Evertz Microsystems is a leading global manufacturer of broadcast equipment and solutions that deliver content to television sets, on-demand services, WebTV, IPTV, and mobile devices (like phones and tablets). Evertz has expertise in delivering complete end-to-end broadcast solutions for all aspects of broadcast production including content creation, content distribution and content delivery. Mediator-X is the latest generation of the Evertz media asset management system. inSITE is the Evertz graphical workflow designer and engine that integrates with Mediator-X to provide a unified solution.

ARCHITECTURE: Mediator-X can support a “multiple Availability Zone (AZ) architecture” and leverage its clustered core architecture to deliver “superior availability by distributing nodes within different AZs”. Some processing nodes can be kept on-premises. Mediator-X uses modern clustered database (transactional and analytical data handed by separate DB engines) and messaging services. Operation, configuration and engineering UIs are all web browser based.

INTEGRATION: Comprehensive integrations are enabled through an extensive web services based API. Evertz supports a Mediator API Developer community. Mediator-X integrates with baseband and file-based systems. No list of integrations seems to be published - hence the lower score here. There is no mention of an easy plugin approach, nor of scripted integration be supported. No mention of real-time resource monitoring.

AUTOMATION: The Mediator-X platform provides a graphical workflow design tool, managing at the component level. Evertz offers workflow packs - templated workflows ready to use. Workflow execution can be prioritised by "on-air" or “TBD” order. The design tool looks messy. There is no mention of real-time graphical workflow monitoring, nor support of user written scripts.

METADATA: While the introduction text to Media-X on the website says it has “Structured and rich technical and business metadata is fully indexed and searchable.”, there is surprisingly no further information on the breadth, depth, or tools that the solution has for metadata management. No mention of a metadata design tool, nor metadata types supported. It does mention that the system supports concepts such as componentized global assets and virtual assets.

USER EXPERIENCE: The Mediator-X UIs seem to adopt a modern style and are not too cluttered. As many Evertz solutions are built from multiple products, not just Mediator-X, there is a varied experience. There is no mention of UI configurability.

ANALYTICS: Evertz inSITE provides “Big Data Analytics” in the form of “real time centralized operational intelligence, aggregating data from all machine data points in a workflow, regardless of device type”. inSITE utilizes industry standard, open source BDA tools; Elastic, Logstash and Kibana (ELK Stack) to receive, store and visualize data, while combining these tools with a purpose built, web-based deployment and management system.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Evertz inSITE has built-in “enhanced data & machine learning” capability to perform “scenario” and “pattern” matching fault prediction. No mention is made of integration to third party AI video indexing services though.