MAM: a contextual retrospective on changing times, technologies and processes

MEDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT | MAM: a contextual retrospective on changing times, technologies and processes

Written by Brett Lindsay, digital philosopher and new technology consultant

Since the digitisation of media throughout the film and television industries, the amount of footage captured and stored as file-based media has created new challenges for how productions need to work with their data, but it has also given rise to new opportunities and new ways of working.

New technology, the rate of change, increased demand and consumption of media content and a virus epidemic have had and will have a huge impact on local and international productions, remote workforces and cloud computing/ storage. Media Asset Management is crucial now more than ever, as productions start to make use of decentralised resources accessing centralised infrastructure.

It has become more and more critical to manage the media from camera to edit and final master. With the various resolutions, formats, frame rates and codecs that new digital cameras offer, the understanding and storage of them has become an important facet of any set or production.

PROBLEM STATEMENT Two decades ago ‘media workflows’ weren’t something discussed in pre-production meetings. Producers and production managers had to ensure they had the right crew and relied on them and their ways of working to deliver the production through the process.

In tape-based production, the reliance was on the physical tape that held the captured ‘gold’, and in professional setups the tapes were only used once: recorded in cameras, logged off of VTR, digitised in edit and then, hopefully, stored in library with log notes and easy-to-find labels in the hopes that, if needed, in future it would be available.

Concerns during this era of production were generation loss in quality of footage from each run of the tape/duplication. The rate of change meant that, for a while in the early-2000s, it seemed that every few months there was a new tape format to gear up for, ranging from BETA,

26 | SCREENAFRICA | APRIL 2020 Digi-BETA, DVCPro, Mini-DV to HDV, and – up until a few years ago – most airplanes even made use of Hi-8 tapes, meaning that production companies had to ensure they had the correct hardware to deliver the precious productions. This gave rise to post-production facilities that would invest in the numerous end points for media delivery and allow productions access to shared facilities as needed. This seemingly worked well and allowed for the rise of specialist roles throughout the production process.

CURRENT PERSPECTIVE The dawn of digital and its pervasive spread through productions of any scale has meant that while things have changed, mostly for the better, in some instances new challenges have been created.

More affordable digital cameras and the endless range of options now cater to any user and budget. The impact is that we have exponentially increased the amount of media captured to meet the evergrowing demand of content required to meet the eager audiences out there – audiences consuming content through mobile phones, online streaming, terrestrial, satellite and OTT VOD services.

The ubiquity of the modern camera has meant that we can go anywhere with them, taking our image capturing to new heights with drones and up-close-andpersonal action with GoPros and action cameras. All of this, however, adds to the complexity of managing media.

Even the simplest of productions has become a multi-cam production with the inclusion of DSLR cameras, drones, GoPros and, quite often, even smartphones, each one of them with different resolutions, formats, frame rates and codecs.

Along with the media data is an endless amount of specific and customised meta-data information – essentially the data about the data, which now provides richer information and immediate ‘log notes’ about the camera, various timecodes, production, operator, DoP info (if setup on camera prior to shoot), etc. So, if the footage alone wasn’t

New technology, the rate of change, increased demand and consumption of media content and a virus epidemic have had and will have a huge impact on local and international productions, remote workforces and cloud computing/storage. Media Asset Management is crucial now more than ever, as productions start to make use of decentralised resources accessing centralised infrastructure.

enough to worry about, there’s even more (albeit very useful) data to manage. So, how to handle it all and what do with it, now that it’s here, there and everywhere?

OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION These developments have seen the rise of the media management/workflow specialist, data/media wrangler and – these days – we have DITs (Digital Imaging Technician) on set and into post-production, assisting DoPs and directors with the ability to view graded media quite often in real-time.

These days, clapper loaders, loggers, on-set editors, grade artists and camera assistants have all started to merge into one critically important role on any set, with deep knowledge of the media requirements/limitations of equipment and a broad view of production requirements, from camera to edit and master delivery.

