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A joint EBU-Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) project that will enable broadcasters to save money and work smarter has won the prestigious Judges' Prize at the International Broadcasting Convention, in Amsterdam. The IBC2012 Awards Ceremony will be held in the RAI Auditorium on Sunday 9 September.

The Framework for Interoperable Media Services (FIMS) is an open standard for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for media that, in simple terms, overcomes expensive, disruptive incompatibilities in IT-based broadcast production technologies.

IT-based solutions are supplanting dedicated video and audio equipment as broadcasters seek media format flexibility, extensive metadata management and cost reduction through the use of general purpose PCs and networks. Yet despite the long-established role of IT in media production, system incompatibilities still cause inefficiencies and drive up costs.

The project has now successfully delivered the FIMS 1.0 specification, which is already operational at Bloomberg. Other industry players are considering following suit.

Speaking on behalf of the FIMS project, the EBU’s Jean-Pierre Evain said: “A few years ago I gave a presentation at the IBC conference about Service Oriented Architectures, and I would never have dreamed of results coming so fast to the market. My colleagues working on FIMS have been excellent, and the industry has recognized these efforts.”

EBU Director of Technology & Innovation, Lieven Vermaele, welcomed the award announcement saying: “Our support of the FIMS project will continue, as we expect its results to have a concrete impact on reducing costs and complexity of integration for EBU Members in the long run. This award provides well-deserved recognition of the work done so far. FIMS has now delivered a solid base-layer specification, but it will grow in terms of services and functionalities demanded by new applications and use cases.”

The Chairman of the IBC Innovation Awards, Michael Lumley, said: “IBC values sharing knowledge above all else, and in developing practical standards so quickly, the FIMS partners had to share their knowledge if the resulting standards were going to be robust enough to be useful globally. I am delighted that we can honour EBU and AMWA for their efforts in driving the FIMS project.”

The Judges' Prize is one of a number of awards presented during IBC each year, and typically presented for innovative projects which have particular creative, technical or commercial imagination.