Veritone, Evolphin team to provide advanced, AI-driven media asset management offering for Inter Milan football club

Veritone and Evolphin Software announced that the Football Club Internazionale Milano (Inter Milan) is leveraging a robust, AI-driven media asset management system based on Veritone aiWARE and the Evolphin Zoom MAM platform. 

The combination of aiWARE and Evolphin Zoom gives Inter Milan a next-generation solution for indexing, managing, and monetizing its massive library of archived and current content. As a result, Inter Milan is able to give its stakeholders around the globe faster and more efficient access to tailored content.

The Evolphin Zoom MAM ingests and transcodes the content from Inter Milan, and sends media for analysis to Veritone’s aiWARE platform. Veritone’s aiWARE uses advanced AI techniques to generate descriptive information about the content, such as spoken words, faces, logos, or advertiser names mentioned, making the content indexed and searchable.

In this manner, aiWARE helps Inter Milan tag and identify key assets within the library, enabling video editors, journalists, and designers to find particular content they need quickly and deliver their work faster than ever.

Once aiWARE has analyzed the team’s assets and generated the necessary metadata, the information is programmatically sent back to the Evolphin Zoom MAM platform. Zoom acts as the orchestrator of Inter Milan’s new digital content production pipeline, providing out-of-the-box media management capabilities, including enterprise-grade security and versioning of assets, rich plugins to Adobe apps, powerful tagging and searching, and automated distribution of content to any destination. 

 “At Evolphin, we are proud to begin this journey with Inter Milan and Veritone,” said Brian Ahearn, CEO of Evolphin. “The technologies we are applying here are incredibly innovative and unlike anything available on the market today.”

“In partnership with Evolphin, we look forward to helping Inter Milan leverage our aiWARE platform to get maximum benefit out of its tremendously valuable content library and better serve all of its key stakeholders, from fans and viewers to sponsors and editors,” said Veritone president Ryan Steelberg.

Infortrend incorporates DaVinci Resolve project server into its scale-out shared storage offering

Infortrend Technology releases on Tuesday its highly scalable shared storage EonStor CS that supports NLE software, such as DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Final Cut Pro to facilitate collaborative editing of 4K and above ultra-high resolution videos. EonStor CS supports over 100 GB/s performance and 100 PB capacity, making it an ideal storage solution for large-scale post-production studios with more than ten workstations. 

In a traditional architecture, the database project server, which contains reels, edited files and timeline, is deployed on a dedicated workstation and connects to other workstations in a peer-to-peer network for editors, colorists, and animators to work together on the same project. Any single point of failure, however, will pose a threat to the project. 

In light of this issue, Infortrend integrates DaVinci Resolve Project Server into the shared media storage and provides RAID protection to guarantee high data availability. The simplified network architecture also makes deployment and management easier for video professionals to focus more on content production.

EonStor CS is a scale-out shared storage solution that allows enterprises to address the sheer volume of data via its scalable capacity and linear-increasing performance. The scalability through a scale-out expansion offers an easier and more cost-effective way of managing growing data in the agile enterprises while reducing consequent performance bottlenecks. 

EonStor CS also improves data utilization and simplifies data management by integrating data from all nodes into one cluster system. The superior performance and scalability make CS suitable for a wide range of data-intensive industries and applications such as media and entertainment (M&E), high-performance computing (HPC), video surveillance, file sharing and backup. 

With EonStor CS, enterprises gain speedy process for storage expansion and data migration. EonStor CS can keep up as the business grows, making it the optimized data storage and management solution.

Moreover, the shared media storage comes with user-friendly management software that is also designed to simplify the deployment. The EonOne software offers two accounts to separate different management roles. One account is for M&E User Administrator, who uses EonOne to set up user accounts and storage quota. The other account is for System Administrator, who is in charge of advanced configurations and maintenance.

In addition, Infortrend develops a client-based utility EonView, which is installed on Windows and macOS workstations to automatically detect the connected storage system and mount the assigned file folder according to the user credentials. This smart utility simplifies the complexities of storage system deployment and network setup, especially for video professionals who are not familiar with IT setting.  

“Infortrend offers comprehensive storage solutions for today’s M&E, no matter the business scale,” said Thomas Kao, senior director of Product Planning. “Besides its highly scalable performance and capacity for large workgroups to fulfill simultaneous workflows, CS supports high density 4U 60-bay form factor to deliver optimized size for massive data storage requirements. With the launch of CS, we aim to serve M&E customers with smarter, easier, and more flexible solutions,” 

Samsung is developing AI ScaleNet capability, enabling seamless, high-resolution 8K streaming

As the world enters the era of 8K TVs with sales of 8K displays steadily increasing, TV manufacturers are constantly adding more offerings to the mix, the 8K market is expected to continue to grow. 

There are, however, a few challenges that need to be addressed before viewers around the world will be able to enjoy 8K’s stunning visuals in their entirety. First, more 8K content will need to be produced, and second, network connections need to be made capable of supporting the seamless streaming of 8K movies and shows.

