The first part of this article explored the emergence a digital supply chain for entertainment media content that is fully file centric, and the recent appearance of cloud-based platforms for storing, managing and distributing content. It suggested a variety of factors for content owners to consider in evaluating various solutions and determining which is right for them. It looked at some of the core functions of these platforms, including suitability for managing media assets, search capabilities, and technical capacity for content creation, ingest, storage and delivery.

Part 2 explores some of the technical operations cloud-based platforms need to function properly in a digital supply chain.

RESOLUTION

Moving master files that are commonly HD, UHD or 4K is a fundamental requirement of any system delivering content for broadcast play-out or theatrical display. These files, by definition, are large and uncompressed and must be delivered intact along with their complete associated audio track layouts. These audio files are either married to the master file or sent along as separate stems and linked to the master image file.

CODECS & FILE FORMATS

In addition to supporting resolutions ranging from SD to 4K, the best platforms accept a full spectrum of file types and containers. Choose a platform that can read the most popular codecs (e.g. DNxHD, ProRes, AVC Intra, XDCAM, DVC ProHD, XAVC-S, and H.264) and formats (e.g. QT, MOV, AVI, MPG, MP4, MXF).

TRANSCODE

Ideally, the platform should create a viewable proxy upon ingest and make it available for viewing or download. This is a convenient way to evaluate a compressed but high-quality version of the master content in a viewer as soon as the transcode has finished. This file can also serve as a screener for delivery to another party or for viewing purposes in a screening room environment shared by guest users in an individual account.

If the platform provides an integrated transcoding service that can accept any input format to a selected output format as well as perform frame rate and aspect ratio conversion, that’s one less task the client will have to outsource and complete before upload.

FILE TRANSFER

Once the content is living in the cloud, delivery of files from one account to another should be seamless and achievable from any location where there is a connection. This delivery process should involve notifying the recipient by email that there is content awaiting confirmation of delivery. In the case of a new recipient, an email request to open an account prior to completing the delivery should be sent to the recipient. Depending on the permissions granted, the recipient will then be able to screen and/or download the content. This provides an additional level of privacy and security to the delivery.

REVIEW & APPROVAL FOR DAILIES, WORKS IN PROGRESS & PROMOTIONAL CONTENT

If the platform is being used to move either master or editable content from the set to post production, finishing, VFX or sound, the project will likely need to create and publish dailies versions of content in a secure and private screening room environment. If the platform is being used primarily to showcase, promote and sell content, then finished programming or trailers (often watermarked by the system) will be the order of the day.

The system should include the ability to create multiple screening rooms. If it also allows screening rooms to be assigned selectively to various stakeholders for review, approval and annotation, so much the better. Perhaps most important, the platform should be sufficiently flexible to include and sign in all the potential guests who will be reviewing the content—not just the platform licensee.

PLATFORM ADMINISTRATION

Any application worth its weight should have enterprise-level control over users and functionality. It should also deliver persistent, automated notification to all recipients of any and all platform activity.

The account administrators must be able to freely create, provision and assign permissions to groups (and users within groups) according to function, as well as monitor usage across the platform and for any action. This is especially important for companies whose users are geographically spread out.

PLATFORM REPORTING

A system that can fully monitor usage can report it down to a granular level. These reports (as HTML and .pdf) should include storage, uploads, downloads, streaming, transcoding and deliveries, among others.

STORAGE

The storage requirements for libraries of M&E-finished programming and/or post-production content can become enormous very quickly. As online storage continues to spearhead the move to the cloud for business and industry, either replacing or augmenting on-premise storage solutions becomes an attractive alternative. While cost will always be the key consideration, the price of online storage continues to drop to record lows. Other drivers include type of storage (block vs. object), privacy, security and fast access to assets. 

SECURITY

In this day and age—next to price—security is the most important consideration when it comes to moving high-value content to the cloud. There are myriad issues regarding security that a company must evaluate before choosing a platform but getting the correct answers to the following questions will provide insight into how dedicated a platform is to protecting its clients’ assets:

· Who has access to the media and in what capacity?

· Can this access be modified or completely removed?

