Tag Archive for: ProfuzLAPIS

Profuz Digital sets the Standard for AI Excellence in Localisation and Broadcast at IBC

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Profuz LAPIS at IBC2024 – Integrated AI evolution and collaboration securing the future

For immediate release – 26 September 2024, Sofia, Bulgaria – Profuz Digital reports a showstopping IBC in Amsterdam as visitors queued each day to see the latest editions of Profuz LAPIS and SubtitleNEXT. Profuz Digital brings to the industry a fresh approach offering unbeatable efficiency, maintainability, and support, and was the star of the conversation powering revolutionary features applauded by customers for its transformational workflow capabilities that help set the standard of AI-enabled digital media asset management workflows and subtitling localisation platforms.

The Profuz Digital team illustrated at IBC how its latest AI enhancements are shaping the future of media workflows by simplifying complex repetitive tasks to enhance productivity so media professionals can devote more time to creating compelling content. While AI was the catchphrase of the event, Profuz Digital is certainly no newcomer to AI and has been offering practical integrated AI for some time within Profuz LAPIS.

Profuz LAPIS is a comprehensive workflow solution, evolving constantly, streamlining workflows, boosting collaboration, and accelerating content creation. It is a one-stop shop for anything file-related. The digital asset management arena is an overcrowded zone, but no other platform has the “Profuz Digital formula,” that has been shaped from decades of experience, proven performance, and flexibility. With unparalleled quality, and ability to integrate with other workflows, Profuz LAPIS is the obvious choice for most Media and Entertainment organisations that are serious about future success.

The LAPIS system uses advanced AI to speed up or replace manual processes and provides users with innovative tools to search, edit, manage and create media content from any device such as desktop PC, laptop, tablet, mobile phone from any location. LAPIS allows effortless connection to multiple cloud and local AI engines to enhance content, data processing, including video and sound generation, enhancement, restoration and image scaling. LAPIS can also extract text from video and images, refine audio transcription which includes speech to text processing in all languages; translation from audio and much more. Driven by user feedback, dedication to empowering the M&E industry with the integration of AI in LAPIS, Profuz Digital continues to add innovative features, promising an exciting evolution that benefits live sports production, localization, broadcasters and other sectors. Within broadcasting alone, TV channels, radio stations, and streaming platforms rely on efficient intelligent systems like LAPIS to manage their extensive libraries of videos, audio clips, graphics, and other content. Production companies need to manage assets throughout the content creation process, from pre-production to post-production.

The newly released SubtitleNEXT version 5.13 at IBC offers a versatile solution for enhancing subtitling tasks with ease with the additional ability to create and edit audio descriptions. The module is packed full of exciting new enhancements such as a shiny new default screen layout and template for audio description, subtitle-free video preview, improved handling of reintroduced news in news rundowns, quicker application startups and loads more that makes work easier for localisation practitioners. Visitors to the show were enamoured with SubtitleNEXT live, its offline preparation and QC capabilities as well as the new audio description add-ons.

“We had an incredible IBC, meeting up with wonderful people in the industry, long-standing and potential new customers and partners. We received positive feedback regarding the latest versions of SubtitleNEXT and Profuz LAPIS, and overall, turnout this year was greater than what we experienced last IBC. Our stand provided a front-row seat to explore how the transformative power of the AI-enabled Profuz LAPIS system can bridge the gap in workflow infrastructure. Attendees could see that LAPIS appeals to all company shapes and sizes, from small studio localisation departments right through to major broadcasters.” Ivanka Vassileva, CEO of Profuz Digital commented, “Many clients who came to view our subtitling software were also captivated by the LAPIS UI print screen on the stand and wanted to know more about it. We had interesting conversations about future investments, innovation, integration, ROI, efficiency, future security, and other trends. The latest AI capabilities impressed many visitors to the stand with comments suggesting our CTO Kamen Ferdinandov must be an ingenious gift to the industry sent from above to show us the vital importance of how a flawless workflow should work! It was clear to all who came to see us that the possibilities are inexhaustible and inspiring.“

“Workflows can be unnecessarily complicated, and our aim is to make it simple by helping our customers automate the heavy lifting, giving them plenty of creative time. Any organisation dealing with large amounts of digital media content, irrespective of its size or industry sector, can benefit from LAPIS as it optimises content workflows, enhances collaboration, maintains brand consistency, complies with copyright and licensing requirements, and delivers compelling media experiences to target audiences.” noted CTO Kamen Ferdinandov at Profuz Digital, “We have spent the last year fine-tuning Profuz LAPIS to make it more efficient than ever to increase productivity and lower costs. The interoperability factor within LAPIS gives it an advantage to operate seamlessly, even with the other systems in a company that have completely different tools. LAPIS can exchange and use media assets such as video, audio, images, and metadata without compatibility concerns getting in the way. The scalable architecture, ability to tightly integrate our software with existing workflows on-premise, in the cloud, or both, and the fact we are able to respond quickly to our client’s changing needs, makes investing in Profuz LAPIS an obvious strategic move towards “future-proofing” media assets and releasing the organisation’s full potential.”