To address these issues, researchers from Samsung Research, an advanced R&D hub within Samsung Electronics’ SET Business, have developed an AI Codec known as AI ScaleNet. First introduced at SDC19, this capability enables delivery of 8K content on networks that typically support only 4K speeds, without the need for additional infrastructure.

To learn more about AI ScaleNet’s development process and potential applications, Samsung Newsroom interviewed Kwangpyo Choi and Youngo Park – researchers from Samsung Research’s Visual Technology team, and the first individuals to suggest and develop this type of innovative technology.

AI ScaleNet utilizes deep learning technology to minimize data loss during compression and enable 8K content to be streamed on networks with lower bandwidth capabilities.

Here’s how it works, in a nutshell: 8K content is compressed to 4K quality using an AI downscaler and transmitted to the user’s TV, which utilizes AI to upscale the content back to 8K quality. When asked to describe the inspiration for the technology, Kwangpyo Choi, a researcher from Samsung Research’s Visual Technology, specified a need for a new video compression and transmission technology in order to accommodate the evolving media landscape, and to address related technical challenges.

“Multimedia content is rapidly moving online, so figuring out how to overcome bandwidth limitations for UHD content transmission has become a major task,” said Choi.

“With AI ScaleNet, users will be able to enjoy 8K-quality content, even at lower bandwidths,” added Youngo Park, another Samsung researcher. “In fact, during periods of high network traffic, when speeds tend to drop, viewers can still expect content to be presented at a relatively higher quality.”

AI ScaleNet addresses bandwidth limitations within modern network infrastructures with what’s known as an adaptive AI Codec. “AI Adaptive Bit Rate Streaming refers to AI technology that adapts to various bandwidths and adjusts the resolution to enable seamless streaming,” said Choi.

The difference the technology makes is especially clear when using over-the-top (OTT) services, where viewers typically notice changes in picture quality. As Choi explained, however, Samsung’s AI Codec and AI ScaleNet technology utilize AI that adapts to changes in bandwidth and optimizes quality, so users enjoy the highest-quality streaming experience possible.

Infortrend optimizes data center footprint with high density 4U 60-bay storage

Infortrend Technology Inc. has introduced the 4U 60-bay unified storage system to address rapid data growth and limited datacenter space challenges. The 4U 60-bay EonStor GS Gen2 features advanced performance, and its high density enclosure can accommodate up to 896 drives in one system, delivering 10PB+ massive capacity for data-intensive applications.

EonStor GS 3000/4000 Gen2 is the latest generation of Infortrend’s high availability enterprise unified storage which integrates NAS/SAN/Cloud gateway into one system. 

Compared with the previous solutions, GS Gen2 NAS performance is improved by 60 percent, reaching up to 9,900/5,500 MB/s read/write throughput. It also supports 900K IOPS performance. Other enhancements include double memory capacity, four onboard 10GbE ports for high-speed I/O connections, and comprehensive form factors.

The EonStor GS 3000/2000 series are comprehensive enterprise solutions with exceptional SAN and NAS transmission performance to meet the storage needs of SMBs to large enterprises. Besides various form factors, they also offer up to 4 sets of modular host boards to fulfill the requirements of numerous applications or architecture transformation to allow more deployment flexibility. 

Furthermore, the system also comes with high expandability of more than 8PB storage capacity to easily meet the needs of future data growth. As such, its outstanding performance, flexibility, and high expandability can run critical applications for SAN and NAS on the market. The GS 3000 is perfect for the performance-conscious, while the GS 2000 is ideal for the budget—conscious as it can meet all general storage needs.

With the support of Intel’s advanced CPU platform, and the newly-released 4U 60-bay form factor, GS Gen2 is designed to empower customers to overcome the issues of rapid data volume growth in terms of storage performance and capacity, while optimizing datacenter space utilization.   

The EonStor GS 5000/4000 series forms the backbone of our high performance solution for enterprises with its powerful performance, flexibility, and high expandability to efficiently boost overall productivity. They can handle large amounts of I/O and file transfers even under high workloads, and are especially ideal for hybrid environments that adopt SAN, NAS, and cloud integration. 

The GS 5000 is perfect for those who want performance, capacity, and a high port count, while the GS 4000 is ideal for the budget-conscious as it can easily meet all general storage needs.

“Infortrend releases the 4U 60-bay GS Gen2 series to prepare businesses for the enormous data management requirements,” said Thomas Kao, senior director of product planning. “This new solution is especially future-proof for data-intensive applications, such as media & entertainment, surveillance, and HPC (high performance computing).”

SwiftStack 7 provides ultra-scale performance and capacity for data storage and management from edge to core to cloud

SwiftStack announced Tuesday SwiftStack 7 with extensive enhancements to its data platform for performance, data utilization, and services at ultra-scale. The update enables demanding workloads such as advanced machine learning, media analytics, and scientific research, in environments like autonomous vehicle development, ingest and processing of 4K/8K video, and other compute-intensive processes.

