Broadcast Engineering - April 2008 - (Page 55)

TECHNOLOGY IN TRANSITION NEW PRODUCTS & REVIEWS vendors take responsibility for the entire picture, providing all subsystems and ensuring that they interface successfully. In many instances where end users picked best-in-class applications from different vendors and attempted to get all parties to play nice, there are stories of delays and cost overruns. This results from the attempt to understand all of the variables involved and manage the complex software integration of the various packages. Each of the storage elements, as well as ingest from baseband or ﬁle sources, are under the watchful eye and — in some respects — control of the DAM manager. (See Figure 1.) The ﬁgure shows a secondary path from the low-resolution browse subsystem, which carries browse video to DAM clients. Using that video, users can input additional metadata or browse and preview content. Notice that the archive manager sits at a slightly different level, as it commands the movement of content among all of the storage silos. Each of the software and hardware subsystems is to a degree autonomous. The video server may also serve content to editing stations or play out to master control under automation control, which is not shown here for simplicity. There could be multiple servers or archives attached to the system, but functionally, the DAM keeps track of the whereabouts of all content, both in the low-resolution browse and high-resolution instances. When it is appropriate to purge content from the high-resolution server, DAM can remove it from the low-resolution browse. Or if a copy has been stored in the archive system, DAM might instruct the browse system to retain its copy to enable searching of content. If an application, such as an edit system, requests a piece of content that is on the archive, the DAM system would instruct the archive manager to move it to an online repository for use, always keeping track of each instance of the content in a detailed database. Conclusion It is easy to see how there is an advantage to putting more eggs in one basket. Communication is needed among all applications to make DAM successful. An operation done without communication could leave the asset management system in the dark about either new or existing content, quickly making the system marginally useful. When this is done right, it makes complex systems much more manageable. BE John Luff is a broadcast technology consultant. ? Send questions and comments to: john.luff@penton.com April 2008 | broadcastengineeringworld.com 55 http://broadcastengineeringworld.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Broadcast Engineering - April 2008

Broadcast Engineering - April 2008 Contents Editorial HD Newsrooms Wavelet Compression Mobile TV Audio Processing for HDTV, Part 1 QoE for IPTV End Users NAB Update Asset Management Advertisers Index

Broadcast Engineering - April 2008

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