains. “So it was good from a technical standpoint, operational standpoint, and then, financially. It's great for them in terms of subscription.”

Why not discover what Avid | Stream IO can offer? Find out more at https://www.avid.com/products/avid-stream-io