Valued customer Monica Paolillo from IT Pros localisation studio in Italy was filmed on the Profuz Digital stand on the IBC show floor and spoke about localisation workflows and the role of AI with CEO of Profuz Digital Ivanka Vassileva. Watch the video here via YouTube to catch a glimpse of what Profuz Digital’s customers are saying (courtesy of Kit Plus News).
https://youtu.be/Ak1iTF4pV14?feature=shared

Profuz Digital returns to IBC in 2025 from 12-15 September in Amsterdam with evermore groundbreaking advancements to share. Stay in the conversation here www.profuzdigital.com


Find out more about SubtitleNEXT at www.SubtitleNEXT.com;
Find out more about Profuz LAPIS here www.ProfuzLAPIS.com;
More about NEXT-TT here https://subtitlenext.com/product-line/platform/

Profuz Digital unveils LAPIS Workflow Innovation Upgrades at NAB 2024

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Entire Media Lifecycle Management with AI workflows – from Planning to Archiving, from News Gathering to Social Media Publishing, from Pre-Production to Localization

For immediate release – 3 April 2024, Sofia, Bulgaria – Specialist systems integration developer Profuz Digital presents for the first time at NAB Show 2024 in Las Vegas from 13 – 17 April, the latest version of Profuz LAPIS – its powerful all-in-one digital media workflow asset management system.

Profuz LAPIS is a remarkable open, cloud-native, and versatile system that scales instantly to connect to other open technology and can be used as an advanced, dynamic content engine, providing archiving and database functionality within a company’s existing management business process infrastructure.

Adopted by many global organizations such as the likes of CANAL Plus and the Council of Europe, LAPIS provides businesses with a central, commanding console dashboard to search, review, interact and process media and data held across a wide range of local, remote and cloud-based storage systems. LAPIS users can organise and find content instantly, using the intuitive filter structure tailored to their specific requirements of this high-volume, high-pressure system. The open LAPIS software ensures companies can build future-proof workflow infrastructures that are capable of virtually unlimited expansion.

The Profuz LAPIS system can be used for every part of a company’s workflow, from content ingest and storage to advanced media searches and publishing. LAPIS uses advanced AI to further accelerate and streamline creative workflows by automatically updating and reassessing assets by integrating data into the content engine and avoiding manual processes.

At NAB2024, Profuz Digital’s senior software architect Boris Petrov will present the latest version of the Profuz LAPIS platform, which includes its stunning new AI capabilities such as semantic search features, advanced speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities, and much more. Profuz LAPIS is central to project management, distribution and archiving, and allows complex projects and processes to be reshuffled between media management and various editing environments that creative teams need to use. Boris Petrov will be available to engage with people at the show who are eager to find out how Profuz Digital’s latest technologies enhance quality and boost efficiency for broadcasters, production and post production professionals.

“Profuz LAPIS brings game-changing feature enhancements that further enriches the user experience. NAB provides the perfect space to showcase these exciting advancements, and we look forward to welcoming people to meet with me there to show them how our software can benefit them, now and in the future.” Boris Petrov, Profuz Digital’s senior software architect outlines.

“The personalized presentations I am holding at NAB will help to highlight how creative professionals can seamlessly work anywhere by accessing tools they can depend on. I’ll be sharing with those at the show, how LAPIS can make a fundamental difference to an organization, irrespective of size. I look forward to meeting up with technology partners, customers and many other professionals at NAB. There will be some exciting announcements throughout the event, including the official launch of our dedicated Profuz LAPIS website (www.profuzlapis.com) ”.

CEO of Profuz Digital Ivanka Vassileva adds, “We are passionate about providing leading-edge resources for both freelancers and companies of all sizes to help them navigate the dynamic mediascape, while armed with the best technology. Our goals are to continually refine AI capabilities in our media asset management system Profuz LAPIS by automatically classifying audiovisual content and texts to make searching ever more powerful. We continue to stay true to our user-focused approach in everything we do, and this is reflected in the upgrades we have made to the latest version of LAPIS that will feature at NAB this year. The latest developments provide a win-win situation for our customers as we further strengthen our technologies and services that we provide to the media localization industry.”

