axle ai, an industry-leading developer of software that makes video searchable, has announced a new Pro option for its axle ai 2020 software that supports Avid’s Media Composer professional editing software. With the new axle ai 2020 Pro module, Avid editors now have the powerful new capability of accessing both native Avid media and a wide range of other media remotely, through any standard web browser. This type of collaborative workflow has rapidly taken over from traditional in-person editing workplaces since the advent of COVID-19, and is likely to remain a fixture in the industry moving forward. Axle ai 2020 already provides workflows for Adobe’s Premiere Pro CC application and Apple’s Final Cut Pro X.
In addition to cataloging and natively representing the Op-Atom media, axle ai 2020 Pro also includes the capability to export AAF sequence files to the Media Composer editor, so that collections of subclips from within axle ai can be directly placed on the Media Composer timeline. In addition, the software creates low-resolution H.264 proxies of MXF Op-Atom media which can then be processed by a range of available AI analysis engines supported in axle ai 2020, including axle’s own axle Speech cloud service and third party AI services such as Microsoft’s Video Indexer (for face recognition, object recognition and onscreen character recognition) and Speechmatics’ transcription engine.
Sam Bogoch, CEO of axle ai, said “It has always been our mission to bring the power of remote video search, collaboration and transcription to an ever-wider group of creative teams. Avid’s Media Composer software is a flagship solution used broadly by top editors in Hollywood as well as the wider broadcast industry. We’re delighted to introduce support for this application and its file formats and workflows” The software works with Avid’s Nexis shared storage systems as well as with a wide range of third party NAS and SAN storage. It also includes integrated upload and download capabilities for moving large media files to and from remote locations.
Axle ai’s systems have been installed at over 600 postproduction teams worldwide, including at dozens of prominent national and regional broadcasters. Gerry Field, Vice President of technology at American Public Television, said “axle made it possible to get a system appropriately scaled for what we need, and for the resources that we have. The two equal parts are cost and complexity. There are a lot of asset management products in the market that, particularly for my needs, are tremendously overbuilt. We needed something that could be installed easily and give us access, quickly, to the content that we need to see.” I was able to get it spun up and operational inside of three days and get axle ai into the adoption cycle.”
A recent article highlighted APT’s remote workflows: www.tinyurl.com/aptcovid. Axle ai is also hosting a panel discussion on “Remote video workflows under COVID – what’s working and what isn’t” together with its cloud storage partner Backblaze on Thursday, June 18th at 1PM ET – register at http://www.tinyurl.com/axleaibb.
Gerry Field will be joined by Scott Salik of Youngevity (both teams use axle ai and Backblaze) to discuss their strategies and toolsets for adapting to remote work. Finally, investment in axle ai is now available to individual investors via Republic; http://republic.co/axle-ai.
Pricing and Availability
The axle ai 2020 Pro solution is available from $4,750 for two users including one year of remote access and software updates. The software is available to run on either MacOS or Linux servers; the Linux version can also be run as a virtual machine in a Windows Server environment. In addition, one free hour of axle Speech transcription is included and additional hours can be purchased in blocks of 10 hours ($19.00) and 100 hours ($170.00). Subscription Interfaces to Microsoft Video Indexer AI-based tagging and Speechmatics transcription engines are available at additional cost.
About axle.ai
axle ai (http://www.axle.ai) is the recognized leader in developing radically simple media management software. It solutions have helped over 600 media organizations improve the way they create, share and store digital video content with media management solutions that are easy to install, use and afford. axle’s radically simple media management uniquely addresses a burgeoning need and has caught on rapidly among video professionals in post-production, education, broadcast, corporate, sports, house of worship, non-profit, advertising-marketing, and government organizations worldwide. At its introduction, axle’s software was recognized with the IBC 2012 Best of Show award and at NAB 2013 with the prestigious DV Magazine Black Diamond and Post Picks awards. axle ai’s recently introduced connectr™ software offers a powerful tool for scripting media workflows, driven by a graphical front end with connect-the-blocks visualization. axle ai, Inc. is a privately held company; its founders have extensive industry experience in media asset management for creative applications. Investors include Jason Calacanis’s LAUNCH accelerator (also a customer) and Quake Capital. The company is also open to individual investors via equity crowdfunding on Republic at http://republic.co/axle-ai. Learn more at http://www.axle.ai.
