Media backups are boring. Let’s be honest about it. There is nothing sexy about making sure that your files are protected and kept safe in a second (or even third) place just in case something goes down. I mean, no one likes paying for insurance, right? That is, until you need it. A backup is what gets you out of production jail.

Redundancy and resilience are routinely factored into Avid’s media production workflows, but there are always scenarios which can occur unexpectedly. And if suddenly your media production system is no longer available, the consequences can be serious.

Regis Andre, Avid’s Senior Director of Product Management, says, “There is always a risk in production if your media and metadata is not backed up in a secure and efficient manner. Security of content is a major concern of many broadcasters, and it is important they have systems in place to mitigate that risk.”

THE CHALLENGE TO PRODUCTION

For news organizations delivering content 24/7, downtime is not an option. But also for productions, the costs of a loss of access to content, or a loss of content altogether can have major implications.

On the one hand, you have the immediate prospect of cost overruns as the editing, logging, and reviewing part of your workflow comes to a complete halt while your engineers try to fix the problem.

Then you have the prospect of the production over-running, further increasing your costs as you need to keep people on the payroll for longer than planned. In the worst-case scenario, you may need to go and re-shoot your material, building in more costs and delays to the overall schedule.

And, of course, if production is not producing, then you run the risk of losing advertising revenues as those scheduled shows do not go out on time. Then there is the prospect of reputational damage to your brand image if shows do not make it to air when intended or do not make it to air at all.

Avid’s MediaCentral | Production Management systems (formerly known as Interplay) are deployed in more than two thousand sites worldwide, providing the backbone for some of the best-known soap operas, news shows, entertainment shows, and live sports events every day of the year.

And those sites can benefit from a solution which provides an important component in an overall business continuity or disaster recovery scenario.

MediaCentral | Sync simplifies media and metadata backup by synchronizing multiple on-premises MediaCentral | Production Management systems together.

THE SOLUTION? MEDIACENTRAL | SYNC

MediaCentral Sync

MediaCentral Sync

KEY FEATURES

• Automate media and metadata backup in your MediaCentral environment
• Keep your shows and production moving with a secure solution that protects against storage, database, and revenue loss
• Enable assets to be stored in more than one place, eliminating the risk of losing all media in the event of a hardware, man-made, or natural disaster
• Sync multiple on-premises MediaCentral | Production Management systems together for automatic data replication
• Have full control over what media and metadata get backed up, as well as when, where, and how often
• Easily access, configure, and view all settings, tasks, and queues in the administration console
• Available through subscription

Regis Andre continues, “We see MediaCentral | Sync as further strengthening our overall solution by providing an integrated backup solution which our customers can benefit from immediately. It is flexible, fast, and gives editorial teams confidence that their production will proceed without any interruption, even if things go wrong elsewhere.”

Fully integrated with MediaCentral | Production Management and Avid NEXIS, it enables up to eight on-premises systems to sync together and automatically replicate assets between them. Any system can be the backup of another, protecting against storage and database loss.

The options in MediaCentral | Sync provide a high degree of flexibility.

System administrators can dictate what media and metadata get backed up—as well as when, where, and how often—using the administration console of MediaCentral | Sync, providing the production team with peace of mind that their work is being saved to a second system, just in case the worst happens.

Processes can be monitored at all times.

MediaCentral | Sync is suitable for organizations with a single MediaCentral | Production Management system or multiple MediaCentral | Production Management systems on a single site.

While all of this sounds like a doomsday scenario and one which is unlikely, there is no doubt that events of the past year or so have prompted broadcast organizations to look again at their disaster recovery and business continuity plans. None of these plans can be studied in isolation, of course, and a holistic approach must be adopted. But as part of that approach, it is important to factor in the importance an integrated solution—and one which is backed by a global support network 24/7, 365 days a year—can bring.

We all hope the worst will never happen, but if it does, MediaCentral | Sync can help make sure your production does not stop when disaster strikes.

Enable business continuity and disaster recovery

Want to produce without pause?

Find out more about how you can back up with confidence with MediaCentral | Sync