Video has become one of the preferred ways of consuming news media and in many countries, like in Asia and in America, the preference betwen video and text is now equally split while in Europe there is still a slight preference for reading text.

Different reasons have contributed to the rise of video:

• Mobile is the preferred news consumption device and reading on mobile can be tough on small screens
• Cellular network speeds have improved
• Ubiquitous wi-fi access
• Upcoming 5G services

All of the above have made high quality/long video possible. Likewise, audio only content has also grown in popularity.

Undeniably the efforts of a newsroom need to significantly focus on video contributions:

• Create original video content
• Publish live streaming channels
• Create engaging stories that can be accessed either by users that prefer reading and users that favour playing a video – or both.

Video handling needs to be fast and easy (yes, sounds obvious but it’s true). Videos are a crucial component of breaking news nowadays, handling video cannot slow down the publishing process.

Atex Desk, our multi-channel content management system for Newsrooms, offers video management functionality by integrating the video platforms of choice for our customers. However, we also wanted to offer a fully integrated and shrink-wrapped solution that could cover the end to end workflows, from video ingestion to video delivery in our own frontend platform, ACE.

So, we set on a course to find the right partner. Our requirements were clear, in order of importance:

1. Quality of delivery. 2019 has been the year that has seen the incredible growth of a social network purely based on video, TikTok. The engaging feature of TikTok is the “flow”, it is so easy and fast to flip among videos that fluidly play, a mesmerizing effect that “captures” the user. Being able to play uninterrupted video at a high quality, with no hiccups and lag was the basic requirement.
2. Worldwide coverage. Newsrooms worldwide are using Atex solutions, we needed a product for the global market, that could deliver the same quality in Europe and in Asia.
3. Live and On-Demand. Most of our customers have a TV Studio or are building one, we needed a solution that could support organisations with a Newsroom and a Studio.
4. Any length. Publishers are building TV Studios to focus on longer form linear commissions, aimed at online streaming services and cable TV.
5. Rich set of APIs. Our users need a solution that is easy and natural to use. We needed a partner that we could completely integrate in our tools.

Long story short, we found the perfect partner in MainStreaming.

MainStreaming® is an intelligent media delivery company that empowers media, enterprises and gaming companies to ensure the best Quality of Experience to their audience, through its revolutionary AI-powered technology. It levels up the viewing experience with its Intelligent Media Deliver Platform (iMDP), the first platform designed to guarantee full governance over the video streaming process, the highest Quality of Service and the best Return on Investment.

How is it integrated? Desk users do not have to learn new tools in order to start using videos. A video can be managed in Desk just like a picture: just drag&drop the video into Desk, set its metadata, optionally make it go through a workflow and then just drop into a story or directly into a website home page. When an article is ready, just publish and in seconds will be available to readers.

Behind the scenes, on-demand videos uploaded in Desk (either manually or through an automated import process) are immediately sent to the MainStreaming cloud where they are processed and optmised for the various devices. Video files are not stored in Desk, only in the MainStreaming cloud, and are referenced in Desk through proxy objects, that users can search, drop into stories, enrich with metadata as if they were “regular” Desk elements.

Atex and MainStreaming launched the partnership in mid-2020 and there are already several newsrooms that have selected us for their video projects. Please contact us if you want to know more or click the MainStreming logo below to visit the MainStreaming web site.