Blackbird upgrades editing and publishing platform

The latest release now supports 16 audio channels

The latest upgrade to the Blackbird platform has been released, including some notable new features that extend the Blackbird workflows.

Blackbird allows editors full multichannel video editing within a browser with up to 18 channels available to create advanced editing sequences, enabling richer and more engaging video to drive viewership and value from content, the company claims.

Publishing options from the editor to the related output media can support both mixed down or split audio configurations. The latest releases extend the existing 8-channel multi track audio up to twice its existing capability, now supporting 16 audio channels. Output file configurations will vary by codec and wrapper but this greatly extends the flexibility of the platform for multi-language and downstream mixing of content, Blackbird said.

The latest Blackbird Edge update provides system load metrics to administrators to be able to validate that the associated ingest and rendering nodes are operating at their optimal configuration. The Blackbird control centre provides metrics on system capacities and maximum processing configurations to also aid scale planning and workload distribution.

The existing Blackbird Edge container images have been extended for full Unicode support for input and publishing to increase workflow flexibility and enhance the breadth of geographies and languages supported. These images are used in Blackbird deployments on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

Multiple video tracks are available within the Blackbird editor to support the creation of output media without any requirement of rendering or delays. Video tracks can contain live and file-based content as well as stills and animations within the timeline.

Video tracks are represented in layers on the timeline that follow Z ordering to overlay media on top of underlying tracks. All Blackbird video layers support alpha channel/transparency along with the video layers, again providing the flexibility to create a high grade of output media including pan/zoom and transitional effects to enhance the content.

Users creating multiple edit variants from the extensive multitrack features can rapidly toggle layers to enable publishing for deliveries that may require alternative branding for different platforms with a high degree of end user efficiency.