Crawford Media Services Buys Archimedia Master Media Player to Speed Creation and Testing Phase of Large Digitization Projects

Archimedia Technology, a new company whose technology and applications bridge the gap between content producers and their archives without loss of quality, today announced that Atlanta-based Crawford Media Services has purchased 10 licenses for the Archimedia Master Media Player. The Archimedia Player is the first software player to support multiple vendors formats, allowing users to view, test, and measure archival-quality files on a standard HDTV. Crawford is using the Archimedia Player to test and verify the quality of the digital master files it creates for its video migration and digital archiving clients, all of whom hold large media collections.

"Our clients range from the United Nations to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to WWE, and the file types, bit rates, and other parameters they require are as varied as the clients themselves, said Steve Davis, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Crawford Media Services. "We are called upon to create a number of different file types, so we must create and verify a new test file for every project before we can begin creating thousands of files of that same type. Having a high-quality tool to test and verify what we do is very important to a company like ours, and its something that has been lacking in the industry. Until now, there has been no single reference player that could play high-bit-rate files, such as lossless JPEG 2000 or DPX sequences."

The Archimedia Master Media Player has features that enable Crawford to shorten the time between creating the "golden file for a large digitization project and the time when production actually begins, which means that Crawford can complete jobs more quickly at lower cost, and ultimately get paid more quickly. Some of the most important features for Crawford are the players ability to play computationally intense files, and to do so on standard equipment rather than purpose-built workstations; and the ability to use an HDMI(R) output from something as basic as a laptop computer onto a typical HDMI LCD display.

Another especially important feature for Crawford is the Archimedia Players metadata display, which reports information such as frame rate, pixel dimensions, wrapper, and color subsampling to help ensure that the digitized file matches the clients parameters. The player reports back the metadata and can detect issues such as interlace problems.

"Some things are difficult to see with the naked eye, so you need software to tell you whats going on, and thats why the metadata display is so valuable, Davis said. "The Archimedia Master Media Player speeds up our creation and testing phase and helps eliminate the risk of completing a massive migration project based on an imperfect test file, which could be very costly. It also makes it much easier for us to take on the most technically challenging projects."

An added benefit of having a software player that works with a generic computer is that there is no need to buy proprietary equipment. Rather, a single PC can play files one minute and be used for clipping or project management the next, giving Crawford even more benefit from its hardware investments.

"Service providers like Crawford are the creative commons of the media industry, where the rubber hits the road, said Mark Gray, Archimedia president and CEO. "Crawford has been a longtime thought leader in the archive and modern production spaces, and shares our commitment to the industry to treat master files in the best possible way regardless of the vendor or format used to create them. With this purchase, Crawford has effectively established Archimedia Master Media Player as its central reference media player for quality control, editorial viewing, and projection on emerging UHDTV/4K televisions."

The purchase comes on the heels of Archimedias award-winning showing at IBC2013, where the Archimedia Player received a 2013 STAR (Superior Technology Award Recipient) Award from the editors of TV Technology Europe magazine. Information about the Archimedia Master Media Player, including a free trial and online purchasing, is available at www.archimediatech.com.

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