ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 7, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced that Digital Workshop, one of South African's leading boutique full-service film and television post-production facilities, has selected high-speed file transfer and workflow automation software from Aspera, an IBM company, to ingest, manage and distribute the hundreds of hours of diverse media content it receives daily from global content owners.
Digital Workshop receives up to five terabytes of DCP (Digital Cinema Package) trailers, EPK (Electronic Press Kit) packages, artwork, television spots and film trailers from global film studios, content distributers and business partners each month. Packaging the media to the required file formats and size, before distributing it to broadcasters and cinemas across South Africa, was an inefficient and time-consuming tape-based process.
With the growing volume of global content it was receiving and the gradual change in the region from tape to file-based production, Digital Workshop was encouraged to seek a more efficient way to manage its complex workflows for processing hundreds of files in multiple formats, as well as a solution that would allow them to distributes content faster and more reliably, despite severe challenges with network latency in South Africa.
To meet these needs, Digital Workshop selected the Aspera FaspexTM Server and Aspera Orchestrator to quickly and securely distribute feature films and high-definition assets digitally. Installed, customized and running within just three hours, Aspera Faspex provides an intuitive, user-friendly interface for individuals and groups to transfer files and directories of any size at high speed. It also solved the challenge of connectivity and bandwidth limitations in South Africa as it offers an HTTP fall back for highly restrictive network environments and automatic resumption of partial or failed transfers.
With Aspera Faspex, Digital Workshop is now able to receive, process and supply high-quality content faster than ever, without delay, within hours. The result is an expanded capacity to deliver media from 500 gigabytes to 3 terabytes per month, including approximately 30 music videos and eight EPKs.
Digital Workshop further improved their digital processing workflow by deploying Aspera Orchestrator. Offering a variety of plug-ins for transcoding and quality control, Aspera Orchestrator automatically manages the end-to-end processing of hundreds of diverse media files for Digital Workshop every month. Any type of digital asset received from global content owners is securely ingested, processed into the requested format, and distributed to a number of media outlets, broadcasters and cinemas in a variety of resolutions, bitrates and formats - all via high-speed Aspera transfer.
"Our investment in Aspera solutions has enabled us to enormously simplify our internal processes and save considerable time that was previously taken up with manual tasks. Now we're able to receive, process and supply high-quality content faster than ever, without delay, within hours. Our fast delivery and reduced turnaround time positions us ahead of the competition in South Africa." said David Rypstra, Managing Director at Digital Workshop.
"For a full-service post-production companies like Digital Workshop that require the fast turnaround and daily delivery of thousands of hours of high-resolution digital content in varied formats, Aspera provides unprecedented reliably, high-performance and security. By truly transforming how they manage digital media with Aspera solutions, Digital Workshop now has absolute automation and transparency of its internal workflow," said Bruce Brewer, EMEA Sales Director at Aspera.
Aspera will be demonstrating the full portfolio of high-speed file transfer and sharing applications at IBC 2015 Hall 7 Stand B27.
About Aspera
Aspera, an IBM company, is the creator of next-generation transport technologies that move the world's data at maximum speed regardless of file size, transfer distance and network conditions. Part of IBM Cloud, Aspera software is powered by the Emmy®award-winning FASP®protocol to deliver the fastest, most predictable file-transfer, share and sync experience across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid infrastructure. Aspera's core technology delivers unprecedented control over bandwidth, complete security and uncompromising reliability. Organizations across a variety of industries on six continents rely on Aspera software for the business-critical transport of their digital assets. Please visit http://www.asperasoft.com and follow us on Twitter @asperasoft for more information.