As industries expand in depth and complexity, new challenges appear, and thus new solutions are necessary. Broadcasters and audio professionals, like other sectors, can profit greatly from novel approaches and taking advantage of solutions that were designed with their newest needs in mind – like reducing logistical problems, adapting to changing workflows and the ever-present issue of compatibility. Among available solutions, Ferncast’s installable software solution aixtream was envisioned from the ground up to tackle these challenges, while staying adaptable for the challenges of the future.
How can aixtream help the contemporary challenges of broadcasters and audio professionals?
Saving Power and Rack Space
Space is always at a premium, especially when talking about electronic devices, which also require power and maintenance. Combining multiple other devices into one device that requires less total space, power and maintenance is a win for the bottom line and the peace of mind of the employees.
aixtream’s flexibility in use and scalability of operation achieves exactly that. The various ways how aixtream can be used as one installation to tackle many different tasks and since the users are not bound to specific hardware setups, they can scale the underlying hardware to their requirements. Customers can take exactly the hardware platform that best fits their use case.
Migration to Software with Operational Workflow Changes
In the past, updating operational workflows and technologies to meet the rising demands of the consumer was next to impossible to do on-the-fly. In the field of on-demand content expectations are growing constantly as people’s expectations shift towards on-demand content. In regular online audio streaming consumers also are expecting ever higher quality, better coverage, and convenience of access.
Furthermore, not just the expectations of end consumers are changing, but also those of users and operators. In an age of rapid software development, everyone expects intuitive user interfaces and customizable applications.
A great downside of conventional package solutions then is that they are only a snapshot of what was modern at the time of their development. However, aixtream is a living software solution that is constantly being improved. With every release the user interface is refined, and new features are added. This constant development also makes it easy to realize customer wishes after their initial purchase. When you have a software solution that has been kept up to date over the years, you do not need to buy a whole new system every few years.
Interoperability for Cost Savings
Even when operators can minimize the number of different vendors and individual hardware pieces they require in their setup, their system must still be compatible the systems used by other sections, partners, and their customers. Accordingly, a large focus of aixtream is the compatibility with other systems that may be used in an audio broadcasting and streaming workflow. Protocols are implemented in standards-compliant but also flexible ways, ensuring that aixtream can work with both standard and custom implementations of the same protocols. In the field of web streaming (OTT) specifically, much effort was invested in making aixtream comply with leading CDNs like Akamai and nacamar and it was certified as a premier platform for web streaming by both providers.
Article published by RedTech News on the 6th of December 2021 in their special edition The Solutioneers.
Download it here for free: https://www.redtech.pro/RedTechSolutioneers.html
