Avid Unveils Interplay Central—Next-Generation Workflow Tools for Media Creation, Distribution and Management

NAB (Booth #SU902), LAS VEGAS, Avid® (NASDAQ: AVID) today announced Interplay® Central—a revolutionary offering that demonstrates Avid’s Integrated Media Enterprise in action, enabling businesses to dramatically improve processes, increase revenues, and compete more effectively. Designed to accommodate a wide array of workflows, Interplay Central delivers next-generation workflow tools for on-the-go media professionals through both web- and mobile-based apps. With an open user-interface, Interplay Central allows individuals in different media production functions to access the tools they need to complete tasks with greater visibility to assets, team collaboration, and workflow agility. First available to users through both a lightweight, intuitive web-based portal and a mobile app, Interplay Central represents the latest evolution of Avid’s Interplay family of solutions.

“Customers across nearly every media discipline have been telling us about the challenges they face, producing hundreds of thousands of hours of content every year, requiring functional specialists and an assortment of dedicated applications to get the job done. This has added significant complexity and inefficiency to our customers’ business operations,” said Gary Greenfield, chairman and CEO at Avid. “Interplay Central is a groundbreaking way to replace dedicated, monolithic applications with open, flexible workflows. Now, virtually anyone involved in the content creation, management and distribution process can work from any location and use toolsets tailored to the tasks they need to perform. This is a paradigm shift for our industry, and one that will enable businesses to improve their productivity, agility, and operational efficiency.”
Role-Based Entry Points to the World of Mobile Media Creation

Building upon and extending the family of Interplay asset management solutions, Interplay Central serves as a window into an organization’s content creation, management and distribution infrastructure and will first be available to users in both a lightweight, intuitive, web-based portal, as well as an app for mobile devices. Using a laptop or desktop computer connected to the web, a range of staff members—including executive producers, technical directors, editors, graphic artists, loggers, writers, reporters, web producers and more—can sign into the Interplay Central portal and access self-contained persona “panes” that are designed for tasks associated with different parts of the media production process. The Interplay Central Mobile app will empower users to browse, create and edit content directly from anywhere even when users are offline or out of network range. Content changes made by users who are working with Interplay Central Mobile in offline mode will be reflected in projects as soon as they have regained network connectivity.

The result is two next-generation workflow tools that deliver superior efficiency in the media creation and production value chain by making the back end invisible to deadline-driven users, allowing them to focus on completing their work with greater speed rather than worrying about the underlying technology. Individuals and teams who use these apps will experience:

Access to a variety of role-based toolsets from any location. Team members who have responsibility for completing specific media creation, production and management tasks are no longer required to use standalone systems or products that are only available in a designated facility. With Interplay Central users can work the way they want to work, accomplishing a range of tasks remotely. In addition, because Interplay Central provides role-based tools for multiple users, individuals who focus on multiple responsibilities can use different toolsets right within the app instead of having to launch a multitude of disparate, standalone products.
Unparalleled flexibility. By reducing dependencies on isolated software applications that were designed for an earlier era of narrowly defined roles and responsibilities, Interplay Central provides one common entry point for all users, greatly streamlining requirements for highly specialized IT infrastructures.
Unprecedented collaborative capabilities. With support for a range of media personas and toolsets, individual contributors working on different parts of a project can interact with one another faster and more directly—right within Interplay Central. This real-time collaboration provides more fluid workflows, increased user adoption, and more effective teaming through use of a single app, reducing the time it takes to complete projects that involve multiple interdependent touch points and contributors with different responsibilities.

Availability

The first version of Interplay Central is planned for release in Q2 2011, and will deliver story-centric workflow capabilities to news organizations of any size ( announced today in a separate release). For more information about Interplay Central, visit www.avid.com.
About Avid

Avid creates the digital audio and video technology used to make the most listened to, most watched and most loved media in the world—from the most prestigious and award-winning feature films, music recordings, television shows, live concert tours and news broadcasts, to music and movies made at home. Some of Avid’s most influential and pioneering solutions include Media Composer®, Pro Tools®, Interplay, ISIS®, VENUE, Oxygen 8, Sibelius®, System 5, and Pinnacle Studio™. For more information about Avid solutions and services, visit www.avid.com, del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube; connect with Avid on Facebook; or subscribe to Avid Industry Buzz.