services

Custom software development

We have been developing software for media archive management systems since 1991. Our Digital Asset Management systems are based on a series of components designed to provide a flexible solution for most of our customers workflow requirements. We have developed all of the code in our digital media archive management system including the text retrieval DBMS, stream servers, transcoders and all other utility and service applications. Because of this we are able to customise systems extensively to fit very closely with customer requirements and work practises.

Occaisionally though, we are tasked with coming up with a bespoke software solution for customers. In this case we prefer to use industry standard protocols and interfaces and embrace the use of open-source code to speed development and to keep costs down. We have experience of integrating our software with many different types of administrative, commercial and industrial systems. As a company we have a wide range of skills and experience which allow us to develop software (primarily in .Net and C++ as well as lower level language programming), and feature rich, dynamic web applications using PHP, CSS, Flash and AJAX. We use open interfaces based upon SOAP and XML for all of the modules in our DAM systems.

Custom software development involves the following stages:

Project Appraisal

• Identification of business and system needs
• Documentation of the current IT system
• Development of specifications
• Preliminary design, scope of work and software estimation (Feasibility study)

• Presentation of feasibility study
• Analysis of deliverables (Confirmation of clients expectations)
• Evaluation of existing software (if applicable)
• Development & Implementation of Solution
• Custom software development
• Project management reviews
• User reviews of draft software
• Implementation of new solution
• User acceptance testing
• Data preparation
• Training

Future Support

• Maintenance agreements available
• Pay-As-You-Go services for add-ons, updates etc.

Key Benefits of Our Consultancy Expertise:

• Scalable business applications
• Boosts productivity in your business processes
• Customisation of your chosen business application to meet your specific requirements

Custom database development

Good database design is essential to efficiently centralize, store and manipulate your company's digital assets, especially where coordination between many users is needed. CIS can build a database to your specification or integrate with an existing database. We also offer advice on schema design, system integration and HSM storage.

System support

Our service strategy is designed to meet the needs of our customers and for continual evoltion of the systems we provide for them. We employ dedicated support engineers who have a huge amount of experience in networking, system integration and hardware platforms.

We can provide support for any CIS system we produce - We can also advise on:

• Back up strategies
• Network Security
• Anti-Virus policies
• System Integration and configuration

Transcoding services

CIS' transcoder server supports decoding from and encoding to a wide range of existing audio/video compression formats and container formats with audio/video filtering and post-processing features. Our transcoder software supports multi thread processing so multiple instances of the transcoder server can be installed on all available processors across multiple machines. This means that large scale asset transcoding can be achieved quickly and at an affordable cost.

Supported Formats include:

Encoding services

Where it is not cost effective for a customer to invest in their own ingest system, we are able to provide tape encoding as a service. We can control most prof essional VCRs via Sony Control Protocol and we can provide automatic encoding services where an EDL exists. Beyond the encoding stage we can also automatically transcode to various browse proxies and even upload to a web service for your assets to be distributed on the web.

Project Management

We have successfully completed projects and offered consultancy services for a number of mission critical projects with budgets between £100k to half a million pounds. A dedicated consultancy and project team is offered as part of each contract undertaken but can also be commissioned separately for feasability studies, pilot projects and scoping work.