For immediate release – 26 June 2023, Strasbourg, France – Profuz Digital is pleased to announce that the Council of Europe has invested in the Profuz LAPIS digital asset management system. Profuz LAPIS is used as an advanced dynamic content engine that enhances collaboration within the Council of Europe, including archiving and interactive database support which plays an integral role in their business processes. The Council of Europe upholds human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe, and is renowned for pioneering new standards, which have progressed to become global benchmarks.

Profuz LAPIS is a powerful “one-stop-shop” for managing digital assets, allowing users to organise and find what is required in an instant with an intuitive filter structure that is tailored to an organisation’s exact needs. Access and usage permissions provide peace of mind that users only see assets relevant to them, eliminating the risk of unapproved content being published. Significant time is saved by the system automatically updating and reassessing assets by seamlessly integrating content data into the content engine, avoiding burdensome manual processes.

The Council of Europe already relies on Profuz LAPIS to conduct a wide variety of tasks such as content ingest, storage, and advanced media library searches, using its AI capabilities to further accelerate creative workflows and automate experience delivery at scale. With Profuz LAPIS working within the Cloud, it has enabled the Council of Europe to streamline its workflows and operations, allowing for numerous speaker session recordings in several languages, at various resolutions.

Profuz LAPIS allows unlimited connectivity with APIs and Amazon. Other features in Profuz LAPIS includes its project management capabilities and meta data functionality. The system creates groups and profiles and has a powerful interactive toolset, with future-proof capabilities and vast archive capacity which is the future of data resourcing.

Meetings are held daily at the Council of Europe and the system allows for public access of information, which includes parliamentary sessions where MP’s speeches are recorded. Video file content is often required to be shared promptly across social media networks, allowing journalists and the media to gain immediate access to download, edit, cut down and report on the material. Council staff members and external bodies are able to find, access and interact with all creative assets within their workflows, ensuring all information passes through the correct channels. Teams are able to minimise time spent switching between systems by running everything through Profuz LAPIS. It is possible to quickly find and share assets directly within their own dashboards.

Alain Mielle, (the Head of Innovation at the Council of Europe) states, “We have been very impressed with the functionalities and performance of Profuz LAPIS as our Media Asset Management platform. In our opinion it is the “Rolls Royce” platform of this industry sector, offering a competitive and attractive price tag. It is not a run of the mill digital asset AV management system, as it offers so much more in terms of functionality and features, and we have seen significant productivity gains and positive user feedback.

The self-service portals in Profuz LAPIS saves time and resources as it reduces the number of people having to be involved in its operation. It is used 24/7 and users can take advantage of Profuz LAPIS’ powerful search engine function that finds historical content quickly.

The system is easily accessible, and its search capabilities are exemplary, enabling universities and research groups to access the Council of Europe’s information. We envisage exploiting its AI capabilities in the future – for example permitting journalists and broadcasters to be able to look up past speeches made by world presidents. These functions will continue to evolve in LAPIS to help us provide valuable accessible archived material.”

Profuz Digital’s French technology partner SAV, which is a high-end audiovisual solutions specialist, introduced the Council of Europe to the Profuz LAPIS platform and played a key role in the collaboration. SAV was the initial link between the customer and the supplier by presenting the LAPIS solution to the Council of Europe and helped define the customer’s requirements. They carried out the follow-up of the project and participated in the training sessions. Today, SAV continues to provide level 1 support for the LAPIS solution.

After meeting with Profuz Digital’s CTO and developer Kaman Ferdinandov for a demonstration of the Profuz LAPIS system last summer, Alain reveals, “We were impressed with Kamen’s vision and expertise – he is ahead of the game, including AI and understands the market. We were won over by the team’s professional approach. They are reliable, super sharp, responsive and friendly too.”

In addition, the Council of Europe will evaluate the use of SubtitleNEXT – Profuz Digital’s subtitling technology – for the transcribing of audio-visual content later this year. Although French and English are the two official languages used by the two statutory bodies at the Council – the Committee of Ministers (PACE), and the Congress of the Council of Europe, German and Italian are also used for some of their work.

On the topic of Artificial Intelligence, Alain shares his thoughts, “I believe AI is not designed to replace humans but to work side by side and to enhance our work processes but there is a real need for regulation. We are seeing the tip of the iceberg of the capabilities of AI, and it will have a huge impact on the way we work in the future. As stated on our website recently, AI presents advantages but also risks to our civilisation. However, it is the role of the Council of Europe to ensure that human rights, democracy and the rule of law are protected and promoted in the digital environment. The Council’s Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) is already on the case and has been mandated by the Committee of Ministers to elaborate a framework Convention on the development, design and application of artificial intelligence, based on the Council of Europe’s standards which is conducive to innovation. Companies such as Profuz Digital are well placed to tackle the challenges ahead as we all face the coming AI revolution in this new digital age.”

Profuz Digital’s CTO Kamen Ferdinandov notes, “We are honoured to support the Council of Europe using Profuz LAPIS as its core system. With an ever-increasing volume of content, there is a growing demand to deliver more content consistently to more users within their organisation with greater agility for better content experiences. All features within Profuz LAPIS have been customised to enable journalists and IT teams at the Council of Europe to collaborate immediately. The assets are cloud-native, and automatically scale to meet traffic and processing demands, ensuring both the application and experiences remain responsive to change. We look forward to enjoying a long-term partnership.”

Ivanka Vassileva, CEO of Profuz Digital confirms, “We are so proud that the Council of Europe has invested in Profuz LAPIS and placed it on the global map as a world-leading system. It’s excellent to see it play a central role with flexible features that will continue to evolve, according to growing requirements, in order to keep ahead of advancing technologies. We look forward to working with the Council of Europe for many years to come.”

Other major bodies within The Council of Europe include the European Court of Human Rights, and the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare (EDQM).

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About the Council of Europe
Find out more here https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal

About Profuz Digital
Profuz Digital develops and provides performance-leading solutions for customisable engineering system integration to empower content providers, broadcast, production, and post-production professionals to operate efficiently at the forefront of an ever-evolving digital environment. Profuz Digital’s primary focus is flexibility, futureproof customer-driven product innovation, fast deployment, along with committed teamwork.

Creators of the advanced real-time and offline captioning and subtitling software platform SubtitleNEXT and Profuz Digital’s digital asset workflow management platforms, Profuz LAPIS, designed to efficiently centralise processes and data all under one roof. Proven technology already adopted by the likes of Canal PLUS, Jornal do Centro, Council of Europe, Bulgarian National Radio and many other organisations.

The NEXT-TT system combines SubtitleNEXT’s functionalities with Profuz LAPIS into an all-in-one powerful hybrid technology-base that provides media professionals with a versatile backbone for enhanced localization services. NEXT-TT can be customised to produce targeted management and efficient workflows. It manages subtitles, dubbing and localization services for media content including the coordination of teams of translators, subtitlers, AV professionals, creative freelancers, while providing users with powerful toolsets in a secure workspace environment.

Many organisations have already adopted Profuz Digital’s technology including Titles-On, EMG, Tarjama in the UAE, IT Pros Italy, Digitalmeister GmbH, Leinhäuser Language Services GmbH, Polsat, Kino Polska, Max Live Media Access, Biovisjon, Doli Media Studio, Cube Cinema Technologies, Tring TV, Bulgarian National Television, Canal Plus Myanmar, AMC, HD Media, KU Leuven University of Leuven, Belgium, University of Rome Tor Vergata, University of Warsaw, University of Ghent, European School of Translation, Hellenic American College of Greece, the Complutense University of Madrid, and many others.

www.profuzdigital.com