Introductory Video

Learn more about AJA Diskover Media Edition in this introductory video to learn about how customers are currently using Diskover Media Edition to manage their data.

Interface Walkthrough Video

A deep dive into the AJA Diskover Media Edition interface, showcasing how Diskover is used at the operator, operations, data manager, pipeline administrator, finance, and executive levels. 55 min.

From start to finish, AJA Diskover Media Edition has you covered. This workflow provides a high level overview of the team’s engagement of your most critical resource, your data, whether it is on-prem, on removable drives, a large SAN, hybrid, to cloud storage in AWS and Azure and more.

Cost Analysis Tool

The cost analysis tool offers an instant snapshot, as well as links to detailed information, showing where your storage money is being allocated via customized reporting. This tool is designed to 1) assist in calculating costs to invoice your customers accurately for storage, and 2) incentivize data curation.

Storage Cost Configuration Overview

AJA Diskover Media Edition storage cost settings allow for a high level of granularity, therefore making sure every byte counts.

Heatmap Report

The heatmap report allows you to easily analyze and monitor data growth (red), data shrinkage, as well as smooth data transition (ex: for backups).

Data Shrinkage Indicators

Green indicates data shrinkage.

Indices Page

Indices page gives you detailed information, searchability and ease of selection.

File Search page

Indices can also be analyzed from the file search page.

Reduce Your Operating Costs

• Cost analysis tools and repeatable reports via AJA Diskover Media Edition Smart Searches assist all stakeholders in making the right data related decisions about time, resources, invoicing and investments.
• Data findability combined with ease of sharing significantly improves the efficiency of the organization and its people.
• AJA Diskover Media Edition toolset allows for data management instead of purchasing additional expensive and unnecessary storage space.
• AJA Diskover Media Edition enhances workflows and their monetization.
• Smart Searches gives you flexibility to build custom queries for easy repeatable reporting, for example by project, customer, aging, size, owner, etc. as well as a mix of criteria for precise information finding and informed decision making.

Empower All Levels of Your Organization

• AJA Diskover Media Edition enables provisioned users to accurately answer questions with the simplicity of search queries, which provide immediate information.
• The clever views, file search tools, repeatable reports, and other smart features assists business users for in-depth analysis of data, informed decision making, as well as rigorous data management.
• AJA Diskover Media Edition allows all stakeholders to have their own relationship with data.

Tools and Workflow Overview

AJA Diskover Media Edition aims for global data curation through search, analytics, and management. The example above is only one of several possibilities.

Metadata Query Support

Example of metadata harvested by AJA Diskover Media Edition permitting meticulous queries and precise results.

File Tree Report

The file tree report instantly profiles the files size and aging for informed decision making – users can drill-down directly from the chart.

Treemap Report

The treemap report displays hierarchical data graphically representing the size of files/directories, candidates for cleanup, aging, etc. Each color corresponds to a directory.

File and Directory Tagging

Files and directories can easily be tagged manually or by automation. Reporting on tags is simple and efficient.

Tag Management

Tags can easily be applied, managed and viewed in the file search page.

The Power of Open-Source

AJA Diskover Media Edition uses Elasticsearch, an open-source highly scalable, mature and wide spread backend search engine, allowing for massive amounts of data to be searched instantaneously.

AJA Diskover Media Edition embraces the logical approach of being open-source, as well as integrating other powerful open-source platforms and plugins.

Open-source software is developed around transparency and trust. It helps organizations become more agile and collaborative in their innovations.

Visualize Your Data

Users can select within various options the best method to export and/or share their search results with a simple click.

Dashboard View

The dashboard page offers a graphical summary of a storage volume, including several clickable links for direct access to details.

Filter Your Search

Users can narrow their searches using the built-in filters. Filters can also be applied to refine existing search results.

User Analysis Report

The user analysis report gives a snapshot of data utilization per user and per group; it is designed to help with operating costs management, as well as customers’ storage consumption for billing accuracy.

Aimed at Resolving Media Specific Challenges

There is an ongoing need to protect content from piracy; facilities often build two completely independent networks: 1) where users have access to the internet, and 2) a production network with no internet access and strict controls on personnel that have access to this network. However, in production workflows, Customer Service Representatives, Artists, Producers, and Operations often need to search the production network. The AJA Diskover Media Edition provides visibility to search for content, without providing access to the actual content.

In addition to the regular daily challenges around data and file-based workflows, AJA Diskover Media Edition pinpoints the major tribulations in the media industry as a starting point.

AJA continues to work very closely with major clients to ensure that we are addressing their feedback and offering the tools they need to most effectively manage and curate their digital assets.

Search on Media Info Attributes

Pushing the limits of search and results accuracy, AJA Diskover Media Edition harvests media info attributes and makes them easily findable. This feature assists with narrowing down the list of search results and improves their accuracy.

If a file at the source doesn’t include media attributes, those details won’t be harvested and/or searchable.

Media attributes can be searched and a summary viewed in the file results pane.

Autodesk Flow Production Tracking Plug-In

New Plug-In integration with Autodesk Flow Production Tracking (formerly known as Shotgun and ShotGrid) uses production status information metadata to align your data management with your production schedules.

Now Autodesk Flow Production Tracking metadata searchable attributes within AJA Diskover Media Edition.

Oxagile IMF Validator Plug-in

Oxagile’s IMF Validator Plug-In, exclusively for AJA Diskover Media Edition, allows users to scan and validate IMF packages before delivery – from any location, regardless of the location of the IMF Package data. Commenting on the new Oxagile plug-in, Matt Pinckley, US Director of Business Development at Oxagile, shared, “We are excited to provide this service to AJA Diskover Media Edition customers, as it will help quickly cue more content creators and providers into when their content is ready to share with their distribution partner or client by meeting IMF packaging requirements. We’re confident this will save them both time and money compared to the processes currently required to validate content.”

