Signiant Helps U.K. Broadcast Industry Comply With New File Delivery Standards

BURLINGTON, MASS. — February 23, 2015 — On Oct 1, 2014, all U.K. broadcasters met a key milestone established through an industry-wide partnership: they were ready to receive digital program content via a single common file delivery format. As a key provider of enabling technology in the industry’s move toward end-to-end file-based workflows, Signiant has been instrumental in the practical implementation of this initiative. In support of the U.K. broadcast industry, Signiant will also be exhibiting at Booth S23 at BVE, the U.K.’s largest event for professionals involved in taking content from creation to consumption, taking place February 24-26 in London.

The Digital Production Partnership (DPP) is an initiative formed by the U.K.’s public service broadcasters to help producers and broadcasters maximize the potential of digital production. The DPP has met for the past four years, and in late 2013 it set Oct. 1, 2014, as File Delivery Day – the day U.K. broadcasters would all be prepared to accept file-based deliveries of program content, using a single delivery standard known as AS-11 DPP.

Signiant provides technology that accelerates the transfer of digital files over public and private networks, a critical part of any digital supply chain operating at scale. U.K. broadcasters such as The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and ITV have adopted Signiant solutions in preparation for DPP compliance. The technology is being implemented by these companies for a portion of internal file exchange, to move some content between multiple companies working on the same program – and finally for delivery of a selection of complete programs from the content producer to the broadcaster. This last step in the supply chain is where the U.K. broadcasters have aligned around a common standard via the DPP.

All Signiant solutions provide a high level of security and move content up to 200 times faster than FTP. Speed is critical not only for meeting the tight timelines that dominate the broadcast business, but also for optimizing the use of network resources. The Signiant portfolio includes a number of different solutions, all of which are being used by the U.K. broadcast industry to adapt to the DPP guidelines:

• Media Shuttle allows people to quickly and easily deliver content from anywhere in the world. Deployed as a hybrid SaaS solution that users access via a simple web application, it is the ideal means of providing a huge, diverse content creator community with an easy way to contribute programs.
• Most broadcasters have a handful of major content producers, and Signiant’s Managers + Agents solution is used for automated transport from these high-volume producers to the broadcaster.
• CloudSpeX, Signiant’s patent-pending asset validation application, was designed specifically to address challenges in the content-creator-to-broadcaster part of the supply chain and has therefore been particularly useful in achieving the DPP milestone. It works by validating certain media file attributes, prior to transfer, against a delivery specification stored in the cloud. Files that comply with the spec are allowed to transfer, while those that fail are stopped and flagged. This solution saves time and money by dramatically lowering rejection rates associated with the receipt of improperly formatted files. In moving validation out of the client and into the cloud, CloudSpeX provides a uniform mechanism for automatically checking files against a chosen specification across the entire content ecosystem.

In a blog post, the DPP recently hailed the File Delivery Day campaign as a success, bringing highly-competitive organizations together to simplify processes that benefit all involved. “Complexity is expensive and distracting,” the DPP said in its blog. “Simplicity focuses attention on what matters; and what matters is quality.”

“I congratulate the U.K. broadcasters on what they have achieved with the DPP,” said Margaret Craig, CEO, Signiant. “The standard itself, as well as the collective commitment to file-based program contribution, will serve the industry well. We feel proud to play a role in providing the solutions broadcasters such as ITV and the BBC depend upon to move their valuable content.”