What’s New in Profuz LAPIS for NAB2024 – The latest version of Profuz LAPIS includes significant advancements in AI capabilities such as new semantic search. LAPIS boasts machine translation and transcription engines that integrate with Amazon, Whisper, Assembly AI, and others. Other upgrades include CG control through the Playlist and TV Channel Scheduling, image sequence support for video animation, parametrized events in the Playlist with customized properties, employees’ work shifts management and clock-in/clock-out with Geo location features, secure login with passkey, Geo location data and map support. Other features across its MAM, News Management and Project Management modules include AI capabilities for automatic speech-to-text and machine translation, advanced planning and scheduling capabilities, complex media assets, and audio and video chunks, storage capacity monitoring, the ability to publish content to social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn, weekly and monthly program templates, broadcasting channels’ time zone settings, subtitling and dubbing process management, news feed imports from external news agencies and much more. (Refer to a comprehensive list of new features here https://profuzlapis.com/downloads/)

Organisations using Profuz Digital’s technologies include London’s Wilco Media, Euro Media Group Belgium, Tarjama in the UAE, Polsat, Bulgarian National Television, Bulgarian National Radio, IT Pros Italy, Digitalmeister GmbH, Leinhäuser Language Services GmbH, University of Warsaw, Ghent and KU Leuven University in Belgium and others.

Profuz Digital is also the force behind bespoke software solutions and localization hybrid platforms SubtitleNEXT and NEXT-TT. The SubtitleNEXT platform is used for both offline and real-time captioning for all kinds of media formats, including storage, streaming, signals and protocols. Some of the many companies that have already adopted SubtitleNEXT include EMG, where SubtitleNEXT was used for the localization of well-known TV series such as Big Little Lies, Dexter: New Blood, including other HBO productions And Just Like That and Euphoria.

NEXT-TT is a hybrid software platform for managing timed-text, dubbing and localization services for all types of content. It includes functionality for managing translation teams, audiovisual professionals, creative freelancers, while providing users with powerful toolsets in a secure workspace enabling accelerated workflows with quality results.

Connect with Boris Petrov at NAB2024 via email or cell info@profuzdigital.com/+14067486727.

Visit www.nab.org for more information


Discover the power behind Profuz LAPIS here www.profuzlapis.com;
Find out more about SubtitleNEXT at www.SubtitleNEXT.com;
Explore the NEXT-TT platform further at https://subtitlenext.com/product-line/platform/

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. 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.

www.profuzdigital.com

Profuz Digital confirms TPN assessment for SubtitleNEXT and NEXT-TT localisation platforms

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For immediate release – 14 February 2024, Sofia, Bulgaria – Specialist systems integration developer Profuz Digital continues to meet high industry standards by attaining TPN assessment. As members of TPN, Profuz Digital completed the self-assessment process for both the company as a whole and its localisation subtitling platforms SubtitleNEXT and NEXT-TT. This proactive step demonstrates that Profuz Digital continues to prioritise customer content security in a dynamic industry.

CEO of Profuz Digital Ivanka Vassileva states, “We care about our customers and take security extremely seriously, especially when working in the creative and dynamic digital environment that we all enjoy working in. Although TPN participation is voluntary, we have always valued content security, and so we are pleased to confirm the completion of our TPN self-assessment process for our localisation platforms – SubtitleNEXT and NEXT-TT.”

SubtitleNEXT was designed to create real-time and prepared subtitling and captioning across all media formats. NEXT-TT is a powerful hybrid localisation platform formed by the integration of SubtitleNEXT with media asset management system Profuz LAPIS, giving operators the best of both worlds in order to work on the desktop and in the Cloud.

The Trusted Partner Network (TPN) is owned by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), and is a global initiative that helps create a culture that understands that security is a critical part of the supply chain and is everybody’s responsibility.

TPN plays a vital role in helping service providers prevent breaches of their customers’ TV shows and cinema productions prior to release dates. TPN helps raise security awareness and capabilities to reduce the number of security assessments that vendors have to go through for each film studio. This allows for studios to effectively use a trusted “one-stop shop” for security information.

Service providers are supported by TPN as a centralised source of content security preparedness with a means for securely providing self-reported, and third-party validated, security information with content owners, in order that they may make their own independent, risk-based decision with regard to vendor sourcing.

