Arvato’s Metzner and Schragmann discuss COVID-19 and production assistance

Arvato Systems has contacted SVG Europe to inform the sports broadcast community as to how the company is coping with the coronavirus pandemic and why its production asset management system can assist broadcasters with remote production operation.

What is the most important message from your company to customers and partners around Europe in light of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic?

Marcus Metzner, CMO: “First of all, it is important that we stick together in this situation and manage it jointly. Naturally, the health of customers, partners and employees is always in the foreground.

“And of course it is very important that we are a reliable partner for our customers, especially now. That’s why we at Arvato Systems took all the necessary measures early on, on the one hand to protect all parties involved and help to avoid the further spread of the virus, and on the other hand to continue to offer our customers the accustomed end-to-end service in the same high quality they have come to expect.

“We are very happy that, for example, almost all of our employees work in the home office, where they can continue their work as before. Our global team and our established Business Continuity Management ensure all this is possible.”

Is there a way your company’s technology or services can specifically help sports media organisations and their workers to continue to produce content in more remote and collaborative ways at this time?

Karsten Schragmann, product manager: “One of the unique aspects of our PAM (production asset management system) for Adobe Premiere Pro, VPMS EditMate, is the application of our advanced streaming server. With this we can stream high quality, but low bitrate proxies of media used in projects from central storage directly to the Premiere Pro client, thereby enabling editors to work from remote locations.

“The simple web UI enables users to quickly search over all assets and add them to projects. With the majority of sports events cancelled or postponed, our customers have been able to quickly search and find content to produce compilations or archive packages to continue driving engagement.

“Of course, once sporting events start to resume, it’s likely that some social distancing measures will continue, with EditMate editors can continue to work remotely, even as events are taking place.: