Certification Program Identifies Cameras and Software That Meet Content Delivery Requirements
Netflix is putting its stamp of approval on a variety of production and post-production tools via the Netflix Post Technology Alliance (NPTA). The NPTA logo identifies products that have been developed in collaboration with Netflix to meet the company’s technical and delivery specifications.
Netflix said it will hold a technology briefing for NPTA members in conjunction with IBC in Amsterdam every September, supplemented by quarterly email updates and notices of any roadmap updates or spec changes that will keep them up to date with Netflix delivery requirements.
The first four categories of products covered by the NPTA are cameras, creative editorial, color-grading and IMF packaging. The program will expand in the future to include production sound, dubbing, and other post-production categories, Netflix said. But the company won’t strive to approve everything — for example, Netflix won’t be certifying lenses, opting instead to certify the cameras that are responsible for passing lens metadata into post-production.
The first products certified by the NPTA come from Adobe, Arri, Avid, Blackmagic Design, Canon, Colorfront, Fraunhofer IIS, Filmlight, Marquise Technologies, MTI Film, Ownzones, Panasonic, Red Digital Cinema, Rohde & Schwarz and Sony. The NPTA certification is applied to specific products, not a company’s offerings across the board.
In a post at the company’s Technology Blog, Netflix said it anticipates adding “many more” tools to the program and noted that inclusion in the program “is not a prescription for which products to use,” only an indicator that an included product “has been vetted for delivery to Netflix.”
Prescription or not, it seems likely that the NPTA logo will give products a leg up on their competition, at least among creators who deliver to Netflix — or have ambitions of doing so. Joining the NPTA program requires “extensive testing” of a manufacturer’s products to ensure they meet technical specs, Netflix said in an FAQ. Participation in the program is free, but Netflix said it may ask companies to chip in to pay for related events.
A complete list of participating products is available at the NPTA website.
