| Livewire sources digital security
By Chris Marlowe
Film and television companies can go digital with degrees of
security and quality previously available only to NASA thanks to a
deal between Liberty Livewire Corp. and Advanced Software Resources
Inc.
"This is a whole new entity within the digital applications
division created to create a single source of digitized media at all
resolutions for all extractions," Liberty Livewire vp digital
applications Chip Aycock said.
The Digital Asset Management & Distribution Center brings
together Liberty Livewire's entertainment industry and digital media
experience with the Intelligent Library System developed by Lockheed
Martin. …
"ILS makes sure that digital files get to the right people at the
right time in an incredibly secure environment," Aycock said. "The
system was initially designed to bring in and manage very large,
detailed files from satellites."
Lockheed developed ILS for the U.S. government over a period of
15 years at an estimated development cost of more than $100
million.
Planned as the first end?to?end service center for digital
encoding, archiving, searching, retrieval and distribution of all
forms of media, the DAMD Center is scheduled to open next month and
will be located at one of Liberty Livewire's Burbank facilities
after a test period at Lockheed in Sunnyvale, Calif. Aycock predicts
that demonstrations for existing Liberty Livewire clients will begin
by year's end.
"Getting from point A to point B won't really change," Aycock
said. "What it does is allow you to keep the whole thing in digital
form throughout, from the telecine output through storage through
processing through compression, all in a secure server
environment."
Aycock said source material and all associated metadata remain
together throughout the process, eliminating opportunities for loss,
deterioration or error.
Liberty Livewire's decision to partner with ILS came after
extensive evaluation of the competition, Aycock said. "We saw all of
the (other) existing data management systems, and they all came up
short," he said. "They were cumbersome, they were unreliable, or
they were financially risky companies."
The DAMD Center will enable studios to search, retrieve and
repurpose content from archives of any size. Customers can preview
products online and share content at multiple locations
simultaneously.
"We are excited to be teaming up with the world's most
experienced provider of digital asset management services," Liberty
Livewire media management division president John Donlon said. "As
the entertainment industry positions itself for the proliferation of
digital media, we will be able to offer services that will
streamline distribution and create new revenue opportunities for
studios and content owners."
Liberty Livewire provides a wide range of audio and video
postproduction, transmission, library, Internet hosting and
audio/video distribution services via satellite and fiber to clients
in the film, TV and advertising industries. It is a majority?owned
subsidiary of Liberty Media Corp. | 
