Text 4: Asset Management
Television content creation is becoming more and more file-based. Broadcasters have to deliver more for less (money). Over-the-air broadcasting is now complemented by satellite, cable offers video on demand (VOD) and interactivity, and now competes with internet protocol television (IPTV) delivered over telco networks. Handheld devices can receive broadcast television and VOD.
Content has to be created for these different delivery channels in multiple formats. Today's over-the-air program is tomorrow's download to mobile. Content is now made available almost simultaneously over several media. The old paradigm of trickle releases to different media over months even years invites piracy. Publishers have learned to monetize program content while it is fresh, in any form the public will consume.
Content creators and publishers are looking to digital asset management (DAM) to improve productivity and to provide sensible management in a file-based production environment.
This article introduces the concepts of asset management. First it answers the question“What are assets? ” The some of the related solutions are described—media management, document management and content management. Finally, it looks at why digital asset management is useful for any enterprise, not just media and publishing industries.
DAM has proved quite a technical challenge. It was not until the end of the twentieth century that affordable systems became available. The fall in the price of processing and disk storage has been the primary enabling factor, along with the ever-increasing bandwidths of computer networks, both within a local area and over long distances. Many of the products that are designed to manage the very large repositories can automate labor-intensive and repetitive tasks. These include cataloging and indexing the content, and the powerful search engines that we use to discover and find content.
To index and catalog digital assets, product developers have leveraged research into the understanding of speech, character recognition and conceptual analysis. The widespread application of these ideas requires considerable processing power to provide real-time ingesting of content, essential in many audio-video applications. The introduction of the low-cost and powerful computer workstations that we now take for granted makes such technology commercially viable.
The modern business creates media content in many guises. Traditionally each department would manage its own media content, usually with some formalized filing structure, as shown in Table 4. Global brand management demands the enterprise-wide sharing content if the corporation is not to descend into chaos, with the wrong logos, out-of-date corporate images, and link-rot on the website.
Table 4 Content in the enterprise
Content is now being delivered over a myriad of different channels. There are the electronic channels: television, ITV (interactive television), Internet and webcasting, cellular phone, and wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs). To this add the conventional print-based media:catalogs, brochures, direct mail, and display advertising. Repurposing the content to offer compelling viewing for these different channels presents an enormous challenge to content publishers and aggregators. The project-based methods familiar to the brochure designer or video producer are replaced with a cooperative web of talent. The potential for mistakes is ripe, with the large number of files and the disparate formats.
Content and media asset management (MAM) are already core back-office applications for the print industries. These systems are ideally suited to the control and management of the large content repositories that publish via the diversity of new technologies.
1.Digital Asset Management (DAM)
Document management has already proved its worth in the traditional print industries. Content management has enabled the efficient deployment of large web sites. As the number of distribution platforms increases, the needs of brand management and the desire to control costs lead naturally to a convergence of the creative and production processes. A large corporation can no longer run print, web, and multi-media production in isolation. Rich media is a term that has been applied to this converged content.
For some enterprises, this convergence may only apply to content creation. It can also extend to the management of marketing collateral and corporate communications. The corporation that communicates directly with the consumer may want an ITV commercial to link through to the company web site. The customer can then view web pages or request further information. All these different media must exhibit a seamless brand image.
The same principles used for content management can be used as the basis of systems for managing rich media asset. The complexity of rich media means that DAM is becoming vital to improve operational efficiency and to control costs.
Rich media production may start with conventional audio and video material, and be enhanced later with synchronized graphic and text elements. The production workflow will have more parallel processes than the traditional linear flow of television production using different creative talent. The pressure to drive down the cost of production is paramount, yet the market is demanding the publication of content in a plethora of format.
2.What are Assets?
A quick look at a dictionary will tell us that the word asset usually relates to property. The same association with property also applies to digital media content. If you have the intellectual property rights to content, then that content can represent an asset. So intellectual property management and protection (IPMP) and digital rights management (DRM) should form an integral part of an asset-management framework.
Content without the usage rights is not an asset (Figure 8).
Figure 8 An asset is content with the right to use
Using metadata, DAM enables the linking of content with the rights information. The same systems that protect property rights can also be used to guard confidential information, so DAM can also be used for the internal distribution of commercially sensitive information.
