Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A well kept secret for editors: K2 HotBins!

The K2 MediaClient stand alone or K2 Server for SAN environment offers a great feature for editors to export files to the MediaClient or SAN and have this files seen by the server and shareable /playable right away by the K2s.

Per the K2 documentation:
A service that will monitor a watched folder, also known as a source
directory, that you specify. Files placed in this watched folder are
automatically imported into the K2 system by the HotBin service


The Capture service is used to setup watch folders that will automatically import files dropped into the watch folders to a predetermined K2 bin.
once the import is over, the files are playable by the K2 MediaClient and are shared as well for other editors or transfer/archive engine.

the Hot bins supports Quicktime, MXF OP1A and AVI type-2 (DV only)for import as well as the "hotbin" XML import is capable of receive MXF O-Atom following the P2 specifications as well.

For more information about the K2 hot bin features follow that link to the PDF system guides: CLICK ME

typical use case is for an editor to ingest a tape on it's local storage, edit, add effects and so on and export a flatten file to the HotBin K2 folder. once the import is done by the editor the K2 Capture service pick up the file and make it available in the K2 bin for playout.
this is a great and simple file based workflow, especially in live production environment where files edited need to be playback as soon as possible.

For any question concerning this subject contact Régis André: regis.andre@thomson.net