Strategies for Maximum Asset Management Adoption
It is well known that Asset Management (MAM) in rich media content creation can be difficult to configure and deploy. This is especially true when designing ingest through archive workflow, and incorporating input from creative editors, producers, vault managers, post supervisors, and the clients paying for your services. Facility managers who know there are advantages to MAM across the business have challenges gaining mindshare of creative professionals who may already have a process that works for them.
There are several facets of asset management to consider when designing a workflow that everyone can live with. It’s important to know the essential operations of the MAM and keep it simple. Attempting to push too much at once onto a creative team can cause a lack of adoption and eventual failed deployment.
Tagging
The act of enriching the metadata of a record, with content-specific or environmental information that may include visual and audible elements, production notes, editorial feedback, and rights information. Tagging and marking can be manual or automated, or automated with manual additions and corrections. Tags and markers can be transferred to editorial applications for assistance with the creative process, and this may be the easiest way to include the creative staff in the MAM environment. If they aren’t using the MAM, they won’t have the notes and comments required for proper edit.
Proxy
Encoding and transcoding for the purpose of offline or lower-bitrate editing is a traditional workflow that goes back to the dawn of non-linear. MAM systems are especially useful for transcoding to lower bitrates, and this proxy generation can be automated in a very efficient way through the use of metadata. Not all incoming files may require proxy, so automating proxy generation through metadata can eliminate wasted cycles. Since it’s an automated process, it’s always working even when the assistants and editors aren’t.
Transcription and Object Recognition
A.I. has solved many problems for post-production, among those include the time wasted reviewing content for a word or phrase; an object or signage; a logo or landmark in frame. On-premises transcription tools provide automated speech-to-text analysis searchable down to the timecode range of a word or phrase. Local transcription tools have the capability to recognize over thirty languages with accuracy; online analysis tools can provide hundreds. Object, logo, and text in image are important elements of a file’s visual properties and also can be searched and located right down to the frame. With tools like this, editors can locate that elusive shot of the fountain in hours of cityscape footage just by searching “water”. When the camera pans over a street sign, retail façade or highway sign, all text is entered into metadata. This could be a great way to ensure that the editors who always have difficulty finding the perfect shot will “buy in” to the MAM process.
Backup and Archive
MAM provides automation of file movement in a friendly UI, with tracking of the current and previous locations of files. This makes it perfect for backup duties, where daily copies to a redundant location on disk, cloud or tape ensure easy recovery in the case of accidental deletion. When the project is archived, the MAM holds thumbnails or small preview files that are used to review the files prior to requesting a restore. This can avoid restoring too much data when only looking for a particular clip or scene. What editor hasn’t gotten lost searching through the archive file list for the shot they need?
Catalog and Project Permissions
The facility may want to open the MAM interface to clients and freelance creatives but must avoid everyone seeing indexed data from all clients. Catalogs and projects have permissions by user account, and records are assigned to catalogs or projects by metadata. Your clients will benefit from having the daily shoot ready to review immediately after ingesting, and your editors will benefit from the early notes and comments. MAM can improve your client services, and your clients will stay with the facility that gives them these valuable tools.
MAM is not the cure for everything. It’s a toolset that could be very active in your daily workflow, or sit passively waiting for the moment the database is needed. With a product like Facilis FastTracker, indexing, transcribing, proxy and data movement is easy to configure and ramp-up is quick. Every feature may not be valuable to you, but there’s no doubt that some will pique the interest of the people you’ll need to make this project work. Included with every HUB server, and under constant development and improvement, FastTracker is a MAM you can live with.