Asset management is much more than rights management—it forms a small, but vital, part of the total solution. Perhaps the most important feature is that DAM provides a framework for the successful monetization of media assets.
There are potential drawbacks. If the system is to be dropped onto a mature corporation, there will be a vast legacy of existing content. What are the costs of indexing and cataloguing the archive? These costs may well outweigh any potential advantages of the online access to the older material. The deployment of DAM, like any other major business decision, should involve a cost-benefit analysis.
It may be that compromises can be made to reach a halfway house of partial digitization, rather than an across-the-board incorporation of every piece of content in the archive. As an example, one criterion could be the last-accessed date. Just because you have the rights to content, its value may well be negligible, so it could well remain in the vault. If the storage cost is high, you could even dispose of it.
What gives an asset value? If it can be resold, then the value is obvious. However, it can also represent a monetary asset, if it can be cost-effectively repurposed and then incorporated into new material. To cite just one example, a new advertising campaign can build on the lessons and experience of the past through access to the media archive. This can save a corporation both time and resources in such research projects.
3.What is Asset Management?
To be more specific, DAM provides for the sensible exploitation and administration of a large asset repository. An asset-management system provides a complete toolbox to the author, publisher, and the end users of the media to efficiently utilize the assets.
Media assets can be in a number of different formats: audio and video clips, graphic images, photographs, and text documents. There may be links and associations between the assets. The files may be shared across an enterprise-scale organization. The media may be traded; it can be syndicated, rented, or sold.
The system architecture must be flexible to provide for all these requirements. These are some of the features and facilities that may be found in a DAM system:
• Co-authoring
• Workflow
• Storage management
• Search tools
• Archiving
• Publishing tools
• Multiple formats
• Wide-area distribution
• Version control
Asset management can be extended through web-based access. This opens up the opportunity to preview and author at the desktop, remote from the content. This access can be within the enterprise, from any dial-up location, or over the Internet.
4.Why Use Asset Management?
Even the best-designed filing scheme has limitations. This is particularly evident when material is shared across a large enterprise in many formats. The optimum scheme for one user may not suit another. Support of multiple file formats on different platforms further complicates the scheme; files may be on Windows or UNIX servers, on dedicated video server, or videotape and CD-ROM.
The user may not know the file name. To help locate wanted material, the filing scheme will require a catalog. Imagine a request like “Find me a happy-looking child wearing a red dress on a crowded beach.” Asset management provides the answer to such questions.
New Words and Expressions
asset n. 资产,有用的东西
VOD abbr. Video On Demand视频点播
catalog v. 编目录
index v. 编入索引中,指出
analog n. 类似物,相似体,模拟
repository n. 储藏室,智囊团,知识库,仓库
PDA abbr. Personal Digital Assistant个人数字助理
brochure n. 小册子
disparate adj. 全异的
booth n. 货摊,售货亭,棚
seamless adj. 无缝合线的,无伤痕的
monetary adj. 货币的,金钱的
Exercises to the Text
1.Translate the following words and phrases into English.
(1)数字资产管理(2)个人数字助理(3)知识产权管理与保护(4)数字版权管理(5)富媒体(6)交互式网络电视(7)索引和编目(8)劳动密集型任务(9)最后访问时间(10)制作流程
2.Translate the following paragraphs into Chinese.
(1) Content is now being delivered over a myriad of different channels. There are the electronic channels: television, ITV (interactive television), Internet and webcasting, cellular phone, and wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs).
(2) DAM has proved quite a technical challenge. It was not until the end of the twentieth century that affordable systems became available. The fall in the price of processing and disk storage has been the primary enabling factor, along with the ever-increasing bandwidths of computer networks, both within a local area and over long distances. Many of the products that are designed to manage the very large repositories can automate labor-intensive and repetitive tasks. These include cataloging and indexing the content, and the powerful search engines that we use to discover and find content.
(3) The user may not know the file name. To help locate wanted material, the filing scheme will require a catalog. Imagine a request like “Find me a happy-looking child wearing a red dress on a crowded beach.” Asset management provides the answer to such questions.