TPN is accelerating how service providers and software application companies of all sizes report their security status, both from a self-reporting and a third-party assessment basis. This approach helps to reduce duplication for security status reporting and tracking of cloud-based, software application workflows and on-site content security measures.

If existing and future customers are interested in reinforcing content security and if they are already TPN members themselves, they will automatically have access to Profuz Digital’s TPN security status.

“It is vital to be part of a growing digital industry community that is dedicated to raising security standards and we see this as a positive move. TPN updates MPA Best Practices to stay current with evolving industry trends and technology evolution which is a tremendous benefit to our customers.” Ivanka Vassileva concludes.

Organisations already adopting Profuz Digital’s technology include the likes of the Council of Europe, Canal Plus France and Myanmar, London’s Wilco Media, Euro Media Group Belgium, Tarjama in the UAE, Polsat, Bulgarian National Television, Bulgarian National Radio, IT Pros Italy, Digitalmeister GmbH, Leinhäuser Language Services GmbH, University of Warsaw, Ghent and KU Leuven University in Belgium and others.

Find out more about SubtitleNEXT at www.SubtitleNEXT.com;
More about NEXT-TT here https://subtitlenext.com/product-line/platform/

About TPN

Visit https://www.ttpn.org/

Bulgarian National Radio relies on Profuz LAPIS to manage mammoth Data Workflows

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For immediate release – 19 December 2023, Sofia, Bulgaria – The Bulgarian National Radio has significantly upgraded its infrastructure by investing in the Profuz LAPIS digital asset management system to help integrate its enormous data workflows. Profuz Digital’s customised scheduling module which utilises the LAPIS software was implemented across all of BNR’s national and regional centres, which includes the BNR’s world service Radio Bulgaria. Data at the BNR is now speedily exchanged and aligned in LAPIS, across the entire organisational infrastructure in Bulgaria, that also extends to its international outreach.

Established in 1935, the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) remains the largest public broadcaster in Bulgaria. It has two national channels, nine regional stations and a multilingual channel which broadcasts providing news in various languages ranging from Albanian, Romanian, English, French, German, Greek, Russian, Spanish, Serbian, and Turkish. The BNR is the only radio operator in the country that broadcasts in FM, AM and short, medium and long waves, including DAB. The BNR also maintains a valuable historical voice archive record of Bulgarian culture.

The BNR required a powerful platform that could handle colossal amounts of information and extensive news-related activities that mainly involves coordinating news reporters out on the field. The organisation specifically chose Profuz LAPIS for its unique ability to centralise complex data activities securely and efficiently across all the BNR’s stations, including online streaming sites, radio websites, sound media, channels and multiple emissions.

A major advantage of having LAPIS is that it is an open and agile system that sits comfortably within an existing infrastructure. LAPIS is designed to adapt and evolve according to the changing needs of the organisation. At the BNR, LAPIS interfaces with all of the organisation’s legacy systems including BNR’s existing digital audio production and playout platform. Within the BNR, all data exchanges and the entire news preparation process takes place within LAPIS, with legacy systems working alongside it for broadcast playout.

The open cloud-native LAPIS software ensures organisations can build future-proof workflow infrastructures that are capable of virtually unlimited expansion. LAPIS allows connectivity through APIs and protocols to various data sources such as RSS, News Feeds, third party MAMs, Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, plus others, and can be deployed on physical, virtual or cloud environments such as AWS.

 

“Bulgarian National Radio wanted us to help them unify all of their data handling and to unite all radio stations into using one single system. This way, they could also be kept aware of all the news that was being produced at any given time across all the departments.” Kamen Ferdinandov, CTO of Profuz Digital explains, “Our open LAPIS technology is versatile, and everything now runs in LAPIS at the BNR with all data and processes centralised seamlessly.”

“It was very important to the BNR that everyone working there could access and share relevant material and be kept informed about what everybody else was doing.” Kamen continues, “What LAPIS was able to achieve, was not available in alternative solutions. The LAPIS module was designed and specifically customised for the BNR to handle vast amounts of radio programming data in over eleven languages to serve both regional and world-wide audiences.”

Kamen further outlines, “LAPIS is tasked to efficiently manage ongoing dataflows of incoming news via internal and external feeds, and at the same time, ensure relevant personnel within the organisation have immediate real-time access to the appropriate feeds.”

“We presented our LAPIS system to the various departments at the BNR, highlighting how it can enhance and simplify their workflow in a radically time-efficient way, without affecting the quality of their work. The system was embraced across the board, and within a year we implemented LAPIS giving them flexibility as they started working with it, allowing it to evolve and offered alternative features if something needed fine tuning along the way,” affirms Ivanka Vassileva, CEO of Profuz Digital.

