Tightrope Media Systems Unveils New Innovations

Tightrope Media Systems has unveiled two powerful new innovations for the Cablecast Community Media broadcast automation, playout, and content publishing platform that give PEG broadcasters greater flexibility and efficiency in how their media content is stored and delivered.

The new Smart Asset Manager (SAM) feature automates content archiving, backup, and retrieval to simplify video server storage management, while the new Cablecast REFLECT+ delivery service combines the robust delivery benefits of the proven Cablecast REFLECT CDN with the ability to store all VOD content in the cloud.

Tightrope will highlight SAM, Cablecast REFLECT+, and other Cablecast advances in suite 739 at the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel during the 2022 NAB Show, taking place April 24 to 27.

Tightly integrated into the Cablecast automation software, SAM intelligently moves or copies content between the video server and alternative storage locations such as a SAN (storage area network), NAS (network attached storage) or cloud storage. Rules-based archiving automatically moves content to archive storage if it is not scheduled to be used within a user-specified number of days, while SAM’s rules-based backup feature copies media files to a designated file store for safekeeping. Users can also manually trigger the archiving of an individual show. Automatic archive retrieval brings assets back onto the playout server when they are needed based on the program schedule, minimizing user effort and helping avoid errors related to missing media.

"Community media organizations" content libraries eventually grow beyond their video server's storage capacity, but manually moving content off and back onto the server is time-consuming and labor-intensive," said Steve Israelsky, President, Cablecast Community Media. "Smart Asset Manager is designed to make archiving and retrieving content painless, flexible, and efficient."

While Tightrope's original Cablecast REFLECT delivery service automatically caches content in the cloud when it is first requested from the on-premises VOD server, the new Cablecast REFLECT+ allows users to effortlessly push some or all of their media into cloud storage even before it is first accessed. Customers can use as little or as much cloud storage as they want, with user-configurable rules – for example, all shows from the past month, or all council meetings and high school sports from the current year – automatically pushing matching VOD content to the cloud. A web-based dashboard allows administrators to monitor cloud storage usage.

"Customers love Cablecast REFLECT's ability to reliably and cost-effectively deliver live streams and VOD content with rich metadata to audiences of any size through Cablecast's turnkey web pages, OTT and mobile apps. However, some organizations want to further isolate their media delivery away from their own network," said Israelsky. "Cablecast REFLECT+ provides all of this same powerful functionality and adds the scalability and flexibility of cloud storage while keeping everything outside the local network."

Cablecast REFLECT+ is offered as an optional service with pricing based on tiered storage capacities. The original Cablecast REFLECT service continues to be available for media organizations who want the scalable delivery advantages of the REFLECT CDN but prefer the economics of on-premises storage.

The Smart Asset Manager is a standard feature of version 7.5 of the Cablecast software, slated for release by the end of April. The upgrade to version 7.5 is free for Cablecast FLEX and Cablecast VIO customers on active software assurance agreements. The optional Cablecast REFLECT+ service also requires the Cablecast 7.5 software.

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