Qvest Media and Sony renew Deutsche Welle production with Media Backbone Hive

In cooperation with Qvest Media Sony is providing the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) with the news and media production system Media Backbone Hive. Thanks to integrating Sony’s Media Backbone Hive into the production centres in Berlin and Bonn, DW is gradually moving towards new production workflows.

Due to its open API interfaces the system forms the centrepiece of a future-oriented production platform which allows efficient, automated and system wide workflows. Using private data centres, the two Hive Digital Centre’s collectively enable approximately 1,000 journalists across the two locations to deliver news remotely in real-time.

With audiences now consuming media directly online rather than through linear channels, flexibility is playing an increasingly important role for media producers needing to distribute content quickly and seamlessly. Rapid content delivery and easy production are key to the success of modern broadcasters and media companies. Serving as a new media asset management system (MAM) equipped with a web editor and Adobe Premiere, Sony’s Hive is equipping DW for today’s fast-moving digital content landscape.

Boosting efficiency and reducing operational costs, Sony’s Media Backbone Hive eliminates the need to use multiple systems and valuable production resources. DW’s journalists, editors and producers can now work closely together and collaborate via the data centre based platform which enables content to be recorded, edited, published and shared on any platform.

Furthermore, Hive’s powerful planning tools continually update DW’s newsroom systems by linking metadata to news content, making material retrievable at various locations and allowing quick access to data stored during field assignments.

“With Hive, our editors not only have more leeway in the way they produce their news, they can now also get to their final product faster,” says Thomas Schäfer, project manager at Deutsche Welle. “The fact that the stories can now also be recorded via mobile phone or tablet is another particularly positive development for us.”