What’s New in MediaCentral 2024.10

Two letters have dominated the discourse about media workflows in recent times—AI. Now AI—or artificial intelligence, its proper name — is coming to MediaCentral, powered by Avid Ada.

Avid Ada is a powerful framework upon which Avid is building a number of AI-enabled solutions. What’s new in MediaCentral 2024.10 version includes a preview of transcription services, and this is just the start.

With new capabilities to deliver more stories faster to more platforms, driving up workflow efficiency, here is a quick summary of what’s new in this release.

Releasing as tech preview within the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX— the powerhouse application which delivers a range of tools into the fingertips of users — a new transcript tab has been added. Transcriptions can be generated manually by users on request or created automatically.

In the transcript window, users see the transcript and can choose an option to highlight the words being spoken as the clip plays. Clicking on any word takes the user directly to the word in the video. Speakers are identified — so if multiple people are speaking in an interview, you can easily say who says what and when — and the speakers can be renamed.

The transcription of clips can begin while media is being ingested into the system — so-called play-while-capture clips — and all information in the transcript is fully searchable. This enables users to find footage faster, speeding up that crucial time-to-air process while Avid Ada services are running within your local MediaCentral environment.

I mentioned earlier that the process of transcription can be automated, thanks to the powerful new Rules Engine. Part of the administration suite, the Rules Engine can automate tasks in your MediaCentral | Production Management or MediaCentral | Asset Management systems.

Also benefiting from enhancements in the new release is the ingest control application, MediaCentral | Acquire. Recordings can now be manipulated in the timeline — for example they can be extended, or the start and end time changed simply through drag and drop directly. Additional user permissions have been implemented.

The release is the latest Long-Term Maintenance (LTM) version of MediaCentral. The third such release in a program begun in 2022 to provide customers with a stable path to upgrades. Feature releases are made at regular intervals, which are then added to the next LTM version on release.

Security also remains a high priority, with this release adding Multi-Factor Authentication support (MFA) for MediaCentral | Newsroom Management and MediaCentral | Asset Management, in addition to the existing support for MediaCentral | Production Management.

Find out how MediaCentral can empower your news and production teams today.