BERGEN is a small - some would say sleepy - city on the west coast of Norway.
Although it’s the Norwegian kingdom's second city, the population is merely 350 000. Located by the coast, people have traditionally made a living from trade, shipping, the workshop industry, and in later decades petroleum. The city’s pride is the local soccer club, although it rarely makes headlines except when it’s relegated every fifth year or so.
So how can it be then, that Bergen is a hot spot for developing new, ground-breaking media technologies?
Companies like Vizrt, Mosart automation, Mjoll, 7Mountains, StormGeo, Electric Friends, and Vimond all hail from Bergen. Global leaders in their field.
Now another two industry-changing broadcast systems from Bergen are making their mark. At this year's NAB convention, only some of the 1200 stands had more traffic than the one showcasing Dina and Mimir. Every major US network as well as leading broadcasters from around the world showed up in Las Vegas to get a demonstration.
Dina is a true cloud-native rundown and newsroom system, the first of its kind that runs entirely in a browser, without the need for software installation or on-prem hardware. Dina is packed with innovative features that improve workflows, including the story-centric approach enabling publishing to any platform including linear, OTT, radio, web, and social media.
Mimir is the MAM/PAM system being the buzz of the industry lately. Built from the ground up on Amazon web infrastructure, Mimir is used for cloud storage and backup. But the true power lies in the groundbreaking search, and editing options, as well as AI-driven speech-to-text transcription and object detection in ways never seen before.
So how come Bergen?
The people behind Dina and Mimir are professionals from the Norwegian broadcast industry with decades of experience in producing television in a small market. Lesser recourses have forced them to think out of the box in order to solve problems.
They are former producers, directors, and editors who have paired up with uniquely qualified UI and UX designers, experienced R&D professionals, and some of the best developers Norway has to offer. Most have backgrounds from Norway’s leading commercial broadcaster TV 2 or Vizrt - many from both.
Together they are on a quest to bring the broadcast industry forward.
- We are truly proud of succeeding in developing ground-breaking and industry-altering solutions. Our products change the way broadcasters think of their newsrooms and make organizations able to take huge leaps forward into the future of broadcasting, says CEO Haavard Myklebust of the tech company Fonn Group.
The latest tech at a lower cost
Being a true cloud-native Software-as-service brings along another huge advantage for broadcasters, namely reducing costs as well as making sure that they will stay at the forefront of technological breakthroughs. Legacy newsroom systems are typically updated once a decade - in some instances even more rarely - throwing the whole technical and editorial side of the newsroom into years-long complicated and heart-wrenching update projects.
In comparison, Dina and Mimir are updated once a week. The weekly deploys are being conducted with no downtime of any systems even while on-air. The users will only notice a change-log notification telling about what new features have been added to the systems. No action is required from the users when updates are conducted, they’re being done in the background by the software supplier.
So what is the fuzz all about except the sheer fact that Dina and Mimir are true cloud-native?
Dina:
- Is a powerful rundown system with features like previewing video and graphics assets directly from the rundown, as well as the option of editing graphics.
- Has extensive drag-and-drop capability integrated with asset systems, eliminating the need for manually inserting clip codes or automation commands.
- Is story-centric, giving the entire newsroom the ability to function as one team on any given story, eliminating flawed workflows where journalistic resources from TV and digital are operating side by side but not collaborating.
- Publishes to any platform; linear TV, OTT, radio, web, and social media.
- Has a comprehensive long-term and short-term planning tool built into the newsroom system itself.
- Contains innovative chat solutions, revolutionizing communication in the newsroom.
Mimir:
- Used for cloud storage and backup.
- Has solutions for search, and editing, as well as automatic speech-to-text transcription.
- Provides persons and objects detection, multi-language translations, and logging.
- Controls AWS Elemental Live, to minimize on-prem infrastructure and save costs.
- Supports live transcription, with integrated artificial intelligence technologies for assisted metadata logging.
- Manages live schedules with tight integration to Adobe Premiere Pro for editing projects.
Would you like to know more about Dina or Mimir? Please get in touch by clicking one of the links below.
