The goal of building a media factory is to simplify and automate content delivery to multiple platforms, explains Julian Fernandez-Campon, business solution director, Tedial
In order to be successful in the new multi-platform, multi-format environment, it’s essential that MAM technology providers are very precise in their use of IT technologies when creating a MAM system that evolves to meet the growing demands of the consumer.
By selecting the correct media IT solutions architecture, media companies can integrate their entire business from acquisition and production through to packaging and delivery, enabling far more efficient and cost-effective operations.
Applying IT technologies, media companies can take advantage of a system where new services can be provisioned for new business opportunities and growth areas quickly including: UHD, nonlinear services, multi-platform delivery, scalability, third-generation environments and profitability within media operations.
To enable broadcasters and content owners to maximise these opportunities, MAM systems should include key features that further improve flexibility and efficiency.
A key way to satisfy these growing media complexities and to maximise/automate content delivery operations, is for modern MAM/workflow solutions to adopt SMPTE IMF methodologies to provide a true media factory.
A media factory is used to process and transform content coming from external providers, or produced internally, according to each specific delivery platform requirement where typical tasks include: re-wrapping, transcoding, segmentation, DRM, generation on ancillary XMLs and all the related media needed for the platform.
The goal of building a media factory is to simplify and automate (as much as possible) content delivery to multiple platforms, focusing on nonlinear issues due to their inherent complexity.
In order to take advantage of IMF methodologies, the MAM/workflow system must have the ability to support extended metadata for efficient content management.
This is why leading MAM software companies have begun to implement a true object relational database as their core product platform, and evolve the classic concept “one asset is a clip” into a more sophisticated media-set that references into a single, logical container all the physical media, audio, subtitles and other related content such as posters and trailers to facilitate this expansion of relationships into hundreds and thousands of reliable connections.
The second design requirement to build a media factory is the use of IMF methodologies themselves: CPL (composition playlist) to define which components are going to be delivered (audio languages, subtitles, etc.); media essences stored in the MAM, as a reference of the source formats that will be used for delivery; and an OPL (Output Profile List) to define the transformations using a set of third-party engines for transforming the media.
This content was first published at IBC2016
The views expressed are those of the author.
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