· Is there the ability to generate an audit trail for all activity on the platform?

· What encryption is in place to protect data from being pirated in the browser?

· Is 256-bit SSL encryption implemented?

· How is data encrypted in transit?

· Where exactly is the data center located?

· How stable and secure is the internet connection into and out of the data center?

· How is access to data on servers encrypted?

· Who can physically access the servers that data is being stored on?

· Is there disk mirroring and incremental backup at the data center?

· Are there any additional on-premise disaster recovery policies in place at the data center?

· Does the data center provide dedicated and exclusive tenancy to its platform clients?

· Is the data center certified with any regulatory agencies, production studios or trade bodies?

TRAINING & SUPPORT

Regardless of how intuitive and easy to navigate a platform may be, there is going to inevitably be a need for training and ongoing support, especially for a new technology that provides a comprehensive solution to the workflows for popular post production and distribution workflows.

This effort can take the form of an online, phone or in-person presence, but it has to be readily available and time-zone sensitive. Early adopters of a new system will appreciate quick response times and certainly deserve the time and attention needed to take them through uncharted waters. As time goes on and these systems penetrate the market, training and support can be formalized and even commercialized, but at first there may be a need for intensive training.

PRICING

Does it make financial sense to utilize online media platforms as opposed to simply buying (and amortizing) more on-premise hardware and software licenses? That will depend on the forecasted volume of content being stored, managed and distributed on an annual basis and what it costs the company to handle this work on-site.

Capital expenditures have the advantage of immediate depreciation, but when one factors in the add-on costs of service, maintenance and other overhead costs, things can get expensive very quickly, especially for boutique and medium-size production/distribution companies.

The technical feasibility of an in-house solution should be considered. Developing and deploying such a complex system would require a significant investment. It can also take a long time to design, implement, test and deploy a system. Keeping it up to date with evolving technology and industry standards might also be challenging. A fully-tailored in-house solution might offer advantages in terms of customization, but that would have to be weighed against an online solution that is ready-made, proven, maintained and evolving.

Assuming the online platform offers a variety of pricing models (such as on-demand and subscription packages) and that the seller is willing to play ball to get the relationship off the ground (i.e. trial periods and gradual on-boarding of content over time) launching a relationship with a cloud-based platform is a worthy exercise.

TRACK RECORD & CUSTOMER REFERENCES

Media platforms should be ready, willing and able to share testimonials in the form of personal referrals and reports in the trade press. The ongoing reputation, credibility and business future of these platforms depend on regular market exposure across all media, and perhaps most important, good word of mouth.

Kenneth Yas is Managing Director—Americas for WCPMedia Services, whose cloud-based content management and distribution system is used by media and entertainment companies around the world. Yas is a 25 year veteran of the post-production industry whose background includes senior management and marketing roles with Lightning Media, Thomson Grass Valley, The Post Group and Lucasfilm.

LUGANO, SWITZERLAND—The retooling of the entertainment industry’s production technology through digital image capture means that workflows from acquisition through distribution for television and film are now exclusively file-centric. 

The emergence of a mature digital supply chain represents a tremendous growth opportunity for content owners. It is creating new markets for content and new life for legacy assets. Much of this content will be played back exclusively on phones, tablets and other devices owned by millennial consumers (among others) hungry for engaging content.

As business relationships become more liquid and new market models emerge, content suppliers must execute faster, more flexibly, with greater control over cost—and with the confidence that their digital assets are being properly stored, managed and protected. 

Emerging digital asset management and IP delivery solutions will provide media companies with better control over their assets while enhancing security and reducing costs. New on-demand, software-based media processing systems, supporting established digital cinematography cameras, nonlinear editors and VFX software are now appearing on the market.

These systems will provide alternatives for clients looking beyond facilities, or consumer-style standalone tools for file transfers, delivery of marketing media and other functions.

For industry professionals looking to make a rational assessment of what is needed in a cloud-based system to support the principal tasks associated with popular digital workflows for top notch entertainment content, the following sections touch on the most important considerations. This guide is by no means exhaustive; there is a lot more to be said about each of the focal points. But it’s a good place to begin.

