Avid Technology Inc. [www.avid.com] has released Active ContentManager 3.0, an update to its system aimed at helping TV news operations adapt audio, video, graphics, and text content for the web and mobile distribution. One key component of the system, the NewsPoller module, will also be sold separately to stations who want to integrate some features of Active ContentManager with existing web content databases.
Avid Active ContentManager 3.0 offers tight integration with the Avid iNEWS newsroom computer system, Avid NewsCutter news editing systems, and Avid Unity and Interplay systems, and can also be used with most other newsroom computer systems and popular nonlinear editing systems, according to the company. NewsCutter users get the advantage of a “particularly powerful” quick publish-to-web function, but the system is meant to be open and customizable for use with a variety of newsroom systems, said Jim Frantzreb, senior marketing manager, broadcast, at Avid. “It integrates newsroom workflow with online publishing.”
The system helps automate such routine tasks as encoding broadcast video for publication to the Web. With the new release, Active ContentManager can be configured to automatically re-post as-aired newscasts of segments for web and mobile video resolutions. Published stories can be automatically positioned on the website by measures such as hits or viewer votes.
The separate release of the NewsPoller module allows stations who want to keep their current web content management databases to take advantage of the integration Avid has created with newsroom systems. The NewsPoller monitors newsroom systems, watching for content that is available for publication to the web. A scripting language based on XML (the Web’s Extensible Markup Language) allows customers to specify how content will be published to the website, or queued for review by a website editor. “We’ve enhanced the scripting language so works with just about any content management system we're aware of,” Frantzreb said.
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