Profuz LAPIS provides flexibility as it allows client adjustments, which means that those using LAPIS at the BNR can modify the system as per their specific needs and unique vision. Our approach with the BNR is for them to embrace LAPIS and make it their own.”

It only takes up to an hour to get trained up in LAPIS as the system is user-friendly. Every person using LAPIS at the BNR has access to their own unique customised interface relevant to their specific role. “We designed the UI to suit all generations to adapt quickly to the technology across a large organisation such as the BNR.” Kamen notes, “Managers can also control and manage where necessary using LAPIS to ensure goals are met and high standards are maintained in the company.”

LAPIS is being used for every requirement across the organisation, and its appeal to the organisation is down to the fact that it is expandable, highly configurable and can implement what they see as the workflow that works best for them, as opposed to dictating a rigid workflow set in stone that might not suit them as many other systems do. LAPIS has enabled the BNR to now develop news material themselves and schedule programmes, news shows, radio schedules and emissions, all within LAPIS.

Other factors that attracted the BNR to adopting LAPIS included its reasonable pricing model and also the fact that Profuz Digital is a reputable Bulgarian company that the BNR can rely on, speak to in their own language and is locally available to help on site. It was key for Profuz Digital to fulfil the BNR’s requirements in every aspect, which included being sensitive to the organisation’s culture and adapting the system to meet these requirements.

Further benefits LAPIS brings to the BNR team is that it works with audio and can automatically transcribe audio files. It also has useful functions such as lightning-speed searching capabilities for material. In addition, it plays a vital role in subtitle creation, where legally required to meet mandatory European laws.

BNR employees can also access LAPIS directly via their mobile phones. Being one single powerful system, LAPIS not only deals with news management at the BNR, but also all the complexities within an organisation’s infrastructure. LAPIS is not only about data management, or traditional Media Asset Management, but also about detailed scheduling and planning that a major evolving radio broadcaster requires.

There have also been new developments in LAPIS regarding security compared to what a traditional MAM system that was built 20 years ago offers, for example. LAPIS is highly secure, and safeguards exterior threats and secures internal defences.

Upcoming AI advancements and future features are in the pipeline. They are not yet available but will include being able to automatically classify genres within texts, news categories, to help speed up manual processes. Another very useful future AI tool soon to be available in LAPIS will be advanced semantic search functionality which finds words and groups of words immediately. LAPIS AI will be able to be used for transcription based on AI image recognition, photos published and so forth.

There are lots of exciting plans in store regarding LAPIS, for example it already is being used for coordinating tasks and managing reporters out on the field. For example a journalist sent to a city to report on an event, will be able to tap in to LAPIS to source transport, equipment and all other logistics required. These can all be arranged using LAPIS to source and coordinate quickly. LAPIS with AI can later also be able to later do the following when and if required: internally as a ticketing system in future, particularly in areas such as resource management, planning, studios, microphones, searches with AI, advanced classification capabilities, assimilation, private data capture, access to Chat GPT functions, instant access to the internet, AI can help improve workflows, speed, data gathering, checking information and no need for laborious manual entry processes. LAPIS is able to advance all of these tasks very fast but still maintaining quality, standards and privacy of data.

AI can later be used within LAPIS to collate statistical information from data, text or images. Due to the open nature of LAPIS, separate AI software technologies and tools can be used in LAPIS.

“We look forward to a long-standing partnership with the BNR and we are proud to support them along the way. With our Profuz LAPIS scheduling tech being successfully received, we are pleased to see positive feedback from everyone using the system there. LAPIS guarantees a future-proof working environment that offers unlimited possibilities. The BNR can request at any time for us to add further options in LAPIS, expand options, and upgrade to AI capabilities when the time is right for them. It is a really exciting period, and the BNR is part of the adventure, as they enter another decade of incredible success ahead of them.” Ivanka says.

“Adopting Profuz LAPIS has been a crucial step in the major digital transformation process of the BNR. An immense volume of content is generated on a daily basis by our 2 national and 9 regional programs, along with 10 of Radio Bulgaria’s foreign language teams. In addition, our team of web editors create a considerable amount of material.” states Program Director of BNR Daniela Kusovska.

“Before we brought LAPIS on board, the vast array of data had become disparate and separated which made it difficult for the various BNR teams to access information and files efficiently. A majority of the content had therefore become inconspicuous and overlooked owing to the inadequate distribution of data flowing between broadcast and digital channels in the BNR system. Working with Profuz LAPIS is now playing a vital role in helping us to invigorate and revolutionise our work processes, particularly in relation to the entire planning, creation and distribution workflow of information. This is really important, not only for our own public mission, but also for professionally maintaining the resources at our disposal responsibly, which LAPIS will effortlessly help us to achieve.”

