Contributed by Jay Batista, Tedial General Manager, US Operations
As Shakespeare says, “A rose by any name would smell as sweet,” but in today’s Media and Entertainment Industry, the number of companies selling media asset management and workflow systems seems to double every day! All MAMs are not the same, and while the language the marketers use to promote the products is often rich, expansive and all encompassing, broadcasters can save themselves a lot of pain, time and money by understanding the various types of MAMs and workflow tools available, and where a particular product provides the best solution.
Know what you want and ask for it! Quality vendors will answer your questions and provide references and ensure you get the system best suited to your requirements.
So what are all these different MAMs?
MAM for linear play-out: Often utilized for enhancing or extending a master control automation system, these dedicated MAMs support a linear channel and effectively automate a number of repetitive station tasks such as dub lists and preparing media for air. They need to be workhorses and have a solid integration with the local automation and traffic systems. The best of breed systems employ the SMPTE BXF interface for this communication channel and come with ready third party tool integrated workflows to handle the standard chores a Television broadcast facility addresses on a daily basis. There are a number of these cost effective systems available, and typically their drawback is a lack of flexibility, business analysis options or limits on their upgrade applications.
Traffic Extended MAMs: A subset of the MAM for linear playout operations are library management tools that are sold as embedded solutions or packaged with Traffic and Billing Systems, Content Management software for OTT or VOD distribution, or Work Order systems. These extend a particular tool in an operation, and often suffer from the limits of the playout MAMs, as well as the limits of some vendors to devote development and support resources to more than their core product line.
Production Asset Managers: Years ago we would call them PAMs, but vendors have tried to blur the lines of their products’ abilities to widen their market reach. Library systems that prepare production schedules and manage workflows to create versions of media, track version relationships and provide automated or manual quality control focused on a particular editing platform meet this essential need. Managing “parent media” and all various “children” versions is of prime importance to production support software. These systems are often maximized to a particular editing toolset and have limited expansion capabilities, but what they do, they do extremely well.
Business Process Managers: Marrying your library to workflow engines for a network operation can bring some solid benefits, especially in task management for employees, automation of repetitive tasks and business analysis for the executive team. These systems are more flexible, customizable and provide more insight into large operations with reports and dashboards. BPM MAMs often integrate into traffic and work order systems, all internal systems including custom built products, and external systems for supplier input and distribution capabilities. If your organization is looking to measure and manage increasing throughput and add new operations or functionalities, a BPM orchestration system may be the best solution for you. If your goal is managing your employees better, understanding their workload and watching the bottom line, BPM MAMs can provide the task management by individual and user groups to control all segments of your company. Key to finding a good BPM MAM is their support third party vendor list. How many common products do they already support? These systems are usually customized to a particular operation, and they can be expensive to build due to the unique requirements of a particular broadcaster.
Enterprise Systems: While many vendors will promote their software as an “enterprise” solution, only a very few actually have a system designed to support multi-site, multi-department, multi-tenant operations. Enterprise solutions build on BPM MAM tools and add the ability to limitlessly scale throughput, manage millions of assets, workflows and users, and support unique, geographically dispersed operations. PAMs and specialized MAMs are often built into these solutions. These are expensive, multi-year projects with major benefits. For example, one of the world’s largest broadcasters Televisa of Mexico has deployed an enterprise system to manage decades of archives, newsroom system integration for story collection and automatic distribution, sports logging at live events across the nation, PAMs operations for Telenovela production, and user support for over 500 individuals across 5 geographically separated operation centers. The automation of workflows, task management and business analytics has measurably reduced overhead and labor costs.
Specialized MAMs: Sports logging tools, archive management systems, distributed production applications for TV Groups, Cloud based systems, systems with internal programmable playlists—there are a number of specialized options available, each with particular benefits that may be just what your organization needs. Yet, specialization comes with a price, usually a limitation in one or more areas of the product. When considering a specialized library and workflow system, it is best to investigate their references fully. Only users can tell you whether the product will meet or exceed your requirements.
Armed with understanding the many types of systems available, what other questions should you be considering as you look to purchase or upgrade your library management systems? Studio Video over IP will become your way of life in the next few years, and your MAM needs to not only support the IP infrastructure requirements but should have a proven record of innovation and the ability to move the system into cloud services. Object relational grid databases provide a fundamental library design that will allow true scaling of your metadata and the system, and there is no end to the growth of metadata! If you understand what you need to achieve through library automation manage and control, and you’ll be able to determine which solutions are best for you.
About Jay Batista
With 35+ years experience in the broadcast industry, Jay Batista brings his technical background and management acumen to his leadership role as General Manager of Tedial, Spain’s North American operations. Most recently the Chief Operating Officer of StorerTV and the President / GM of AmberFin USA, Jay has held executive positions since 1990, managing strategic growth, sales and marketing, mergers and acquisitions, and product innovation. Starting his first radio job at 16, Jay has held engineering positions in radio, television and satellite communications operations. Jay holds a Masters Degree from Ohio University’s School of Radio & Television, has taught at three universities and is active on community boards and non-profit organizations.
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