SwiftStack 7 drives previously unseen throughput performance at massive multi-petabyte scale and can handle thousands of simultaneous workers accessing data. Independent third-party testing on similar hardware and workloads validates SwiftStack 7 is multiple times faster than competitors, realizing extremely high production throughput speeds at over 100GB per second. The simple, open architecture allows linear scaling of both performance and capacity.

ProxyFS Edge extends SwiftStack’s file services to be distributed at the edge, close to the application, for high-throughput, data-intensive use cases. The containerized ProxyFS agent at the edge provides caching capabilities to minimize latency, while providing massive throughput to large datasets stored at the core. ProxyFS Edge is an extension of the existing ProxyFS clustered file system that allows for file and object API access to the same data sets.

The newest component of SwiftStack 1space, the 1space File Connector, brings existing enterprise file data into the cloud namespace so cloud-native applications can access data via S3 or Swift object APIs without complex migration. 

The containerized 1space File Connector interacts with network-attached storage (NAS) and can scale out to provided high-performance access of files to modern applications. This allows businesses and organizations to modernize their workflows incrementally and apply 1space data placement and protection policies (copy, move, tier) to file data when needed.

SwiftStack PRO (Professional Remote Operations) is an optional service developed from best practices employed by hundreds of large-scale customers, includes advanced professional service- and software-based capabilities to allow 24x7 remote management and monitoring of SwiftStack production clusters. SwiftStack PRO ensures teams of any size can keep a highly utilized data storage and management platform optimized for demanding uses.

SwiftStack 7’s capabilities are essential for deep learning at ultra-scale. This customer-proven architecture stack satisfies the storage performance needed by GPU compute complexes and modern AI frameworks accessing and processing hundreds of petabytes of data. SwiftStack’s architecture delivers elasticity from edge to core to cloud, data immutability for long-term referenceability, and viable TCO. 

“Data scientists are constrained by inherited infrastructure, particularly in performance, scalability, cost, metadata enrichment, workflow integration, and portability to accommodate data at the edge, core, and cloud,” said George Crump, Chief Steward at Storage Switzerland. “Large enterprise customers need to architect a data pipeline and framework to deliver business outcomes and intelligence, and SwiftStack’s software is a strategic component supporting these modern applications.”

“Right now, data is changing the world, applications can exist anywhere from the edge to the core data center to the cloud, and data management and control has been decoupled from core infrastructure,” said Joe Arnold, SwiftStack founder and chief product officer. “Our customers are pushing the boundaries in demanding environments, such as deep learning, and SwiftStack 7 is the foundation for delivering performance, capacity, and services at scale.”

SwiftStack 7 will be released next month, containing the ultra-scale performance enhancements and the 1space File Connector. ProxyFS Edge is currently in beta and will be generally available in early 2020. SwiftStack PRO and the SwiftStack AI Architecture are available immediately.

Alibaba Cloud collaborates with Animal Logic to create better animation production experience

Alibaba Cloud, the data intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, and Animal Logic announced Tuesday a partnership to meet the growing and demanding requirements of media production. Animal Logic has started backing-up its on-premise production content onto Alibaba Cloud’s world-class computing platform. Through this partnership, the parties hope to drive efficiencies of media production by utilising more cloud computing technologies.

Alibaba Cloud and Animal Logic will continue working on future cross-regional storage and backup projects, large scale rendering farm requirements and migration of legacy applications to the cloud. These projects will support Animal Logic’s multi-cloud, whilst retiring a number of critical legacy applications, and ageing on-premise hardware.

“Alibaba Cloud is thrilled to announce our partnership with Animal Logic, in which we will bring increased efficiency and safety to the artists at Animal Logic and in turn, push the boundaries of animation and VFX to a new level,” said Raymond Ma, General Manager for Alibaba Cloud in Australia and New Zealand.

Alibaba Cloud’s cross border network covers 20 regions and 61 availability zones globally. It is also the first Cloud provider to fulfil the additional requirements of Germany’s Cloud Computing Compliance Controls Catalog (C5) and has more than 70 security and compliance accreditations worldwide.

As one of digital production studios that created animation and visual effects for various films including Peter Rabbit, The LEGO Movie 2, Captain Marvel and Happy Feet, Animal Logic requires a high-performance cloud storage platform that can quickly scale up for backup requirements, especially during peak production periods, in which 150TB of data can be generated in a 24-hour period. 

Animal Logic required a partner that could not only provide them with secure data protection capabilities, but also secure backup solutions for the increasingly large amount of data generated within a short period of time.

“Our partnership with Alibaba Cloud will provide us with the best technology to secure our content more efficiently,” says Darin Grant, Animal Logic’s Chief Technology Officer. “With Alibaba Cloud, we have the capability to backup large amounts of data and in turn, operate seamlessly even during our busiest times.”