Media asset management is happening more now than ever, but we are becoming less and less aware of its presence. Take your cell phone camera for example. When your cell phone takes a picture, there is a ton of supplemental info in your picture file. There is the time/date stamp, but there is other info embedded as well. Information such as GPS location. Imagine looking at a picture of your great parents wedding day. Not only did you not know that date, but you had no idea where that picture was taken. Our great-grandchildren will be able to go the exact location on earth where we were married. It’s pretty impressive when you think about it. It’s the metadata in the picture file that enables us to use that information.
People will tell you that metadata is “data about data” but what does that really mean? What that means is if you have a media file, you can add supplemental data to attach to that video clip to make it easier to search in the future. This sounds intimidating to some people, but the reality you encounter this phenomenon every day of your life. It comes to you in the form of YouTube.
If you were to search for “Charlie Brown Christmas” on YouTube, you may not remember what the name of the program, but you remember it was a Christmas program with a dog named “Snoopy” in it. So you visit YouTube you search or “Christmas” and “Snoopy” and sure enough, you will be brought right to the link for “Charlie Brown Christmas.” This is because whoever posted that video to YouTube also added the searchable info of “Snoopy”, who is Charlie Brown’s dog.
When post houses and newsrooms move into digital media asset management, it becomes a new culture in how media is managed. You have the capability of having multiple departments access the same media. This makes sense because if you have your whole facility using the same software for email, why not have them all on the same software for media asset management?
There are other considerations you should have when adding media to a digital asset management system. First being the archive is only as good as the metadata being attached to it. In the previous example, if the person who posted the video did not think to add any other searchable data such as the other characters names in Charlie Brown Christmas (such as Snoopy, Woodstock, Linus, Lucy, etc.), then it makes it more difficult for someone to find that clip in the future. Especially because the whole point is to make these video files searchable for years and years to come.
The other major consideration should be how to manage the database that all these assets are creating. It is crucial when you are using any digital media asset management system that you keep your actual database on raided storage. This is important because you need to have the flexibility to have a hard drive fail. If you keep your asset manager’s database on non-protected storage you run the risk of losing the entire database should you have a hard drive failure. Most manufacturers will insist that the database for their software is stored outside of the operating system on some raided networked storage.
The last consideration is future proofing. If you invest in a digital asset management system, you need to ensure that its database is in an open enough format so that if the company you first invest in disappears for some reason, you can choose a new company that can support your already existing database. If the database is compatible with Oracle or MySQL, you are in a good spot.
There are a ton of great products on the market that handle the management of video assets. Take Avid Interplay for example. You will find Interplay in most news rooms and major post houses in New England. What Interplay does is it allows its users to index their media assets from inside and outside of video editing systems. This can also be done within Avid’s flagship Media Composer editing software. Users can have all their assets in their editing bins to be automatically checked in. What Interplay also allows you to do is index your media from outside of Media Composer as well. Using Interplay Access, a Photoshop artist can check in their work into Interplay to have it searchable for the video editing staff. So not only are these asset management systems indexing your video assets, but they have the capability of indexing all of your assets. You need the web team to find a graphic? Marketing needs a logo for an upcoming tradeshow? Legal needs a company logo for a letterhead? Your media asset management system can bring it all together for all departments in your organization.
A more affordable alternative to Avid’s Interplay is Cat DV. Cat DV is found in more ad agencies, smaller post houses and news rooms. What makes Cat DV such a great product is the system requirements are more lenient than an Avid Interplay. Cat DV can run as a server on most Macs and PCs.
Many of these asset management systems worked with applications, but more and more of them are moving toward a web-browser-based user interface. This is a powerful paradigm shift because people used to have to buy expensive licenses per seat of anyone who was to see the database. Now, with more and more companies moving toward a web browser based tool, this means that anyone on the same network as the media asset management system can browse, add and update assets in the database.
Wonder if this is for you? Well Cat DV offers a free trial. Try using it and seeing how it helps your day to day post work. You can visit them at www.squarebox.com.
Steve McGrath is a Broadcast Sales Engineer for HB Communications. He has worked with NBC, ABC, CBS, NESN, NECN, Fox, ESPN, Reuters, Pentagon, USDA, Powderhouse and many others. You may reach him