Dalet aims to reduce transcoding workflow complexity

Available later this year, the Dalet Workflow Engine combined with Dalet AmberFin transcoding platform aims to improve control of media workflows with a BPMN 2.0-compliant workflow designer.

Dalet claimed that users would be able to quickly create complex workflow chains with little or no prior experience. Deployed workflows could be monitored at any level of detail with graphical and textual reporting of workflow instances. It will be combined with the latest Dalet AmberFin developments in standards and frame rate conversion as well as international versioning and UHD capabilities.

Business Process Model & Notation (BPMN) provides a framework for designing and deploying workflows, enabling users to dynamically monitor workflow occurrences in detail, with activities being highlighted as media moves through the chain.

This means that operators do not need to know or worry about a specific task; when the Dalet AmberFin transcode platform receives a work order, it starts a process that describes the ‘recipe’ – the ingredients and actions required to make the technical outputs. Users need only be concerned about the trigger and the result.

In the workflow designer, users are presented with a clear and simple palette of events, activities, gateways and paths that use terms and graphics that are comfortably familiar to users with IT or media backgrounds. This common graphical language improves the communication and documentation of both the job requirements and the execution details.

Context-sensitive options and settings intuitively guide users through the process of joining workflow elements, with logical defaults and settings that make adding tasks such as ‘email supervisor’  incredibly fast. Workflow success paths are complemented by advanced exception handling, ensuring high degrees of automation while retaining the freedom for human intervention.

Dalet director of marketing Ben Davenport said that while combining workflow orchestration with a transcode platform is not a new concept, the new workflow approach distances users from the complexities of transcode to make the process of media workflows familiar to anyone with an IT background.