With virtual assets, nxtedition has solved a significant headache for the media industry by simplifying how different product APIs from different vendors can be deeply integrated into nxtedition. Successfully deploying other products to their full potential can be challenging for a traditional broadcaster. Typically, these integrations are highly technical API calls held together by infrastructure solutions – referred to as glue – which can be fragile and difficult to maintain.  

Now, when a nxtedition user selects a "domain" outside of nxtedition, virtual assets will switch to the third-party API and fetch all the data, content, and metadata, displaying it to the user within the nxtedition user interface. For example, if a user switches to the newswire services domain, then nxtedition's search facility can search the entire news services API directly from nxtedition. Users can preview that content within nxtedition, where only the proxy is streamed from the newswires API rather than the high-res version.   

The significant gain with virtual assets is speed; nothing is created inside the nxtedition system; everything is virtual, making it easy and fast to find and assess content within a single platform. Once a user sees the required media or asset, they can harvest it, and the API handles the download of the high-resolution footage or the metadata into nxtedition, ready to be used live on air, managed in a storyboard or sent out as a social post.  

The virtual assets feature behaves like an OS for third-party systems by integrating them deeply into the nxtedition user experience. The same applies to social media, where Tweets or Facebook comments can be virtually ingested and organized in storyboards or sent to html graphic templates. Entire legacy archives can be searched through their APIs instantly, and relevant clips can be brought in on demand. Email inboxes can also be deeply integrated, harvested, and used for story ideas or content.  

Adam Leah, creative director at nxtedition commented: "By using this approach within the nxtedition API, we have made it far easier to integrate with other solutions without having to build customized solutions for each client. In effect, nxtedition becomes the consolidator, hugely reducing complexity, engineering, and exception errors and allowing workflows to run even faster. The added speed and agility that the new virtual assets feature provides will ensure our clients continue to be accurate, fast, and first with their stories."  

Virtual assets will be included with the next major software release to clients.