Signiant Helps Manage Discovery Content
Software handles file transfers globally
By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/28/2009 5:00:27 PM
Content distribution specialist Signiant says that Discovery Communications is now using Signiant’s software to direct the flow of content between Discovery’s worldwide locations.
Burlington, Mass.-based Signiant makes software that manages and optimizes the delivery of digital media over wide-area networks and its file-based delivery systems are already used by large programmers like NBC Universal and Lifetime. Discovery is using Signiant’s Content Distribution Management (CDM) software to direct content collaboration between its origination and post-production facilities, improving the post-production process for series like “Jockeys” on Animal Planet, “Treasure Quest” on Discovery Channel and “Count Down to the Crown” on TLC, and speed up its file-transfer workflow on a worldwide basis.
The Signiant deployment is broken down into two areas at Discovery. One is to handle heavy asset transfer of both standard-def and HD content, while the other is to support Discovery’s low-res proxy solution, called the Digital Media Center (DMC), which is used to access and repurposed archived content for new-media production, among other applications.
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Signiant’s CDM software has been integrated with the Discovery library and DMC tool to make its assets viewable worldwide across the entire company and to outside partners. The Signiant deployment for the DMC supports 8,000 users, with an estimated 250 concurrent users uploading and downloading files at any given time.
Discovery has integrated Signiant with its current media management solution through open application program interfaces (APIs), allowing it to streamline the management of content that needs to transferred to Discovery’s various distribution facilities based in Sterling, Va., Miami, Fla., London and Singapore.
“We had an extensive proof of concept review of several vendors to find a solution that could take full advantage of available bandwidth and deal with the specifications appropriately,” said Discovery SVP of media engineering Bart Palmer in a statement. “Signiant not only integrated seamlessly with our existing technologies, but they also had all the right relationships with key channel partners and common tool sets that we use to manage a lot of our workflows.”
