The Changing Face of Broadcasting. NDR Grows Audiences with Timely Programming for Television, Web, and Social Media

Adobe Customer Story

The changing face of broadcasting. NDR grows audiences with timely programming for television, web, and social media.

“Working with Adobe Creative Cloud for enterprise, we have improved collaboration, simplified workflows across the company, and increased our audience by getting people coverage of the latest news and events minutes after they happen.”

Sascha Molina, Head of IT, NDR

SOLUTION Adobe Creative Cloud for enterprise

RESULTS Speed editing with INTEGRATED media asset management system GROW audiences with fast delivery of stories on current, relevant topics Collaborative editing and graphics workflow saves TIME AND MONEY

Deliver content for TV, WEB, AND SOCIAL audiences Adobe Customer Story

Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) Reaching viewers across multiple channels Established in 1956 In today’s broadcast environment, audiences expect to see events as they’re happening—and not just on Employees: 3,500 their television screens. Delivering programming across channels—TV, the web, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets—is essential for broadcasters to reach and retain audiences. Hamburg, Germany www.ndr.de Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (ARD), Germany’s largest broadcaster, helps to satisfy this media demand. ARD reaches homes across Germany ARD through its nine autonomous regional public broadcasting corporations, which include Hannover, Kiel, Schwerin, and Hamburg-based Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR). NDR’s 3,500 employees work to deliver www.ard.de original radio and television programming daily—from news and sports coverage to culture and lifestyle programs—to viewers in northern Germany and the surrounding regions. The broadcaster has also turned its attention to the web and social media as essential channels for reaching today’s audiences. CHALLENGES • Capture the immediacy of current events “News and sports are obviously very time-sensitive; we may only have minutes to cut together highlights by producing television and video clips in before they go on air or get posted online,” says Sascha Molina, Head of IT for NDR. “But even our longer less time features need to move fast. If we do a special show following a visit from the Pope, for example, we’ll gain more viewers if we can get it on air while the visit is still fresh in people’s minds.” • Access new video codecs and features for top productions NDR not only produces and edits all of its programming in house, from television specials to Facebook • Deliver media content to customers videos, it also handles up to 20% of ARD’s programming. For NDR’s post-production team, working quickly across social media channels and efficiently is a must for giving audiences the quick response to news and events that they expect. Broadcasting hot topics One of NDR’s secrets for an agile workflow is an integrated media asset management (MAM) system. By ingesting all raw footage into one central location, everyone from editors to journalists can quickly find and access the footage they need. So when NDR decided to upgrade its aging editing platform, integration with NDR’s existing Arvato system for media management was a must. The post-production team at NDR was using Final Cut Pro 7, but with a lack of updates and increasing instability, the team wanted a new platform that could leverage the latest codecs and technological advances in video. Avid wouldn’t work with Arvato and the existing Harmonic storage system, while Final Cut Pro 10 would require significant integration and training efforts. NDR found that only Adobe Premiere Pro CC, part of Adobe Creative Cloud, offered both easy-to-use workflows and robust APIs for seamless integration with Arvato, saving the broadcaster the cost and hassle of replacing its media management system. Adobe Customer Story

Creative Cloud for enterprise also enabled the broadcaster to centralize and simplify license management for its 350 users across the organization. In addition to deploying licenses to employees, NDR IT can easily assign and revoke access to the company’s 100 editing freelancers who help during peak times. “Adobe Creative Cloud for enterprise was the best solution for us,” says Molina. “While the licensing model was a change, it’s ultimately a huge plus for us in the broadcast industry. With Adobe Creative Cloud we get new codecs and features as soon as they are available without having to wait for or weigh the cost versus benefits of every upgrade.”

Building connected audiences In a modern broadcast environment, television isn’t the only means of reaching audiences. NDR also produces video for the web and social channels such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Adobe Creative Cloud, including Premiere Pro CC, makes it easy to produce different clips for each channel, which helps to build audiences that can stay connected to the broadcaster no matter where they are located or how they like “Adobe Creative Cloud for enterprise to watch video. supports a tighter, smoother, and faster editing workflow without Ease of integration with NDR’s Arvato system for media management was a key factor in the broadcaster’s decision to switch to Adobe Premiere Pro. Arvato designed flexible panels in Premiere Pro CC that enable reducing quality so we can produce editors to seamlessly access assets and editing workflows from a single tool. Editors don’t waste time more great content in less time.” copying or transcoding footage for separate workflows. Instead, they can pull footage directly from the single, centralized MAM into any workflow that they need. Sascha Molina, Head of IT, NDR “We’ve learned to design different workflows for television and social media,” explains Molina. “There are different format, aspect ratio, and content requirements for each channel. A two-minute video for television and a two-minute video for Facebook have to be completely different things because the demands of the audiences are different. Adobe Premiere Pro CC enables our editors to quickly turn footage into consumable content for our audiences on any channel.”

Combining creative efforts The graphics department at NDR has worked with Adobe creative apps for years, so the move to Creative Cloud for enterprise was a win for them as well. By working with the same family of Adobe Creative Cloud tools, the editing and graphics departments are closer and more in sync than ever, resulting in faster delivery of content. This accelerated workflow is critical to NDR as content velocity becomes a key differentiator in the broadcast television market. Adobe Customer Story

For example, using Adobe After Effects CC, the graphics department creates templates for lower-thirds and other on-screen elements to help speed production workflows. Editors don’t need to convert or render elements before applying them to videos and can quickly change text or make other minor adjustments through Adobe Premiere Pro CC. “Adobe Creative Cloud for enterprise supports a tighter, smoother, and faster editing workflow without reducing quality so we can produce more great content in less time,” says Molina. “Because the tools are so similar and easy to learn, we can even have one person doing both editing and graphics jobs for social media video, which makes delivering content for our social channels much more cost-effective.” NDR’s success with Adobe Creative Cloud and Premiere Pro CC now serves as an example of a centralized, integrated modern broadcasting workflow for other ARD member companies to consider. “Many other ARD companies are starting to ask us about how we’re using Adobe Premiere Pro CC, and all we can say is that our experiences have been excellent,” adds Molina. “We’re proof that teams can make the switch and see results.” SOLUTION AT A GLANCE Streamlining document workflows • Adobe Creative Cloud for enterprise. Apps used include: NDR also continues to explore options for how it can expand its use of Adobe tools for greater production values. Beyond Creative Cloud, NDR is also using Adobe Acrobat DC for PDF forms that streamline equipment • Adobe Premiere Pro CC procurement, applications, and other administrative workflows. • Adobe After Effects CC “Adobe solutions allow us to work faster and smarter so that we can spend less time wrestling with software • Adobe Acrobat DC and more time focusing on our viewers,” says Molina. “Working with Adobe Creative Cloud for enterprise, we have improved collaboration, simplified workflows across the company, and increased our audiences by getting people coverage of the latest news and events minutes after they happen.”

For more information www.adobe.com/creativecloud.html

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