With the large amount of audio and video content in typical broadcast facilities of today, it is becoming more and more difficult to access and track these valuable assets as they move from one digital storage system to another. This broadcast quality (high bitrate) digital content is cumbersome to access, view, and manipulate unless you have access to high-cost editing and video server systems.

As part of Masstech Group's asset access initiative, we have produced a family of asset virtualization tools all based around giving users effective access to the content regardless of where they might be.

At the core of this virtualization initiative is MassStore™, which acts as a central consolidation point for the assets and their associated metadata. Through the use of MassTrans-it, low-bitrate, frame-accurate versions of the content are made available through the MassStore™ Web interface for QA and for content spot checking.

Extending this content to fully utilize these Low-Res versions of the assets, MassBrowse provides a "cut edit" and "content preparation" tool which can be used to manipulate assets via any TCP/IP connection without the need for traditional expensive equipment and costly dedicated bandwidth. These low-resolution proxy versions are direct, frame-accurate representations of the original broadcast quality content, so any edits performed on them map directly to the parent asset.

The MassBrowse client application can be installed on any computer with network access to the low-res proxy content generated by the MassTrans-it system. The MassBrowse client provides a user-friendly interface with full metadata support and an advanced hardware jog/shuttle panel for a real editor look and feel.