Every day, the Telebelluno newsroom receives content from very different sources: professional ENG cameras, smartphones used in the field, audio recordings, SD archive material, photographs and images.

All of this material has to arrive quickly in the same Avid MediaCentral production environment, with NEXIS storage, ready to be edited, published and archived.

The problem was not the content. It was the complexity hidden behind every file.

The solution designed with Telebelluno starts from a simple principle: anyone should be able to upload any content without worrying about the format.

That is why Ation Flow introduces a Universal Watchfolder: a shared network folder where the user simply drops the file. From that moment on, the system takes over.

Behind this simplicity lies an automatic orchestration: Ation Flow recognizes the type of content, analyzes it, decides the correct path, normalizes it, loads it into MediaCentral and, where useful, enriches it with metadata and transcriptions.

The end user only sees the result: the material ready for production, or the material that needs review.

The value of the Universal Watchfolder emerges the moment a piece of content is dropped into the ingest folder.

From there, Ation Flow takes over: it inspects the file, reads its technical characteristics, orientation, resolution, codec, and the presence and type of audio tracks, and automatically selects the most suitable processing path.

For Telebelluno, every piece of content is normalized to a single standard: XDCAM EX35 50i.

This means that, regardless of the source, the final result is always consistent, ready for production and aligned with the newsroom’s standards.

The archive stays organized over time.

Editing timelines no longer have to deal with inconsistent formats.

Quality no longer depends on repeated manual checks on every single asset.

The vertical video case is one of the most immediate examples of Ation Flow’s value.

Instead of producing an image with black side bars, poorly suited to broadcast, Flow automatically reformats the content into a full 16:9 frame, creating a blurred background from the frame itself.

The result is a cleaner, more readable video that is consistent with the broadcast standard.

It is a seemingly small but decisive intervention: multiplied across dozens of clips a day, it removes a repetitive manual task and turns a potential operational bottleneck into an invisible step in the workflow.

The value increases even further with news content, where many videos arrive in vertical format and have to be handled, normalized and published in the shortest possible time.

Ation Flow adds a second layer of automation: whenever a piece of content contains a spoken track — an interview, the audio of a video clip or a field recording — the system automatically triggers transcription.

The text does not stay hidden in a separate metadata file.

It is written directly into the asset’s timeline in MediaCentral, in the form of time-based locators.

For the editor, this means being able to open a clip and see, at the exact point on the timeline, what is being said at that moment. They can jump straight to a sentence, search an interview by keyword or retrieve archive material without having to listen back through hours of content.

Adopting the Universal Watchfolder produced a concrete change in the way the newsroom manages content. Not just more speed, but less complexity for people and greater consistency across the entire production environment.

Previously, bringing content into MediaCentral required technical skills: knowing presets, formats, the correct folders and the expected standards.

Today the operation is accessible to anyone: you drop the file into a shared folder and Ation Flow handles everything else.

The barrier between those who produce content and those who manage the system is drastically reduced.

Every asset is automatically aligned with the production standard chosen by Telebelluno.

This means the archive grows in an orderly, uniform and reusable way, even over the long term. Anyone searching for material tomorrow won’t have to reconcile different formats or manually check file compatibility.

Quality becomes a property of the workflow, not a check left to the individual operator.

Automatic transcription with timeline markers changes the way the newsroom works with footage.

Hours of interviews, statements and recordings are no longer opaque blocks to be listened back through manually. They become content that is searchable, navigable and quotable.

For a television newsroom, this means turning the archive from a simple repository into an active editorial resource.

The Telebelluno case demonstrates the principle at the heart of Ation Flow: shifting repetitive work from people to the system, leaving the newsroom to make the decisions that matter.

A newsroom should not have to wonder how to handle a vertical video, which preset to use or whether a file already complies with the internal standard.

It should focus on what creates value: telling stories.

The Universal Watchfolder also highlights a second key element: Ation Flow makes it possible to build tailor-made workflows, adapted to the client’s real needs, without developing dedicated software.

In Telebelluno’s case, the flow was configured around the newsroom’s operating rules: output standards, destination folders, handling of vertical videos, transcription and publishing to MediaCentral.

This is the promise of a well-designed platform: not to replace the client, but to give them the right levers to work better.

Ation Flow removes operational complexity from media workflows, turning content from different sources into ready, consistent assets that are usable in production environments.