Italy’s RAI expands use of Avid software and storage

In a multi-year agreement, Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) is extending its longstanding use of Avid solutions, including upgrades to the MediaCentral platform and Media Composer video editing software, and the addition of Avid Nexis storage systems.

“As a multichannel broadcaster delivering a massive volume of original content, it’s crucial to be ready to scale production capacity whenever we need it,” said Ubaldo Toni, director of technology, RAI. “Augmenting our workflows with the latest Avid solutions gives us a powerful foundation to deliver on today’s commitments and easily scale to support future projects.”

RAI recently completed migration to Avid Nexis | E5 media storage systems for channels Tg1, 2, and 3, RaiNews24 and Rai Parlamento, totalling six petabytes of available storage. This enables RAI’s teams to access content and projects across their network from anywhere in real time. RAI’s selection of Avid Nexis storage reduces its carbon footprint and delivers cost savings from lower power consumption and reduced rack space compared to its previous solution.

The upgrade will also include moving to the latest version of Avid’s MediaCentral production asset management system. Users will migrate from the existing MediaCentral | UX to the web-based MediaCentral | Cloud UX, delivering collaborative workflows for news, production and archive. The upgrades also include an increased number of Avid Media Composer | Ultimate editing software seats. With support for hundreds of third-party products in the Avid ecosystem, the open MediaCentral platform is key to RAI’s dramatically enhanced workflow flexibility.

“Leading broadcasters such as RAI are achieving scalability and collaboration on highly flexible foundations that solve today’s needs and leave the door open for easy growth,” said Tom Cordiner, chief revenue officer, Avid. “RAI is capturing significant new workflow advantages with MediaCentral, Avid Nexis and Media Composer, ensuring they have the available content production resources they need in one integrated solution. We’re proud to continue our partnership with RAI as they go further and faster to innovate programming across their channels.”