A MAM (Media Asset Management) system is a facility designed to facilitate the management of media files in fully digital environments. In addition to offering administrative facilities, a MAM will provide several types of technical services that allow optimizing and automating the production processes of a television production company.
This definition, which seems so clear, begins to become somewhat confusing when a channel or production house decides to go to market to look for MAM solutions, because it usually encounters contradictory attitudes. Some suppliers emphasize storage issues, while others insist on starting from workflows for production, others think fundamentally about news production and the others focus on process automation; and perhaps the only point on which they agree is the convenience of migrating as soon as possible to production systems without tapes.
What we all agree on, however, is that a well-structured MAM system must have the potential to meet the needs of all functional areas of a television station, from ingestion to archiving and distribution of finished parts, and even serve areas that were not traditionally directly connected to production tasks. such as the accounting part or the traffic department.
But what a well-structured MAM system means is something different for each organization, the same as for each provider. And this makes a lot of sense if you consider the degree of complexity of such an installation.
The implementation of a MAM solution generally requires the installation of an exceptionally robust IT infrastructure, the assembly of sophisticated storage systems and the commissioning of multiple software solutions for different applications, and in almost all cases a significant effort of integrating new elements with existing platforms. These types of projects simply do not support a margin of error.
The case of Caracol T.V.
Considering the above, Caracol T.V. of Colombia decided to design a MAM system based on a rigorous process of diagnosing its needs, and then look for partners to integrate a "tailor-made" solution. In this way it is possible to ensure that the system responds more to the vision of the client organization than to that of the suppliers.
The most convenient thing for any organization is to approach the sizing of the project from an economic study that allows to objectively compare the costs of the traditional production and archiving models with those that could result from the implementation of the MAM system. In the case of a television station operating in a major market and with a significant volume of own production, it is most likely that such a study will result in an expectation of return on investment of between 2 and 5 years, thus clarifying in almost all cases the viability of the project.
The assembly of a MAM system is a challenge of a magnitude that can significantly affect the Development Plan of an organization. Therefore, it is important to formally define it as a Project that is compatible with the vision of the organization and its future expectations. In this sense, it is important to get the company to commit to the project, and to achieve this commitment it is important to start from agreements that allow to guarantee that each productive area benefits as the project is executed. On the other hand, the levels of investment required by a project of this type require that the resources that are acquired not only meet the basic requirements of the organization, but can accommodate extraordinary requirements that, as we all know, will always appear.
The plan has to be perfect: it would be unacceptable if the ideal workflow cannot be implemented because one of the suppliers does not support a codec, or that the progress of the project is compromised because in its initial phases it was oversized and unnecessary expenses were made depending on the tasks that had to be fulfilled.
Another way to ensure that the project is achievable and productive is to assume from the beginning that it will be handled in a staggered manner, in several stages. This makes it easier to size the investment and make adjustments during execution. Dividing the project into several phases is also a resource to make it more flexible and protect the organization against obsolescence. In addition, a process developed in independent phases tends to generate modular platforms with greater operational flexibility and better possibilities to adapt to the changes of the organization in the future. This is a desirable feature that in the case of Caracol became one of the main requirements for MAM system suppliers that were part of the selection process.
Caracol decided to take on the MAM project as a priority activity without sparing time or effort, with the conviction that a clear design would allow tangible results to be obtained in a relatively short time. According to this criterion, a completely clear definition of objectives was sought. What is the most important thing? Options such as support for the sale of products, preservation of the historical archive and reduction of production costs were considered. Defining objectives according to the real needs of the company is the starting point to achieve an efficient and productive design.
MAM Culture
An important point that emerged in the early stages of the design work of Caracol's MAM is that the means should not become objectives: It was established that the parameters of the project should not be formulated based on the adoption of specific technological solutions, and the implementation of the MAM should be a gradual process that does not condition the evolution of each of the areas involved. This led to the establishment of premises such as that the implementation of the MAM would not imply the immediate migration to production systems without tapes, or that radical changes would not be proposed in the existing platforms to accommodate the implementation of the MAM System. In the case of Caracol, changes as important as the elimination of the tapes occur more as a natural consequence of the success of the project than as a requirement of it.
