MAM goes to asia

Multi-platform delivery, file-based operation and production budget cuts have all played their part in catapulting digital archiving and asset management from a useful programme research tool into a core part of broadcast operations, as we have noted for some years.

But now it seems that what used to be the preserve of well-heeled corporations in the West is making significant inroads over here.

At last year’s IBC in Amsterdam, UK company Software Generation Ltd (SGL) announced that HBO Asia has selected its SGL FlashNet system as a key part of a cutting-edge multi-application archive system based on sophisticated media asset management (MAM).

Based in Singapore, HBO Asia is a joint venture of media giants Paramount Films, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Time Warner and Universal Studios, and claims to bring the best of Hollywood to Asia through extensive licensing deals with major Hollywood studios such as Columbia/TriStar, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Bros.

Viewers have a choice of five commercial-free subscription movie channels – HBO, HBO Signature, HBO Family, HBO Hits and Cinemax – plus a subscription video-on-demand service. As well as exclusive movie rights, HBO Asia also offers a range of award-winning exclusive shows under its HBO Original brand – all of which adds up to a vast volume of valuable archive material.

Already a seasoned user of SGL FlashNet 5.0 within an Avid environment, HBO Asia has upgraded to the FlashNet 6.0 release, working with Avid’s Interplay non-linear workflow asset management system, which in turn is integrated with Nverizon on-air automation. At the heart of HBO Asia’s Multi Application system, FlashNet 6.0 controls the archive of material from Omneon playout servers and provides added Interplay archive components.

“The Multi Application archive at HBO Asia is one of the most sophisticated digital archives within the region,” claims Vincent Teo, Senior Vice President of Technology & Operations at HBO Asia. “By adding SGL FlashNet as a key component, we have reliable software that controls main elements of the archive, whilst providing a completely secure storage environment.”

SGL FlashNet is based around a clustered architecture, which the company says can scale to fit any organisation, from the largest networks to the smallest local broadcaster. FlashNet’s high levels of redundancy and fast data transfer capabilities are claimed to allow the system to fit seamlessly into virtually any environment, regardless of existing architecture.

SGL is so confident about the local market that it has recruited ex Ciprico and Avid engineering manager William Tay as Operations Manager for the SEA (South East Asian) market, who is based in Singapore.

Licensing deal

Meanwhile Front Porch Digital, which claims to be the global leader in content storage management (CSM) for the media and entertainment industry, has got even closer to Avid. In February the company announced a product license agreement covering the integration of its DIVArchive software with Avid Interplay, along with the original Avid Workgroup 4 Media Manager product line.

“We continuously look to offer our customers the broadest possible choice in archive systems, and are delighted to announce this next level in our co-operation with Front Porch,” says Sam Bogoch, Director of Infrastructure Solutions at Avid Technology. “Front Porch has successfully deployed its Avid-licensed systems throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia, and we are pleased to work with a company that is making such a strong commitment to our industry-leading workflow products.”

According to Front Porch Digital’s President and CEO Mike Knaisch, the DIVArchive/Avid interface offers easy SD and HD content storage expansion, material exchange, transcoding, and long-term archiving. Given that DIVArchive provides a central storage system serving multiple post-production, newsroom and on-air systems, customers need only a single investment in storage equipment. In addition, in-path transcoding permits true tapeless content sharing and exchange between different workflow ‘silos’ in a broadcast environment, adds Knaisch.

Last November Tel Aviv-based IETV (Israel Educational Television), Israel’s oldest broadcaster, installed an entirely digital tapeless production workflow based around DIVArchive, covering everything from production, post, playout and archive to purchasing.

Budget-conscious

Avid itself has of course been steadily acquiring companies related to its core editing business, one of the most recent being broadcast automation specialist Sundance Digital. Now Sundance has developed its own archive management toolset.

Aimed at small stations and launched just before last year’s IBC, the Sundance Archive Engine is described as a fully-integrated and configured archiving system that enables broadcasters to easily retrieve archive footage without spending hours recovering video and managing storage assets.

According to Product Manager Rick Stora, the system provides budget-conscious customers an alternative to pricey archive solutions. “Broadcasters can adapt to expanding storage needs without adding more costly on-line video drives,” he says, “and as the engine lets users keep more video close at hand under automation management, the possibility of accidentally deleting important material in order to free space on the server is significantly reduced.”

Built around a 16-drive Avid storage chassis and based on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system, the unit features 500 GB SATA drives, a hardware RAID controller, SGL FlashNet and the Sundance Archive Manager software application.

A Sundance Archive Manager application supervises media on the on-air server and near-line storage, deciding which clips should be sent and retrieved from the Sundance Archive Engine, while the actual pull, send and delete requests to the Engine are issued by FlashNet. Up to 6.37 TB (terabytes) of RAID 5 near-line content storage can be managed in conjunction with any Sundance certified video server.

