Starz Entertainment

Movie Provider Automates to Meet Higher Demand, Reduce Costs, Improve Brand Visibility

Premium movie service provider Starz Entertainment needed a better way to create branded, service-specific movie files for its expanding distribution channels. It automated the process by creating the MediaForge production solution, using Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. The result boosts productivity, provides capacity for new distribution deals, and saved Starz U.S.$2.4 million on development.

 

Business Needs

Every time consumers gain another choice in how they view movies— premium cable, on-demand, satellite, phones, and other handheld devices—the workload increases throughout the production chain at Starz Entertainment.

To maintain and increase the value of its brands, Starz adds customized trailers and branding elements to the program materials that it distributes. The added elements might promote subscription or on-demand services, new movies, or special programming events, and the customized trailers and tags change frequently during a distribution time frame. For each movie that Starz offers, it must produce customized content in several distribution specifications for each of several distribution partners—such as a cable, satellite, telco, and Internet content providers. The traditional method of production required an editor to manually assemble a distribution master for each distribution partner. Each distribution master would then be encoded in the requisite distribution specification.

Producing all these customized materials and formats for the various distributors became an increasingly time-consuming and expensive endeavor, requiring thousands of staff hours to prepare multiple versions of hundreds of movies per month. The costs skyrocketed. And as its on-demand services—and the thousands of titles offered—became more popular, Starz saw the challenge growing.

“As the distribution channels proliferated, the demands on our time and budget soared,” says James Porter, Vice President, Post Production and Broadcast Operations Center, Starz Entertainment. “We couldn’t keep up with it.”

Solution

Porter and Stephen Smith, Director of Media Systems Integration at Starz Entertainment, set out to improve the customization process. To replace the manual, one-version-at-a-time procedure, they designed a software solution—called MediaForge—that automates the process of branding, packaging, and transcoding the movies and other entertainment programming that Starz offers. The result is the ability to create custom distribution material more quickly than before, and at lower cost.

The collaboration and team features in Visual Studio Team System … make it faster and easier for a group of developers—we had eight working on MediaForge—to work together reliably. Stephen Smith Director of Media Systems Integration, Starz Entertainment

Starz has produced several versions of the MediaForge solution over the past three years, always using the Microsoft® Visual Studio® development system. Most recently, Starz used Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite, Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server, and Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5, an integral component of the Windows® operating system that supports building and running Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications. MediaForge is based on two key elements of the .NET Framework: Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation.

Windows Presentation Foundation, the presentation system for building Windows-based client applications with visually stunning user experiences, has a rendering engine able to take advantage of modern graphics hardware, and application development features including Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML). With Windows Presentation Foundation and XAML, Starz could associate a single piece of code with any of several interface controls, so different types of users could access the same functionality in various ways. For example, the “video wrapper” control—which connects a video input to an output—can appear in different parts of MediaForge as a series of buttons with descriptions, as a drop-down list, or as a matrix, depending on how frequently a user will access the control and how much screen area that user wants the control to take up.

The developers used Windows Workflow Foundation—the programming model, engine, and tools for quickly building reactive applications—to add intelligence to the job list that contains the many tasks that go into producing the customized film files. “Windows Workflow Foundation uses XAML to add logic to our job list,” says Smith. “That means it was easy for us to give the solution the ability to change the processes of a job based on new conditions or instructions.”

Benefits

By implementing the MediaForge automation solution, Starz has been able to meet the challenges of producing customized distribution materials for the ever-increasing number of distribution opportunities. Where it was straining to produce 300 movie versions per month with a dedicated staff of four, it now produces between 8,000 and 10,000 feature-length files per month with a staff of two, redeploying other employees to more strategic functions.

“For the first time in years, we are able to comfortably meet the demands of distribution,” says Porter. “We have the ability to seek out new distribution channels and to respond quickly with customized product for those channels.”

Use of Visual Studio Team System and the .NET Framework didn’t just speed the creation of customized content; it also sped the development of the solution that creates that content. Team Foundation Server combines team portal, version control, work item tracking, build management, process guidance, and business intelligence into a unified server, so the team can collaborate more effectively, delivering higher-quality software.

“The collaboration and team features in Visual Studio Team System … make it faster and easier for a group of developers—we had eight working on MediaForge—to work together reliably,” says Smith. “We don’t waste time asking who changed what.”

Smith estimates that Starz saved eight work years and U.S.$2.4 million by using Visual Studio Team System and the .NET Framework, compared with working in Java or Linux. And because the MediaForge solution is highly modular, Porter says its code can be easily reused elsewhere at the company—for example, in preproduction or production applications—further increasing return on investment.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the world's most popular development environment for designing, developing, and testing next-generation Windows-based solutions and Web applications and services. By improving the development experience for Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office, Visual Studio 2008 helps organizations deliver a variety of solutions more productively than ever before. Visual Studio Team System expands the product line with new software tools that enable greater communication and collaboration throughout the development life cycle. Interaction between developers and designers is enhanced with Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft Expression® design software. With Visual Studio 2008, businesses can deliver modern service-oriented solutions more efficiently.

For more information about Visual Studio 2008, go to:
www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio