Silex Media has developed a middleware based IT-framework that enables organisations to simply and effectively integrate broadcast applications and production islands within an existing workflow management environment, or allows them to use the technology to create a complete Media Lifecycle Management system for archives and production without being locked into one vendor or one solution.

The result is a highly integrated environment that allows the total enterprise to have better (re)use of the content and producing content faster than before.

This framework has been productized by DAVID Systems, under the name of Hydrogen. The Hydrogen products continue to play a big role in the workflow solutions provided by Silex Media.Each project is different, so is each implementation. Silex Media's experts know how to best integrate and customize the middleware.

Hydrogen consists of:

• Hydrogen Media Accelerator: faster time to air, automatically preparing assets for edit and playout.
  Branded as AtomFactory, the software has been rewritten specifically for the popular Apple Final Cut Pro NLE.

• Hydrogen Archive Catalyst: transparent access to hierarchical storage management digital tape based archive.

• Hydrogen Lifecycle Management: the backbone information system for the broadcast cooperation - integrating systems, functionalities and workflows.

Taking your content further

Reusing content, improving time-to-air, integrating heterogeneous environments, dealing with many formats and standards, adapting to the latest technology, challenges that are facing today's broadcasters and media organizations.There are 3 goals that are part of the design of the middleware:

• maximum performance: using best-of-breed components, to let each component perform in the best way possible;
• maximum flexibility: being able to add/replace/upgrade over time, means it is possible to always have what you need, when you need it;
• maximum openness: the interfaces use open API's, which allows other developers to add and customers to change workflows, without being locked into one provider.

Maximum Performance

With this flexible and open approach to  technology designs and the use of standard technologies like Oracle, Silex Media works with customers of all sizes to ensure that not only can they optimise content access and re-use, but that they can also improve the time-to-air, with editing processes being greatly reduced. With the use of the Hydrogen media acceleration modules, customers have seen achieve up to 50% improvement in their ingest-to-playout turnaround time.

Maximum Flexibility

Optimizing just a small step of the workflow or building a complete Media Lifecycle Management system. No one size fits all. That's why the Hydrogen system is available as small but powerful modules that improve the workflow, or as a enterprise wide Media Lifecycle Management system.

Maximum Openness

Customer should not be locked in to one supplier or one solution. That is why not only Silex Media but also 3^rd party developers, the customer or anyone else can develop on top of the Hydrogen framework. A comprehensive fully documented XML API is available which also supports specific systems including, automation systems, NLEs, various forms of ingest, transcode and bridges to other systems via a message broker. Being open allows for easy integration to legacy systems and enables third party manufacturer to integrate easily.