 

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.
www.profuzdigital.com
Discover the power behind Profuz LAPIS here www.profuzlapis.com;
Find out more about SubtitleNEXT at www.SubtitleNEXT.com;
Explore the NEXT-TT platform further at https://subtitlenext.com/product-line/platform/

About the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR)

The Bulgarian National Radio is Bulgaria’s national radio broadcasting organisation. It operates two national and nine regional channels, as well as an international service – Radio Bulgaria – which broadcasts in 11 languages. Public service broadcasting in Bulgaria, is financed mainly through a state subsidy. The subsidy has to be spent on the preparation, creation and the transmission of the national and regional programmes. Its volume is determined annually on the basis of the average programme production costs per hour approved by the Council of Ministers, regardless of the programme type

The BNR operates the following national, regional and international stations:

National

  • Horizont: BNR’s most listened-to channel, with round-the-clock news, comment, and music (with the emphasis on modern popular music genres).
  • Hristo Botev Radio: covering science and the arts, documentaries and discussions on cultural and social questions, drama, classical music, jazz, and programming for children.


Regional

  • Radio Blagoevgrad
  • Radio Burgas
  • Radio Kardzhali
  • Radio Plovdiv
  • Radio Shumen
  • Radio Sofia
  • Radio Stara Zagora
  • Radio Varna
  • Radio Vidin


International – Radio Bulgaria provides news in Bulgarian and also in Albanian, Romanian, English, French, German, Greek, Russian, Spanish, Serbian and Turkish.

www.bnr.bg/

How the Council of Europe is embracing the future using new agile AI-enabled digital management toolbox

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The Council of Europe recently invested in what they claim is no ordinary run-of-the-mill digital asset management system. The powerful platform is called Profuz LAPIS, developed by specialist systems integrator Profuz Digital.

The Council chose Profuz LAPIS for every part of the workflow, from content ingest and storage to advanced media searches. It’s used for extensive archiving and interactive database support and can streamline workflows in the Cloud with LAPIS, allowing numerous speaker session recordings in several languages, at various resolutions in real-time. Public access of information at the Council is allowed through LAPIS, which includes parliamentary sessions where MP’s speeches are recorded for example. Video file content is regularly 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.

The Council’s head of innovation, Alain Mielle, along with technology partner Audry Sales from French Value-Added Reseller SAV were recently at Europe’s largest broadcast trade event IBC in Amsterdam to discuss this agile technology at the Profuz Digital stand.

Overview of how challenges were solved

From the outset, Alain Mielle was looking for a digital asset management system that would be “future-ready” and be able to support their European customers including being able to accommodate the media and professional journalists and reporters.

The Council has thousands of hours’ worth of data and footage of recorded meetings, sessions, events that date all the way back from 1949. The idea was to find an easy-to-use solution that allowed the team at the Council to be able to add features as they went along, day to day or month to month as they worked on various projects.

Alain said he did a call to tender, and that’s when he was introduced to the Profuz LAPIS system through Profuz Digital’s technology partner SAV – a French Value-Added Reseller. He went on to describe LAPIS as not just an ordinary asset management solution, but as a useful toolbox in effect. Alain said the response he received from SAV won him over because he knew this system could truly deliver what he wanted, and it was future-proof. Alain felt that particularly with respect to AI, the LAPIS technology was the most powerful choice as it would be able deliver features such as Speech to Text, AI Translation, Face Recognition and many other upcoming AI features that would help reduce costs thereby cutting down on unnecessary time-consuming processes as well.

Alain said the system was really good and he’s has been using LAPIS now for 2 years. After receiving user feedback, modifications in certain areas have been made and refined, step by step to further enhance the system to suit the Council’s specific requirements.

What was so unique about this system?

Alain confirmed that the key advantage of having LAPIS at the Council of Europe is that it is really straightforward to manage. The interface is easy to navigate making searching effortless. In addition, the editing process has been simplified, making it efficient and painless – for example when a journalists interviews a member of parliament, Profuz LAPIS allows them to access that footage which can then be edited using LAPIS, then cut and promptly downloaded, ready to be instantly shared across social media networks without delay.

Another point to note he said is that all the intelligence behind the workflow such as calendars, voice recognition features and so forth are really the beginning of their AI services and it’s a good starting point from which to expand on to further in this area within LAPIS.