To approach the project of implementing a MAM system, the entire organization must be involved, and it is definitely recommended that all areas be an active part of the platform design team. In this way it is possible to ensure an accurate description of all the needs and, what is more important, to prepare the company with the necessary tools to face the immediate future either with tools of a MAM installation or with other types of solutions.
By starting from this attitude it is possible to ensure that the MAM system meets real needs and is useful for all areas of the company from the initial phases of its implementation. In the case of Caracol, it was decided to give special importance to the areas of Archive and Broadcasting. In accordance with this criterion, in the initial phases of the project, the mastering of new programs in the form of files was implemented that can be delivered directly to the servers of the broadcast area and also sent to a near-online storage space on which the archive area operates to advance its traditional tasks of registration and cataloging of the material.
One of the main values of Caracol's MAM system is the availability of the stored material and the ease of consulting it through a web interface that works on ordinary computers. Through this interface it is possible to manage the processes of enrichment of the material by adding metadata, handle all kinds of transcoding processes – including rule changes – and also deliver material "online" to internal and external customers or publish pieces on digital platforms such as the public web or cell phone networks.
In fact, a well-managed MAM system that encourages the constant enrichment of the material becomes a generator of new business: The availability of well-indexed material represents the possibility of identifying new reuse opportunities that allow generating new products, which is synonymous with new revenues. In short, enriched material becomes useful content that has greater potential to continue circulating in the traditional TV market – or in markets that have opened up thanks to new media.
In addition to meeting the needs of areas traditionally linked to production processes, a MAM system can extend its services to previously unthinkable areas of the organization. An example is the post-production area, which can use MAM resources to advance material pre-editing processes at very low cost; once a cut of the piece is established it is very easy to deliver an EDL or editing list to the stations of the conventional post-production environment for completion. This model allows optimizing the management of storage resources and improving editing times by adapting their use according to the needs and cost scheme of each project.
Implementation
A typical MAM system consists of several modules, such as the Asset Management System itself, the file manager with its library and secure storage devices, and is usually complemented by a repertoire of subsystems responsible for the transport of material and transcoding or communications tasks.
According to Caracol's vision, the implementation of a MAM system should be defined from the beginning as a turnkey project, which helps reduce technical and financial risks. The ideal is that the selected supplier has local representation and that it has good capacity as an integrator, since it is most likely that it will have to implement systems of very recent development, from different suppliers and generally from different countries. In the execution of a project of this type, the selection of a supplier really capable of teaming up with the company is the key to success.
Given the complexity of an installation of this type, the different integration proposals that are being considered should be reviewed as with a magnifying glass; a thorough analysis of the offers can allow us to detect inconsistencies in a timely manner that in real work scenarios can represent costly delays or even the need to redesign workflows to adapt the installation to the limitations of some of the components.
A particularly important factor is the careful evaluation of totally new products, with which we can run the risk of complications on account of their incipient development: Generally a mature product with some time of presence in the market will offer greater integration facilities with products from other manufacturers or with conventional production platforms, post-production and automation.
In most cases, the implementation of a MAM platform will require an important work of adaptation of the company's data networks, which in principle will be the support for the interconnection between the productive areas of the company and the MAM modules. The company's IT platform must support the transport of large volumes of data with great reliability and a very good level of security. A low-performance network will have serious repercussions on the performance of the entire system, and in extreme cases can take it out of service completely. In real terms, this can become one of the most important cost centers of the project, depending on the state of the networks at the time of starting the implementation.
However, the most important factors to ensure success in the implementation of a MAM system are the total accompaniment to users and the constant monitoring of processes to ensure a correct implementation. The biggest drawback that can present itself in implementation is the paradigm shift that comes with the advent of new technologies. If cultural factors are taken into account, those that tend to generate resistance among users can be detected in a timely manner and thus, as the system shows results, we will be able to see how the confidence of the users goes from the tapes to the transport of material by network, and over time we will reach a point where we will stop feeling the need to touch a cassette to feel safe, and we will probably start to perceive the use of VTRs as an inconvenience.
Caracol T.V.'s experience in the implementation of its MAM system leads us to invite TV&Video readers to approach their own feasibility studies with confidence and great rigor, with the certainty that a MAM installation will allow them to optimize processes and resources and be prepared for the great challenges that lie ahead in the content production market.
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