While the digital age may have made capturing footage easier, it may not have made it simpler. The numerous tape formats have been replaced by numerous camera card options all requiring their own reader to allow for the transfer of media from the ‘native’ card to a mobile HDD (Hard Disk Drive), SSD (Solid State Drive), or NAS (Network-Attached Storage) solution.

INDUSTRY IMPACT In a relatively short period of time new players have become established brands and trusted partners on every production around the world. As technology drives new opportunities, so more areas of need are identified. Brands like LaCie, Western Digital, Orico, SanDisk, AJA and BlackMagic, to name a few, are now commonplace wherever you go, all delivering valuable services at every point of any production.

BUT WAIT, THAT’S NOT ALL… The rate of change hasn’t stopped or slowed, in fact it’s quite the opposite, all this data needs a final home, but who has enough central storage for all of it?

In order to have data ‘on premises’, at the production facility, important infrastructure is required to support it. This includes data centres with racks, network switches, power supply management, climate controlled temperature and humidity. In most environments this will also require a resident engineer, or a service-level agreement with an external specialist trusted with keeping it all going. This solution must also provide quick turnaround, in terms of fixing issues at the speed required in the TV and film production process, to keep everyone moving forward in order to continue feeding the media monster and eager audiences.

With all of this racking up huge investment costs for production companies and facilities, not to mention large, on-going costs to maintain and support it, is there a better way to do handle data storage?

KEY AREAS OF FOCUS How do you ensure your media is managed effectively throughout the process and provide continuous access to the right people when they need it, sometimes all at the same time?

ENTER THE CLOUD For a lot of creatives in film and TV, the idea of also having to be technicallyminded is already daunting enough, and most have trusted crew members that they work with on most productions. The thought, then, that production specialists should now have an understanding of IT is understandably quite daunting.

Cloud storage allows for users to expand their storage requirements as they require without having to go through the trouble of setting up their own infrastructure. The benefits to using a shared cloud storage service means you don’t have to hire on-premises engineers or incur expensive SLAs for infrastructure you own.

WHO IS DOING THIS NOW? Modern MAM software demystifies and revolutionises the hard work around managing your media, reducing operational costs, improving efficiency and providing more time for creatives to do great work.

MAM software allows for users, regardless of their specific focus on any production, to access and interact with the media of their choosing. Editors, loggers and assistants have workflows to suit them, while directors and producers have different tools that allow them to view media without disturbing anyone else in the workflow. Most of them will help you easily catalogue the vast amount of media from multiple sources and allow some sort of preview or ability to log or add to the metadata.

Automation has also become a key feature of MAM software, allowing you to crunch through all of the media at your disposal and make quick work of organising it, transcoding it into your preferred format and arranging into the correct folders for later access. This software is often referred to as MAM, but is also known as DAM (Digital Asset Management) or a CMS (Content Management System). A quick Google search will find you a ton of options, most with a free trial period. A lot of the storage hardware and NLE (Non-Linear Editing) software, like Adobe Premiere Pro or Avid Media Composer, has some basic level of MAM available in their features or has supporting software to enhance it.

There are a number of productions and broadcasters in Africa looking for ways of being more efficient in how they deliver high-quality episodes while maintaining a viable business model. However, even a bit of research yields a lot of results and plenty of choices. The best advice, for now, is to ask yourself a few easy questions to identify your needs in a MAM and cloud storage solution:

• What am I wanting to produce? • What do I think I need to produce it? (Number of users and storage volume) • Do I need to allow multiple users to access it? • Will it improve the way we work already? • How much will it cost? • Is there an option between capital investment and operational expense?

New technology exists, the decision to find what works and ultimately incorporate it into your business or production is a choice that will require a level of change management for the way you work and the crew that uses it.

A lot of partners provide very useful case studies and testimonials around new workflows and technology which will help you better understand the fit and the expected outcomes of this new way of working.