Media and entertainment industry software company VSN will showcase in April through an online event a number of enhancements to its VSNCrea Traffic and Scheduling System, VSNExplorer Media Asset Management System and VSN NewsConnect web plugin for news production. All these enhancements and new capabilities have been specifically developed to contribute to increase efficiency, save time and resources, eliminate error and contribute to improve Media companies' profitability. Our commitment to our customers has always been to provide them with valuable additional functionalities that will have a substantial positive impact on their operations, said Patricia Corral, Marketing Director, VSN. In April, coinciding when NAB was previously taken place, we will be taking the opportunity to demonstrate that commitment in action with new features and capabilities that can improve our customers' efficiency, productivity and profitability - and all without any constraint when integrating third-party software or hardware.
New Smart Modules for Content Acquisition and Commercials in VSNCrea Traffic and Scheduling System
The latest version of VSNCrea now benefits from even higher levels of automation, allowing users to more easily manage acquired content and advertising scheduling and enabling both improved accuracy and enhanced productivity.
Historically, the management and monitoring of advertising scheduling and broadcasting rights has been a manual process, often relying on Excel spreadsheets - and as such, it was both time-consuming and error-prone, said Corral. Now, VSNCrea provides new levels of automation that can minimize the time and resources spent on the task while eliminating potentially costly mistakes.
Users can now locate content quickly with its associated broadcasting rights; automate the scheduling of their catalogue according to their own licenses and set-ups; and schedule advertising time slots with associated pricing depending on the time of broadcast or publishing while avoiding, for example, same-category repetition. The enhanced version of VSNCrea also allows users to perform a comprehensive revenue and ROI analysis with customized reports and dashboards.
The new module for Content Acquisitions' management in VSNCrea enables to automate the scheduling of the catalogue according to the contents' broadcasting rights.
Enhanced Cataloguing and Media Archive Workflows with VSNExplorer MAM
The new functionality now included in VSNExplorer MAM enables users to derive even more value from their content/media assets. It uses the power of semantic searching - in which the search engine understands the meaning of the enquiry, rather than looking for literal matches - to significantly improve how metadata is associated with content and improve the findability' of content so that searching becomes much more productive.
For any organization looking to migrate its existing archive systems, or to bring its elderly archive system into line with what's possible with new technologies, this new functionality will be extremely appealing, said Corral. It can exponentially increase the speed with which content can be catalogued, located and retrieved.
VSNExplorer MAM is now capable of syntactically cataloguing all the terms and sentences used in the description of scenes in order to achieve formal, unambiguous, accurate and user-agnostic metadata for content in any language. Qualifiers - such as colours, mood, commercial names, types of objects and so on can be added to metadata in order to achieve even more precise search results. Advanced thesaurus management enables users to create different groups of terms and hierarchies by defining broader, narrower, related or preferred terms.
The new cataloging tools and media archive workflows in VSNExplorer MAM help users to achieve precise and unambiguous results in metadata cataloging, regardless of the user that performs the task.
VSN NewsConnect News Production System with Adaptive Production for all Studios
VSN NewsConnect, which brings together all the third party tools required for news production, now enables users to control multiple studios in different locations, even if the systems used in the studios are different. This provides users with maximum flexibility for their daily work, enabling them to perform all the tasks for news production within one single workspace - improving efficiency and saving time.
What this means is that a user - typically, a journalist - can simply send a news item to any studio and NewsConnect will automatically ensure that the delivered content matches the format requirements of the receiving devices, said Corral. This remote interoperability is very useful in enabling news to be repurposed to the requirements of local broadcasters without worrying about technical compatibility - maximizing the value of the news.
Previously, sending a story to a specific studio would require knowledge of the systems in use at that studio, and manual adaptation of the media to ensure compatibility with the target NRCS, NLE, CG, video server, studio playout system and so on. Now, users can focus on creating stories: NewsConnect takes care of automatically adapting the media to the different systems available, sending e.g. linear TV, WebTV, non-linear platforms or social media as appropriate.
More information about VSN and its products is available at the company's corporate website, as well as through a new online event that will be available and open for registration soon. Book your meeting or product demo in advance through this online form.
