WDR mediagroup: Powering complex digital media workflows

• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Middleware, SDKs & Libraries

• Discrete Manufacturing
• Product Research & Development

• Track & Trace of Assets
• Process Control & Optimization

• System Integration
• Software Design & Engineering Services

WDR mediagroup (WDRmg), one of the largest integrated media service providers in Germany, needed an efficient way to manage its complex workflows for processing content from multiple file formats for content digitizing, archiving and delivery, as well as marketing and advertising services. Serving as the media arm for German public broadcasting institution WDR, WDRmg also digitizes historical programming – often originating in outdated formats – from WDR’s 40-plus year broadcasting history to prepare it for streaming services. WDRmg sought a high-performance transfer and automation solution that could swiftly manage high-volume processing workflows while maintaining a high level of security, reliability, and ease of use.

WDR mediagroup (WDRmg) is a Germany-based enterprise that offers media services, including program marketing and advertising for radio, tv, and online, in addition to providing digitization, digital archiving, and other technical services. WDRmg is the commercial subsidiary of the West German Broadcasting Corporation (WDR) in Cologne. As an innovative service provider for media content, it offers 360-degree marketing and sales of high-quality WDR programmes and supplies of other partners via all distribution channels and platforms. In addition to its core business, which is the marketing of advertising time, its versatile service portfolio covers the entire digital value-added chain: WDRmg digitalizes and archives media content, sets up an infrastructure for their further commercial exploitation and is finally responsible for marketing and sales.

WDRmg selected Aspera’s web-based automation platform, Aspera Orchestrator, to streamline complex workflows and help ensure accuracy of each processing step throughout the pipeline. By placing Aspera Orchestrator at the center of its workflow management system, WDRmg was able to integrate an array of existing subsystems with highly efficient, predictable file processing and delivery pipelines to give it complete control and transparency of the process. WDRmg ingests material from customers quickly and securely via high-speed Aspera transfer, completes processing and transcoding into required formats and distributes the resulting content to a variety of online streaming services. As part of this integrated end-to-end workflow, completed projects are automatically archived by IBM Archive and Essence Manager (AREMA), a multi-format media management and archive application. The addition of Aspera faspex provides WDRmg users with an intuitive, high-performance solution to collaborate, share and deliver large files company wide. Additionally, Aspera Console offers full transparency and accountability along the entire process chain with real-time notification, logging and reporting capabilities.

• Fast transfers: With Aspera, WDRmg receives, processes, and distributes large media files around the world at maximum speed, regardless of file size, transfer distance or network conditions.
• Reliability: Automatic resume for partial transfers and retry for failed transfers help ensure media files are delivered dependably.
• Scalability: Orchestrator scales fluidly and reliably to accommodate fluctuations in demand.

• WDRmg can now process and upload approximately 80 percent more video content to video streaming platforms for its customers.
• These performance and efficiency improvements enable WDRmg to significantly expand its capacity to supply high-quality content to 15 leading video-on-demand platforms, which exposes the content to a much wider audience.