CineSys CineViewer Player Plug-in

Through seamless third party platform access via the Diskover UI – users can preview and validate their media assets instantly, in their favorite web-browser, regardless of where their media assets are stored, with CineSys’ powerful CineViewer application.

Qumulo Integration

AJA Diskover Media Edition users can index, search, analyze, and take action on data stored within Qumulo workspaces. The Qumulo SHIFT platform enables users to trigger data movement using granular metadata, and find and tag data for movement to/from Qumulo on-premises, Qumulo Cloud, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Telestream GLIM Integration

Telestream GLIM is designed to allow media professionals to quickly preview media files in high resolution, with color accuracy via any web browser, without generating a proxy file. GLIM can generate these previews for files located on-prem or in cloud storage. Files are shown with SCTE-35 markers, waveform view, and audio metering to ensure compliance standards on the fly for any user in any location.

• The Telestream GLIM application can be launched via AJA Diskover Media Edition Interface using File Action > Open in GLIM menu selection.
• GLIM application launches automatically upon selecting “Open in GLIM” menu option (User must have an active GLIM account and be logged in prior to launching the plug-in)
• The file can now be viewed and validated along with its metadata without giving the user destructive access to the source file.

Telestream Vantage Integration

AJA Diskover Media Edition offers Telestream Vantage integration, significantly enhancing workflows for users of both applications.

Telestream Vantage is a powerful platform for transcoding media, generating proxy files, and generating deliverable packages. The AJA Diskover Media Edition Telestream Vantage Plugin allows end-users to submit files for transcoding directly from the AJA Diskover Media Edition user interface. This process can be utilized by all end-users without needing access to the production tools and source files.

• The plugin eliminates many steps from going back and forth between the two applications.
• Vantage offers several transcoding options which can be confusing to non-technical users > the plugin allows for limiting the number of options to only the ones relevant to the end-users.
• Creating a Vantage account for an end-user is intensive as it requires complex and time-consuming configurations > single end-user accounts for Vantage are not required with the plugin as all they need is access to AJA Diskover Media Edition.
• End-users with a Vantage account also means that they have access to your production network > the plugin keeps your network secure as the end-users only have access to read-only information via AJA Diskover Media Edition.
• Files are very easy to find within AJA Diskover Media Edition’s global index compared to Vantage where one needs to know where to look.
• The learning curve is quick and easy for new end-users.

Xytech Media Operations Platform: Asset Creation Plug-I

Post facilities often have client assets that have been archived and lack findability, visibility, and searchability, and therefore, the opaque nature of these assets makes them difficult to reuse or repurpose. Companies with years of such archived assets have often stored these on tape media or removable hard drives, which are often stored in a physical vault.

Assets were often stored on such “offline” media due to costs, however, with the advent of cloud and object storage, the economics are now making it viable to store such vaulted assets on more “online media”. Although, simply putting these assets onto online media does not necessarily make these assets findable in context or within the facility’s order management system.

The Xytech asset creation tool is designed to find and index newly restored online assets from LTO tapes, removable hard drives, etc., making them available, findable, and searchable within the Xytech order management system, as well as Diskover.

The plugin operates on the assumption that the assets restored to online media are placed into a folder with the following naming convention: CustomerID_CustomerName

The path location is added to the asset within Xytech and the asset number is assigned to the file via a tag within the Diskover Index.

Xytech Media Operations Platform: Order Status Plug-In

The Xytech order status plugin is designed to automate the correlation of the order management system and the storage system, by harvesting key business context from Xytech and applying that context within AJA Diskover Media Edition. In turn, this business context metadata can be used to automate workflows, monitor costs, create customized reports, etc.

Facilities often manually correlate the order management system with the storage repositories. However, manual processes are subject to human errors and difficult to scale as the volume of media orders and data turnover increases constantly.

Therefore, the lack of integration for file-based workflows between the order management system and the underlying storage repositories, makes data management decisions difficult as they are solely based on attributes of files or objects on storage. Additional business context is needed from the order management system to increase precision and accuracy of data management decisions.

An instance of key information might be the invoice date for a work order. A status change for a work order can be a key indicator for data management, for example, once a Xytech media order has been “invoiced”, then the data associated with that media order can be a candidate for archival.

Broad User Support

Even though several data features will be added over time, AJA Diskover Media Edition will mostly remain a search and read-only tool for the end-users; data integrity and protection being the ultimate objective.

AJA Diskover Media Edition allows all end-users to have access to the data via a global index in a read-only format, for them to make informed decisions, and then in turn for the System Administrators to methodically curate the data in a safe and controlled environment.

AJA Diskover Media Edition also offers broad types of user support, allowing users to search and access content at a level appropriate to their needs and production role:

Executives: Those in a position of overall responsibility that need to be aware of resource drains and the costs associated – this tool will allow them to see actual costs associated and they can then manage their teams to ensure costs are being managed efficiently.

System Administrators: System Administrators have to deal with the management of storage resources, locations, and stress on infrastructure. This tool helps them visibly understand what is happening across a range of platforms.

Operators: Various productions will have a number of teams, internal and external to deal with. Understanding where to direct these teams for their storage needs and actively understanding the costs of those decisions enables them to achieve executives’ goals.

Creative teams: Creative artists need to understand where to draw their content from and where to post their content after their work is done. Diskover provides various teams with an understanding of exactly what paths they need to follow on a network – whether local or cloud based.