How they all got together in the first place

Alain worked closely together with tech partner SAV to implement LAPIS. From the point of implementation to delivery, it took a year, and it was a great success.

Value Added Reseller and technology partner of Profuz Digital Audry Sales at SAV explained what happened from the very first call he received from Alain. Audry said it was an advantage that Profuz LAPIS is actually an innovative toolbox effectively with many useful tools. Furthermore, it allows room for many new tools to be added later on and modified as and when required.

So when Audry went to see Alain and understood Alain’s requirements, he knew that the LAPIS system was perfect for him. Notably regarding AI, LAPIS would provide him with the flexibility and added benefit of being able to put different tools together to fit his requirements. Alain was very impressed by the sheer power of LAPIS and the fact it could move things around and offer versatility on a vast scale.

Audry said that when he won the tender, he made sure from the start that the LAPIS engineering team and Alain were in constant communication with one another throughout the process which established a solid communication link between us all. Profuz Digital developed and customised the LAPIS solution along with SAV’s vital input to make sure that integration took place successfully. “Everything went so smoothly, the solution is on air being used at the Council right now, and everyone is happy, and we’ve done training.” Audry noted.

Audry said it is important for the system to grasped fairly quickly by both AV and non-AV professionals alike. The trick is that in LAPIS, the complexity is hidden, and that the visible user interface is designed to be “user-friendly” and easy to navigate. A bit like a car, Audry remarked, that if you’re driving a sports car, you don’t want to see how the engine works, you literally just want to be able to drive it with ease and make it perform at its best.

“Our relationship with Alain at the Council and with Profuz Digital is strong and we will continue working together going forward for the long-term, the link between the Value-Added Reseller and the editor using LAPIS is very important and it is essential to maintain high levels of communication between ourselves so that nothing is missed and to make sure everything happens.” Audry confirmed.

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. 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 including AI.

Head of Innovation at the Council of Europe Alain Mielle said, “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.”

Alain added, “The LAPIS 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… 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.”

Organisations already adopting Profuz Digital’s technology include the likes of the Council of Europe, Canal Plus France and Myanmar, London’s Wilco Media, Euro Media Group Belgium, Tarjama in the UAE, Polsat, Bulgarian National Television, Bulgarian National Radio, IT Pros Italy, Digitalmeister GmbH, Leinhäuser Language Services GmbH, University of Warsaw, Ghent and KU Leuven University in Belgium and others. Further information can be found at Profuz Digital’s website here www.profuzdigital.com

Profuz Digital features Cloud and Hybrid Media Workflows at IBC 2023

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The Complete Media Lifecycle Management with AI workflows – from Planning to Archiving, from News Gathering to Social Media Publishing, from Pre-Production to Localisation at Stand 8.A03


15 – 18 September 2023 – Stand 8.A03 – IBC – RAI Amsterdam Convention Centre

For immediate release – 24 July 2023, Sofia, Bulgaria – Profuz Digital, the specialist systems integration developer behind bespoke software solutions SubtitleNEXT, NEXT-TT and Profuz LAPIS platforms, will underline how these latest technologies boost quality and efficiency for broadcasters, production and post production at IBC 2023 (Amsterdam RAI, 15-18 September, stand 8.A03). Demonstrations will highlight how creative professionals can seamlessly work anywhere by accessing tools they rely on.


New for IBC2023 in Profuz LAPIS

The ability to use media asset management system Profuz LAPIS is central to project management, distribution and archiving, and allows complex projects and processes to be reshuffled as required between media management and various editing environments that creative teams need to use at the time. Recently adopted by the Council of Europe, Profuz LAPIS provides a central, powerful dashboard from which to search, review, interact and process media and data which is held across a wide range of local, remote and cloud-based storage systems.

LAPIS allows connectivity through APIs and protocols to various data sources such as RSS, News Feeds, third party MAMs, Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, plus others, and can be deployed on physical, virtual or cloud environments such as AWS. Adding such an efficient single and system-agnostic interface for both existing and future storage infrastructures and data sources, ensures an all-embracing comprehensive management approach of media and data, while maintaining user-interface consistency, which leads to improved accuracy and reduced user burden.

As Profuz LAPIS is an open, cloud-native system, that can scale instantly and connect to any other open technology, it makes it a practical platform to integrate with other existing systems and can be used as an advanced, dynamic content engine, providing archiving and database functionality within a company’s existing management business process infrastructure. Users of LAPIS can organise and find content instantly, using an intuitive filter structure tailored to the very specific requirements of this high-volume, high-pressure system. LAPIS includes extensive permissions architecture, involving workgroups, to ensure users see only assets relevant to them, and eliminates the risk of unapproved content being published within an organisation.

