Getting Your Production to the Market

As any journalist knows, the greatest story is of little value if it doesn’t meet the deadline.  Much the same is true if images and/or videos do not reach the market in time.

Keedup offers clients a range of return times, including within minutes.  We have studied the problem of moving images quickly and keeping them well organised to allow efficient keywording and captioning.

Transmission speeds are important, as is keywording software.  The vital link between these two is workflow software which allows you to keep track of what has and hasn’t been done, and enables you to run the whole system automatically.

Many image and news businesses still rely on old systems – dragging images into folders and sending their production by dropping those folders manually into FTP software.

Keywording software  is too often part of a digital asset management programme, with ponderous systems for organising the images for keywording requiring a myriad of unnecessary steps to achieve the most basic functionality.  The reason for this is that designers of DAM software view keywording systems as an add-on, and normally design them with no integration of vocabularies or other key ingredients to allow fast processing of images or video.

Using Lean Six Sigma

Over a two year period, Keedup used the principles of manufacturing efficiency – Lean Six Sigma – to make a system minimising time lost with transfers and image handling. Transmission and keywording software were integrated, and Keedup has developed its unique workflow software, Piksee.

Almost all Keedup workflow systems are automated. Keywording reference images are reduced in size to shave seconds from processes such as saving metadata, and a satellite server in Montreal, Canada, is used to turbo-charge transmission speeds.

Clients can opt for different levels of speed.  Priority Image Flow is available around the clock, and aims for return on an ASAP basis, generally within minutes.  Not all image sets or videos require immediate processing.  Our workflow systems still add value by making it possible to organise and return images or video in an orderly fashion, so clients can opt for slower return times at lower cost – anything up to days or weeks.

Where a client has its own keywording or workflow system, Keedup can work with that system, or assist in adapting it to be more efficient.  A number of clients already work with Keedup in that way