THE RATIONALE

Does the end-user really need a platform of this type or is the system currently in place for handling content from inception through distribution sufficient for the workload and/or the size of the archive?

That’s really the first question that needs to be asked and answered. This usually will mean a closer and detailed inspection of how materials are currently handled (and for what purpose) and if that process could stand some updating, security enhancement, streamlining or cost containment.

If email attachments, Dropbox, videotape, hard drives and FedEx constitute the framework for moving around a company’s intellectual property, there is definite room for improvement. Beyond current practices, the size of the company’s library and the frequency, type and destination of the deliverables are important concerns.

If it’s a production company, either creating content or buying third-party, it’s worth looking at how production and post-production elements—from dailies through interim cuts—are trafficked among the stakeholders.If it’s a distribution company or sales agency, the question becomes, “is the primary focus on promotion, marketing and sales?”

CONTENT MANAGEMENT & PLATFORM DESIGN

The taxonomy of content for feature films, documentaries and episodic television series are quite specific to the entertainment industry. For those working in the business and tasked with editorial and distribution, there’s a particular way of organizing and delivering shows according to technical “bibles”—and an expectation that there will be an assortment of versions and formats that will be created for every unique title. It’s standard operating procedure for those in the know, and a complete mystery to everyone else.

In other industries, although there are digital asset management systems in place that do a great job of ingesting and cataloging multiple types of content, they are often “procrustean” for M&E (i.e. you have to force your content into their scheme by whatever means necessary, whether you like it or not). Finding a platform that follows a broadcast hierarchy should be the goal.

USER INTERFACE

Using an M&E-compatible platform is not without its operational intricacies. That’s to be expected in a system with the depth to thoroughly manage a large volume of complex content. However, once mastered, the system should have a logical design and be reasonably intuitive in the execution of key tasks.

This is where heuristics (self-educating, problem-solving tools built into the software) are valuable. These include safeguards to challenge and prevent common keystroke errors coupled with some type of contextual online help to assist the end user.

The application should, of course, be browser-based and browser-agnostic making it available in any connected location on any operating system.

SEARCH

Search is the backbone of any digital asset management system. It must be an engine that can access the essential descriptive fields, filter content and include at least one customizable function that allows the end-user to specify a unique category. The idea here is to accurately accelerate the search process and make it less of a back-breaking exercise.

CONTENT CREATION, INGEST & STORAGE

The more integrated this process is, the better. This component should include the ability to establish a basic content record (that can be augmented later ), trigger an accelerated file transfer protocol (e.g. Signiant or Aspera) and store the content in a secure, private cloud—all in a single, coordinated step.

Moving large files to online platforms is a function of the size of the file, connectivity speed and, to some degree, the distance between data center and the original location of the file transfer point. Moreover, DAM systems of this type must interface third party transfer clients for the secure and high-speed transfer of their files for both the sender who is uploading and storing content and, eventually, the recipient who will receive and potentially download the delivery.

Without this crucial feature, any large transfer, even with decent available bandwidth, is untenable. With an advanced file transfer technology in place, both the sender and recipient leverage the power of the platform’s UDP license at reasonable cost.

This function must also accommodate collateral content, such as key art, script and all manner of text files that can be linked to the master content so that a particular project can be fully packaged for delivery.

METADATA

Metadata represents the rich repository of data that describes a piece of digital content. It’s the glue that holds together and defines the database contents. This includes both descriptive data that is manually entered or retrieved from other sources and technical information located in the file header. The media platform must be able to mine metadata on ingest and auto-populate multiple fields, effectively acting as a container check of the master file. Once the content has been uploaded, the platform should allow the addition of more metadata including the uploading of information from other platforms.

This is the first in a two-part article on cloud-based media management platforms. Part two explores how cloud-based platforms manage technical operations including the management of master files, support for codecs, transcoding and review and approval.

Kenneth Yas is Managing Director—Americas for WCPMedia Services, a developer of cloud-based content management and distribution systems. Yas is a 25-year veteran of the post-production industry whose background includes senior management and marketing roles with Lightning Media, Thomson Grass Valley, The Post Group and Lucasfilm.