Home Entertainment

The home entertainment industry is not unique in the challenges it faces – ‘cut costs and get the products out quicker’ could be applied to most markets – where it differs is that the industry is expected to maintain that magical quality that keeps customers coming back for more, while at the same time releasing products for an ever-increasing number of platforms such as Blu-ray and electronic sell through (EST).

Cut Outsourcing Costs

If you are commissioning video titles – whether they are DVDs, Blu-ray discs or for download – you will be facing increasing pressure to make savings as costs of production increase and budgets are slashed. Frequently, even though there is a market demand, the cost of production can make the release of marginal products economically non-viable.

ZOO offers something different from the traditional service you will get from other vendors; our approach to the authoring and localization of titles is to develop tools that automate the costly repetitive tasks involved in production. Our Templated Authoring System (TAS) and Blu-ray disc authoring tool (BDX) offer a flexible templated approach to disc content preparation. This allows for the creation of complex discs at a significantly reduced cost due to time savings made in the authoring and QC processes.

Using localized menus and manifests from our Media Adaptation Tool (MAT), our Interactive Content Editor (ICE) provides a simple UI to help authors create iTunes Extras for download. This removes the need for costly and error-prone hand coding and creates .ite files that fully meet the Apple design guidelines and, due to the automated authoring process, need significantly less QC than those that are hand coded.

Depending on your needs we can either license the tools to you or offer you a full or part service. Either way you will reap the benefits of our wealth of experience and dramatically reduce your production costs, meaning that those previously uneconomic products are suddenly viable and can now be introduced into your product streams.

Decrease Time to Market

Day-and-date launch. The buzz phrase of the media industry for the last couple of years is still, for some, a mythical Holy Grail – something to dream about but as yet unattainable.  For others, they have attained their Holy Grail, but at a cost – either they are paying a premium to get the product out or they have to be satisfied with a reduced product offering in order to meet the target date.

The problem with day-and-date is that companies need to co-ordinate the vast amount of data needed to achieve their mythical target. For movie releases, the data includes not only the different format video assets needed for the DVD, the Blu-ray and the video-on-demand, but also the audio, subtitles, bonus features as well as the printed material such as disc wraps, inserts, O‑sleeves and so on. That is without even considering the vast amount of promotional material needed such as web adverts, posters and in-store stands. The list of assets is enormous and when you are trying to release the product in multiple markets with multiple languages the problem increases dramatically.

This is where ZOO comes in. We have been at the sharp end of the demand for day-and-date releases for the past few years and have developed our tools and services to help you co-ordinate your data, speed up the localization and drastically cut the time taken to create your products – whether they are EST, DVD or Blu-ray – as well as the associated promotional material.

MAT and our Translation Management System (TMS) work seamlessly to localize assets – whether they are DVD, Blu-ray or EST menus, packaging or promotional material – into any language. Our TAS, BDX and ICE authoring products can create complex, professional, products in a fraction of the time it takes to author titles using the traditional tools, while also reducing the time spent on QC.

We appreciate that some customers want to be able to hand over entire projects to vendors, others want to take an active part in the process and others want to do it themselves, so we are happy to work with you in a way that is best suited to meet the needs of your business. We can work directly with you or our tools are available to license.

Manage Complexity

Creation of home entertainment products is complex work – there are many parties whose work must be co-ordinated; everyone is under time pressure; there is a high reliance on human labour; it is easy to make mistakes; every aspect of these products must be checked and verified; the cost of ensuring that products meet the stringent quality expectations of modern consumers is high.  Our technology manages complex workflows to bring structure and enforce adherence to standards – we can achieve high quality results very cost effectively.

For the vast array of project co-ordinators, designers, translators, approvers and production artists involved in a project, the web-based TMS provides a global one-stop shop for the management of the complex interactions to successfully deliver multiple assets in multiple languages. The TMS securely manages the complete localization workflow including translation of the source text, proofing and distribution of the final assets. This ensures that production schedules are strictly monitored and costs are minimized.

The TMS is provided as a hosted service that can be managed by us or you depending on your requirements. Additional services such as translation and design are also available.

One Size Does Not Fit All

Our products and services have been designed to fit the needs of our customers. It is in both our and our customers’ best interest to ensure that their products are produced in the most efficient way possible. We therefore offer our products as a service where you reap the benefit of our highly skilled production staff, or our products are available under license for use by your own staff.

We also offer the following services:

Video and Post Production – Full service video production

ZOO maintains its own in-house video and post-production facilities. We provide complete support for materials like bonus features, electronic press kits, trailers and TV spots.

We do more than assemble clips. We produce original materials from initial scripts to location shoots, interviews and voice-overs. We are a mini-studio, devoted to creating unique documentary and promotional material for major media releases.

Creative – Multimedia skills from design to gaming

The ZOO creative team includes designers, animators, visual effects artists and editors who specialize in the unique needs of global media producers and marketers.

ZOO offers comprehensive creative support from graphic design to 3-D animation. Our in-house talent can design for virtually any media, script and produce bonus features, even conceive, create and code DVD and web-based games.

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