AJA Diskover Media Edition Advanced Data Management Software

Overview

AJA Diskover Media Edition is the new, easy to deploy data management software solution designed to let you take control of your media storage, across your entire organization, regardless of where it is physically located. Use high-speed, cutting-edge searches, cost analysis, tagging and other sophisticated tools to empower all levels of your organization to make informed data decisions, therefore enhancing your file-based production line and its monetization. Efficiently curate your existing assets, and never lose a file again with AJA Diskover Media Edition.

AJA Diskover Media Edition offers the tools to:

Tell you instantly where all your data lives and share the results in one click on local, remote, or cloud based storage.
Monetize and maximize the efficiency of your workflows through several industry specific plugins.
Assist with your clients being charged accurately for storage space.
Curate your valuable assets securely and methodically.

Features

Highly scalable, AJA Diskover Media Edition efficiently and quickly searches data fragmented across multi-platform storage, bringing you all the answers in one global view.
Gives you extraordinary speed and reliability with Elasticsearch in the backend continuously indexing all your storage volumes in parallel.
AJA Diskover Media Edition provides a global index in a non-proprietary format, enabling organizations to maintain data independence, and therefore avoiding vendors holding your index hostage in non-open form.
Well suited for long term asset preservation.
100% open-source platform allowing for unlimited expansion and plugins integration.
Easily accessible via your favorite web browser.
Supports all known file types.
Telestream GLIM and Vantage integration.
Workflow automation through configurable scheduled tasks.
Find and copy file paths to any file you have indexed, regardless of where it is located, from your web browser, no matter where you are.
Integration with DropBox, Qumulo and LucidLink cloud platforms.

More Details

Introductory Video

Find out about AJA Diskover Media Edition by watching this introductory video.

Interface Walkthrough Video

Take a look at the AJA Diskover Media Edition interface with this in depth walkthrough video.

Cost Analysis Tools…No Bytes Left on the Table

AJA Diskover Media Edition is leading the data management industry for video, media and film production with its cost analysis tools and their degree of customization, which maximizes the ROI of your valuable assets. When calculating the cost per gigabyte, companies should also consider compounding additional factors like electricity, cloud providers’ cost, square footage of building space, support contracts, system administrator’s salary, AJA Diskover Media Edition annual subscription cost, etc.

AJA Diskover Media Edition offers tools to assist you in determining storage costs for your clients’ data/projects, as well as detailed reporting to substantiate your invoices.

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 calcualting 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.

Download Workflow

Unique Heatmap Report and Indices Comparison

AJA Diskover Media Edition is leading the industry by being the first to offer indices comparison from two different points in time, empowering you to easily track changes in your data.

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 everyone 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.

Download Workflow

Smooth Workflows for Increased Productivity

Improves collective efficiency by streamlining file-based workflows.
Metadata is harvested to add business context to extensive searches and analytics.
Workflow enhancement via manual tagging, auto-tags, and scheduled tasks.
Several reports are available to end-users to meticulously analyze and properly act on data.
Far beyond “cleaning”, AJA Diskover Media Edition offers a full toolset for global data curation.

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.

Download Workflow

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.

Tagging

Tags are crucial for successful data management and efficient workflows.

Tagging allows for logical manual tagging by any users, alerting for actions to be taken, project workflow stages, as well as ease of searches.
Auto-tags and scheduled tasks can be configured based on aging, project status, etc. for automated data curation.
Easy reporting on tags can be achieved in several ways.

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 embraced the logical approach of itself being open-source, as well as integrating other open-source platforms and plugins that are powerful and highly integrative.

Open-source software is developed around transparency and trust. They help 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 the 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, the AJA Diskover Media Edition pinpoints the major tribulations in the media industry as a starting point.

We continue to work very closely with major clients to make sure that we are addressing any feedback, and offer 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, the 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 improve 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.

Telestream GLIM Integration

AJA Diskover Media Edition includes 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.

MediaPulse Asset Creation

Post facilities often have customers’ assets that have been archived and lack findability, visibility, searchability, and therefore the opaque nature of these assets make 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 frequently 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”. However, 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 MediaPulse asset creation tool included in the AJA Diskover Media Edition 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 MediaPulse order management system.

The plugin operates on the assumption that assets restored to online media are placed into a folder using a specific naming convention. The info is added to the asset within MediaPulse and the asset number is assigned as a field to the file within the Diskover Index.

MediaPulse Media Order Status

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 rapidly and 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 MediaPulse media order has been “invoiced”, then the data associated with that media order can be a candidate for archive.

The MediaPulse order status plugin is designed to automate the correlation of the order management system and the storage system, by harvesting key business context from MediaPulse and applying that context within the AJA Diskover Media Edition platform.

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 an 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.

Support and Warranty

AJA Diskover Media Edition is covered by a one year warranty, renewable with the annual subscription. AJA Video Systems provide support for all basic installation and set up queries. For more focused issues beyond installation and setup, Diskover will provide direct support. Please see the individual Product’s Manual for additional specifics around warranty conditions for the product itself.

Contact Support

180 Litton Drive, Grass Valley, CA 95945 USA
Phone: +1-530-271-3190, Fax: +1-530-271-3140
Email: support@aja.com

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