The LAPIS system can be used for every part of the workflow, from content ingest and storage to advanced media searches. It uses AI to further accelerate creative workflows and ensures that the user experience is always tuned to expectations, even at the very large scale involved. It streamlines workflows by automatically updating and reassessing assets, seamless integrating data into the content engine and avoiding manual processes.

The LAPIS system is a native web application, which means qualified users can interact with data and archives from any location. The open LAPIS software ensures companies can build future-proof workflow infrastructures that are capable of virtually unlimited expansion.

The latest enhancements in Profuz LAPIS across it’s MAM, News Management and Project Management modules for IBC2023 include upgraded AI capabilities for automatic speech-to-text and machine translation, advanced planning and scheduling capabilities, complex media assets, and audio and video chunks. Other features include storage capacity monitoring, the ability to publish content to social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn, weekly and monthly program templates, channels’ time zone settings, subtitling and dubbing process management, news feed imports from external news agencies and much more. (Refer to a comprehensive list of new features here https://profuzlapis.com/downloads/)


New for IBC2023 in SubtitleNEXT

Designed to create real-time and prepared subtitling and captioning across all media formats, version 5.12 of Profuz Digital’s SubtitleNEXT introduces a range of enhancements to support text in all directions including vertical subtitle writing for East Asian languages.

Available in both desktop and cloud environments, SubtitleNEXT supports writing text in all directions (from right to left, left to right, top to bottom, and bottom to top) in all languages. It also introduces emphasis (boutens) and rubies which are used in Japanese and other East Asian languages. The new version enables import and export of subtitles with the above features in the traditionally used formats such as LambdaCap, as well as in TTML, WebVTT and SRT. Other new features include the ability to export subtitling error lists in CSV files and adds more error checks for teletext and closed captions.

SubtitleNEXT version 5.12 will be demonstrated at the Profuz Digital stand, together with other subtitling modules for broadcasters. These include the SubtitleNEXT Live Manager for live collaborative work; the SubtitleNEXT Central automation of subtitles – airing in multiple languages and formats; and the SubtitleNEXT DVB Muxer for multiplexing subtitles with video.


New for IBC2023 in NEXT-TT

SubtitleNEXT, when combined with business management system Profuz LAPIS, transforms into the powerful hybrid localisation platform NEXT-TT, giving operators the best of both worlds – to work on the desktop and Cloud environments. New features in SubtitleNEXT have been made available to all SubtitleNEXT users of both the desktop and SubtitleNEXT LAPIS versions, used in conjunction with the NEXT-TT hybrid platform. NEXT-TT also boasts a new “tree view” of projects, tasks and other folders, including advanced filtering upgrades and customised filters, enhanced layout, customised filters, quick searches and more.

Ivanka Vassileva, CEO of Profuz Digital confirms, “We are passionate about providing leading-edge resources for both freelancers and organisations of all sizes to help them navigate the complex mediascape, while armed with the best technology. Our goals are to continually refine AI capabilities in our media asset management system Profuz LAPIS by automatically transcribing recordings to provide full-text metadata, which will make searching ever more powerful. Our team is also looking at using AI in other ways across SubtitleNEXT and NEXT-TT, to give customers further control. SubtitleNEXT’s new version brings game-changing feature enhancements that further enriches the

user experience. IBC provides the perfect space to showcase these exciting advancements, and we look forward to welcoming people to our stand to show them how our software can benefit them, now and in the future.”

Several high-profile organisations have adopted SubtitleNEXT and NEXT-TT’s technology including many universities. Some of the organisations that are using Profuz Digital’s technology include Council of Europe, London’s 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, Bulgarian National Radio, Canal Plus France and Myanmar, AMC, HD Media, KU Leuven University in 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 others.

See Profuz Digital on stand 8.A03 at IBC2023. For more information on Profuz Digital’s solutions, visit https://profuzdigital.com/ibc-2023-demo-request/ to get in touch or to book a meeting/demo.

For more information about IBC, go to www.ibc.org


Discover the power behind Profuz LAPIS here www.profuzlapis.com;
Find out more about SubtitleNEXT at www.SubtitleNEXT.com;
Explore the NEXT-TT platform further at https://subtitlenext.com/product-line/platform/

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. 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.

www.profuzdigital.com

Council of Europe fully embraces the Profuz LAPIS Digital Asset Media platform, boosting Workflows for real time Data and vast Archive Management

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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