Avid Interplay Central: Media creation, distribution and management

Starting in the second quarter of the year, Avid will have the first version of Interplay Central, which will offer a set of next-generation workflow tools for media creation, distribution and management, allowing professionals in different functions in content production to access the tools they need to carry out their tasks.

With the new Avid Interplay Central embodies the Integrated Media Enterprise concept that allows companies to significantly improve processes, increase revenues and compete more effectively. Designed to support a wide variety of workflows, Interplay Central, scheduled for release in Q2 2011, will provide next-generation workflow tools for location-based audiovisual professionals via mobile and web-based applications.

Thanks to its open user interface, it allows professionals in different functions in content production to access the tools they need to carry out their tasks, offering better visibility to content, greater team collaboration and workflow agility. Initially available to users through a lightweight, intuitive web portal or mobile applications, Interplay Central represents the latest evolution of Avid's family of Interplay solutions.

Gary Greenfield, president and CEO of Avid, acknowledged during the last NAB that "customers in virtually every audiovisual discipline have told us about the challenges they face, producing thousands of hours of content each year and needing operational specialists and a variety of specific applications to finish the job. This has added significant complexity and inefficiency to our customers' business operations."

"Interplay Central is an innovative way to replace monolithic and dedicated applications with open and flexible workflows. Now, practically every person involved in the process of creating, managing and distributing content can work from any location and use tools adapted to the tasks they have to carry out. This is a paradigm shift for our industry, something that will allow companies to improve their productivity, agility and operational efficiency," added Greenfield.

Mobile content creation

Interplay Central is a development and expansion of Avid's family of content management solutions and serves as a window into an organization's resource creation, management and distribution infrastructure; It will initially be available as a simple and intuitive web portal or as an application for mobile devices.

Through an Internet-connected laptop or desktop computer, various staff members (including executive producers, technical directors, editors, graphic artists, cataloguers, copywriters, reporters, web producers and more) can connect to the Interplay Central portal and access autonomous “panels” by profile, designated to tasks related to different parts of the content production process. The Interplay Central Mobile application will make it easy for users to browse, create and edit content directly from anywhere, even when they are offline or out of network range. Changes to content made by users working with Interplay Central Mobile in offline mode will be reflected in the projects as soon as the network connection is reestablished.

We are therefore faced with two state-of-the-art workflow tools that provide superior efficiency in the creation of content and in the production performance chain; They do this by making the technical process invisible to users working under tight deadlines, so they can focus on completing their work faster, rather than worrying about the underlying technology.

Individual professionals and teams using these applications will have greater access to a variety of tools tailored to the user's role from any location. Team members responsible for completing specific media creation, production, and management tasks will no longer have to use standalone systems or products that are only available at a given studio. With Interplay Central, users can work as they see fit, carrying out various tasks remotely. Additionally, because Interplay Central provides job-specific tools for multiple users, professionals responsible for multiple tasks can use different tools directly within the application, rather than having to use many different standalone products.

By reducing reliance on siled software applications designed for a previous era of strictly defined roles and responsibilities, Interplay Central provides a common entry point for all users, streamlining requirements for highly specialized IT infrastructures.

With support for a large number of user profiles and toolsets, collaborators working on different parts of a project can interact with each other more quickly and directly within Interplay Central. This real-time collaboration translates into smoother workflows, better user integration, and more effective teamwork through a single application; This reduces the completion time of projects that involve multiple interdependent points of contact and collaborators with different responsibilities.

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