IPV has been a pioneer in media asset management. Their flagship product is the IPV Curator, which primarily focuses on the production and post product stages of the media supply chain. IPV target Broadcast, Sports, Creative Agencies and Houses of Worship markets. Version 2.1.1 of the Curator software was launched a few months before NAB, showing some significant investment in key areas such as user experience, Adobe Premiere panel functionality, and a new analytics dashboard.

ARCHITECTURE: Curator can be deployed on the cloud, on-premise or hybrid. A model of hi-res files kept on-premise and proxies in the cloud is promoted, with Process Engine Agents installed on-site to enable control from cloud services of on-premise tools. This is a lightweight process service that manages metadata extraction, file movement, and permission. No mention of underlying technologies.

INTEGRATION: IPV has a wide range of technology integration across the media supply chain, including Myers ProTrack for scheduling, FileCatalyst for accelerated file transfer, Adobe Premiere panel for editing (including captions editable in both Curator Logger and Premiere), and Pebble Beach Marina for linear automated playout. It can also control SDI baseband equipment for ingest. IPV support both a plugin and scripting approach, and monitor resources in real-time using their Device Director service.

AUTOMATION: While IPV promotes itself as the pioneer of file-based proxy workflows, Curator appears not to have a graphical workflow engine, nor even workflow configuration tools. All workflows seem to need to be developed by IPV developers to meet each customer’s specific requirements.

METADATA: Curator Logger is a comprehensive temporal metadata entry and review tool. A tab is provided for presenting all previous logged events and filter by type. Another tag presents tables of logging types (Content, Compliance, Edit Notes, Caption etc). Curator Logger applies controlled vocabularies, that includes but is not limited to a partnership with Adlib software. Captions are also fully supported on the player and can be modified. Integrations with AI for metadata creation was released and demonstrated at NAB in April. A new thesaurus feature has just been added. No mention of a metadata design tool.

USER EXPERIENCE: Curator has a good focus on fresher and slicker UX with modern style, including new styling and icons, ability to customise columns, and clearer presentation of clipmarks. The player speed in the Curator UI can be controlled to provide forward and reverse slow mo or accelerated play, with intuitive keyboard shortcuts.

ANALYTICS: An Analytics functionality module provides easy access to data on asset usage to “improve processes, reduce costs and increase output”. In addition to table in the Curator Logger UI, metadata can be displayed using open source dashboards (Microsoft Power Bi used in the demos). Analytics focus not on what the human and machine resources have been doing, but on what has been logged. So charts on the number of a particular sporting event that may have occurred can be built etc.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Curator integrates with Azure Media Services to provide intelligent automation of subtitles generation subtitles, facial detection etc. It includes feature to help users sort through AI-generated data, displaying important information like provenance and predicted accuracy.