It is undeniable that for most people, the events of 2016 may be remembered for a long time to come, as resembling the dark side of the moon, and so, people are hoping to see 2017 in a more positive light. But, this is a newsletter about Emotion and the Media industry, so that is where my focus will be…

For us 2016 started with lots of anxiety – time, money, and no space to breathe. Delayed projects and some challenges to taking our product to the next level made for a high pressure start. But, we knuckled under and did what we do best under pressure – work hard and deliver product.

In spite of a number of challenges, little did we know that 2016 for us would be the great gig in the sky.

Towards the end of the first quarter, a major customer tasked us to add some functionality to the Engine that we had not envisaged nor planned for… file wrapping and language tagging. We always work well when driven by you – customers giving us direction and deadlines.

With close collaboration and a lot of hard work, we delivered a solution that worked well for our customer. Then came a process of consolidation that allowed a number of aspects of Engine to be wrapped up into a powerful, integrated solution – simply put, tidying up and making Engine bullet proof from an operations point of view.

Whilst all this was going on we were seeing and satisfying a number of client requirements using the existing Engine functions. We were finally getting to a point where the Engine was recognised as a flexible and automatable tool for file-based audio processing.

So, a lot of jet setting and a lot of demos and presentations led to some good sales and happy clients.

What we began to realize was that for a long time, our loudness application was our ray of light and whilst it is still a significant part of the business, the additional tools we have built into Engine now provide a large spectrum of solutions for our users.

What some of our customers realized is that routine and mundane tasks that make up a dull day should definitely be automated! Engine had the potential to automate manual and repetitive tasks such as loudness, track mapping, adding audio tracks, removing tracks, inserting audio, replacing audio, Dolby encode, decode and really saving time and money…it’s a hit

As you know, those tasks would normally be done using edit software functions, which would require an import of the file (decoding video) and then an operator would execute those tasks using the facilities of the edit suite or using plug ins. The process involves loading the file, manually working on the file, and exporting the files.

For example, a customer in Asia has been using Engine to do 16 workflows for their requirement. And that Engine services 10 edit suites!

So you don’t need 10 operators, 10 plug ins, and 10 edits suites to get the job done. We don’t have time to kill today! Those editors can be doing more creative and valuable work.

Click here to download the Edit Suite app note

Requirements that have come about in the past year will affect most broadcasters and content delivery houses. And this is our ray of sunshine for 2017!

So, to truly get you into a flying start for 2017, we would like to invite you to download a trial of Engine. Try it!

Click here to download a trial of Engine

We’d like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the New Year and to thank you for all of the valuable feedback and suggestions that have allowed us to make a great product. And we’d like to encourage more. Here’s looking forward to working with you!

Sincerely,

MC