Rich media

A new archive project facility for Kuwait Television in Kuwait City marks not only the first of its kind in the Middle East but also the first installation of the Harris Invenio digital asset management tool in the region.

Comprising a suite of software applications for the ingest and management of rich media assets, Invenio is claimed to act as the front end to the workflow engine, providing consolidated metadata that makes it easy to find, manage and distribute ingested content.

Invenio is actually just part of a wider package supplied by Harris Broadcast, which includes an Intelligent Media Mover (IMM) workflow management system, Nexio XS servers, Velocity NX editors, Centrio broadcast multiviewer and Platinum router, all HD-ready. Harris calls this its ‘ONE’ approach, bringing together integrated products in a field that seems to be increasingly moving away from standalone systems.

“After a rigorous evaluation with key manufacturers we chose Harris because the company was able to provide an integrated solution to meet our clients’ needs,” says Ali Al-Elayyan, CEO of system installer Gulf Media Company, adding that the Harris engineering team was locally based and natively spoke the same language.

In the news

Managing news assets is a notoriously fast-moving business trading in brief clips, but according French news management specialist Dalet Digital Media Systems it took some twenty man-years of research and development to bring to market Version 2.0 of its Media Asset Management Engine, unveiled at last year’s IBC.

“Intensive collaboration with our partners and customers was necessary in order to optimise metadata tracking across the workflow and facilitate multi-platform content distribution,” notes Nicolas Hans, Director of Marketing at Dalet.

The new release is claimed to provide dramatic performance improvements in file-based ingest and content distribution, as well as support for HD formats. A new Dalet Xtend for Apple Final Cut Pro also allows access to the Media Asset Management platform from any Apple FCP seat, with improved support for video formats such as IMX and HD along with third-party editing systems and video servers. Dalet claims its systems are used in 50 countries by over 1,700 big name customers, including Media Corporation of Singapore.

A clever innovation in news asset management is NewsML (News Mark-up Language) developed by the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC.org) and now adopted by scores of agencies worldwide. Instead of storing all related content in the same package, NewsML is able to simply point to sources held on a web site somewhere else. This means users retrieve only the data they need, making NewsML far more efficient on storage and bandwidth overheads.

Higher productivity

While we generally think of asset management systems as entities that either contain or at the very least tabulate content, it’s easy to forget that the way operations and tasks are managed can make a significant impact on overall efficiency.

It was for this reason that Red Bee Media, the former in-house BBC Broadcast division and now the largest playout and channel management business in the UK, has tooled up with California-based Xytech’s Enterprise software with Job Management, Scheduling and Bidding modules to manage the workflow in its new Format Transfer Area.

As well as business workflow management and resource scheduling software, Xytech also produces asset management systems, and recently appointed Digistor as its reseller for the Asia Pacific region. The Red Bee installation was designed to manage various working processes in its Format Transfer Area such as budget management, project and order creation, scheduling and tracking of resources, hopefully resulting in increased workflow efficiency.

At last year’s IBC, Ceiton of Germany launched Web Workflow PPS, which unusually has a 3D visualisation engine to show a dynamic overview of any workflow in perspective. According to Ceiton, which has already installed several systems in its home country, Web Workflow PPS is the first real workflow management system specifically designed for the broadcasting, motion picture, post production, and pre-mastering industries. Unlike off-the-shelf systems, this web-based tool is claimed to be adaptable any workflow – from a simple service procedure to the most complex production processes.

By unifying quotations, order production, scheduling, time and activity recording, contacts, billing and content archiving in one system, the company claims the system streamlines entire business processes, while saving time and money at the same time.

You might expect to see asset management functions in productivity tools, but now you’ll even find it incorporated within graphics systems. For example the virtual studios and on-air graphics systems specialist Orad has teamed up with media asset management company Cinegy to create what they describe as a comprehensive digital graphic workflow solution for the broadcasting market, which made its debut at last year’s IBC.

Users start by registering graphic assets, including templates, rundowns, data sources, clips, and audio files, to a database to be shared by multiple users in different locations. The storage of the media remains at all times transparent to the final user, who is also able to associate metadata to specific assets and search the database accordingly.

By storing graphics assets into Cinegy’s Media Asset Management system, Orad says the entire production workflow is substantially improved. A user rights management system is provided to manage user permissions, authorisation and access to assets stored in the database, while access is provided to catalogued contents – such as video and audio clips, stills and documents – by searching metadata fields or by predefined filters.

Administration tools are also included for database maintenance, backup, upgrade, synchronization and cleanup, says Orad. It’s all further evidence, as if any were needed, that content creation and distribution has become increasingly dependent on IT processes and procedures. It’s all a far cry from the time-honoured methods – and let’s face it inefficiencies – of traditional TV production.