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Media Asset Management: Integrate to accumulate |
IN order to stay at the leading edge of broadcast solutions, OmniBus is constantly re-assessing its approach to media and asset management.
Many years ago, we were the first to expound the importance of tying MAM with the understanding of where media was located and the ability to move it around.
After all, a media asset management system should not be merely a database with pictures.
You have to know how to manage and move media around a facility, how to track usage of content and the existence of material on multiple servers and archives . and how to access it.
We followed that by providing richer asset management solutions, allowing broadcasters to employ their own metadata schemas in which they could store and track business-related information.
And the third phase of the development was the recognition that the only way to derive real value from a MAM system was to tie it to a broadcast workflow.
Having vast amounts of information in a database won't save - or even make - you any money unless it's a constituent part of an over-arching workflow system.
So we came up with context-sensitive task sheets that enabled operators to interact with the media in a very structured way.
If, for example, you have 100 new commercials coming into your facility a day, the task sheets ensured operators ingested them at the correct time, passed them through quality control and notified the traffic people of their existence in the system.
And if, for any reason, an advertisement did not pass QC, it could be passed back to the supplier quickly and easily with a message that another copy was needed.
With integration of that kind, a media asset management system really begins to earn its own keep.
But, obviously, we can't afford to stand still and there are a couple of areas where we see the technology changing.
We are moving away from the concept of fixed, extremely complex SQL databases.
Modern technology makes it easy for us to take more advantage of XML; as a result, asset stores are less rigid and structured and, therefore, users can configure them to contain just the relevant metadata they need before passing them seamlessly around a facility.
This means that, for example, you may have an XML representation of a programme that contains 100 fields of information. The operators ingesting or quality checking the material will, obviously, be interested in a completely different set of information from the schedulers or the people who are making the promos.
The use of XML makes a system extremely extensible so that broadcasters can add the extra fields and properties they want and can control how the information is presented to operators who see the data that's relevant to them in a style that suits them best.
I think there is an unnecessary obsession with standards. Make no mistake, standards are very important at the touch-points between different systems - i.e. the in and out points of a broadcast facility - but they are not so critical within a broadcast facility.
By trying to be all things to all people, the standards become unnecessarily unwieldy.
If, for example, you're a small regional broadcaster, you will want to be able to build a metadata schema that works for you and your business safe in the knowledge that the elements that are relevant to the outside world obey the standards at the point data leaves and enters your facility.
This would allow you to apply your own schema internally and our XML model has been designed to make that a reality.
We're also moving in the direction of allowing the broadcast operators to interact with media asset management using the broadcast tools on the OmniBus G3 desktop that we designed to be the single, multi-faceted interface in technical facilities.
Which leaves the question: what about the needs of the other users requiring MAM access in the rest of the building?
Traditionally, MAM suppliers have fallen into one of two camps.
They provide either a stand-alone media asset management application that has to be installed on everybody's workstation or, alternatively, web browsing technology that interacts with the MAM system.
My view is that neither of these is ideal. By all means, use the web as a way of distributing software to people's desktops but I don't think it's a good idea to make your user interface web-based as you're very restricted in the way it can react and feel to the user.
The choice of user interface - the office desktop - has already been made for the users. While Macs obviously have their place in graphics and design, the Windows platform reigns supreme in broadcast offices throughout the industry.
If people are using Microsoft Office every day, shouldn't they also expect their media asset management system to be integrated into that environment in exactly the same way as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets?
To that end, OmniBus has been working closely with Microsoft to bring the state-of-the-art technologies available within Office 2003 to broadcast users, enabling them to have rich media asset management experiences on the desktop without ever leaving the screen that's most familiar to them.
We see the correct utilization of off-the-shelf Microsoft tools honed and supplemented by OmniBus' strong broadcast infrastructure and media asset management giving users the best of both worlds . and an extremely cost-effective way of managing their assets on a potentially global basis.
And that's another troublesome point with many MAM solutions - they simply haven't produced the savings that broadcasters were expecting; indeed, in a lot of cases, broadcasters have had to hire even more people to input and manage all the data that is generated.
I think that's somewhat missing the point.
The answer to all these potential minefields is to make sure you really understand why you're going down the MAM path. Are you doing it to increase and realise the value of your assets or to improve the efficiency of your workforce?
Applying a MAM solution in isolation without having a true understanding of business processes, workflow or - critically - media management is a mistake.
Without seamless integration with the broadcast infrastructure, even the most fancy MAM system will never properly carry out the 'management' in asset management.
It will be a solution in search of a function, permanently playing catch up with the reality of what's happening in the rest of your facility.
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