VAM & DAM

I'm Al Falaschi. I’ve been with Widen Enterprises, Inc. since October of 2006, but my roots in dealing with digital audio and video date back to the late 1990’s. I’ve built numerous audio recording and video editing facilities and continue to be an independent music producer/engineer and video editor.

Understanding the technological blueprint of digital audio and video, I’ve helped form Widen’s expansion of the Digital Asset Management system to include additional audio/video capabilites, and help plan future growth in these areas. Understanding industry standards and custom workflows allows me to guide Widen’s product into maintaining the status as one of the leading providers of DAM systems and services.

The purpose of my blog is to keep you in the loop on what's going on in Widen's world of video handling, in addition to discussing the opportunities and issues with audio / video and digital asset management. Stay tuned...
 

People who deal with putting video on websites are closely watching the developing reality tv series revolving around HTML5 video. Here are the things that I am watching as they will most definitely affect how Digital Asset Management and Video asset management systems ingest, manage and distribute video assets. Since video support in html5 is dependent on the browser, I will look at this from the different major browser choices:



1. Internet Explorer (60% market share) - Microsoft owned. Has recently put their support behind H.264. Will not support Ogg Theora, and popular opinion has them not supporting VP8 if Google makes it open source. Seemingly has given up on Silverlight and VC1 as a web standard codec. But is a major player because of it's browsers market share.

2. Firefox (25% market share) - Only supports open source royalty free standards. Will not support H.264. Currently supports Ogg Theora and there is a good chance it will back VP8 if it goes open source. Firefox is a major player because of its browser market share.

3. Google Chrome (7% market share) - Currently supports both Ogg Theora, and H.264. Acquired the VP8 codec from it's purchase of On2 Technologies. Has been rumored to announce VP8 going open source/royalty free in May 2010. Google is a major player for two reasons. It owns YouTube which is the largest source of online video,.....by a very wide margin. And it owns the VP8 codec. While Chrome only has a 7% market share, Google controls the largest segment of viewers with YouTube. Imagine if YouTube dropped H.264 in favor of VP8...???

4. Safari - (5% market share) - Supports H.264. Owns H.264 through the licensing body MPEG LA, of which it is a member. While Safari's market share is next to nothing, Apple is a major player because most online content is currently in H.264, and lest we not mention that they have ridiculous amount of influence due to their domination in the mobile devices category with the iPhone and iPad. Steve Jobs recently mentioned being behind "open standards." This will be put to the test if Google open sources VP8.

Over the next 6-12 months,....all of this will be thrown into a pot, cooked, stirred, and shaken up. What comes out is why everyone is watching this like a car crash. Until something works itself out, Flash is still king, and the only thing that works on everything, (Whoops, except the iPad/iPhone).

Digital asset management and video asset management systems, for now, will add these as additional parameters. It may be a while before we can start deleting and simplifying.

If anyone wants to chat about Video Asset Management at NAB this year, shoot me an email and we can set up a time to meet. I'll be there from noon on Monday the 12th, thru the close of the show on Thursday. NAB is like my "Candy Store" so you will have to excuse the drooling. I'll be looking at new video camcorders, DSLR's, editing software, online video publishing options, other digital asset management options that are specific to production environments.....I'm getting excited already. Find out more at NAB.org. 

A coworker recently asked me: "What is the next big format that will hit after 1080p? I'm curious what is on the horizon."

There are a number of ways to answer that question. In terms of factual numbers, 1080p is a "resolution." The next logical larger sizes are 2K and 4K. But those exist already... so the answer switches from fact-based, to opinion-based.

I am a video tweak head, so I am always interested in the next video format that can squeeze in one more pixel of resolution. But I realize that I am in the minority, at least as far as a business case goes for an entire industry to adopt a format. Moving from standard definition video to HD (specifically 1080p) was a no brainer. There are clearly visable advantages in clarity and overall viewing experience. But if you look at what is next in terms of higher resolution, we run into a wall.

The wall is the ability for the human eye to see the detail that the device is displaying. Here is an interesting article on the science behind what the human eye can see. It basically says that there is almost no visable difference even between 720p and 1080p when watching a 50" screen from 8 feet away, which is the average viewing distance in the average home. Therefore, in order to need more detail than what 1080p can provide, you would either need to sit closer than 8 feet, or need a screen larger than 100". Video is mostly consumed on a TV, or online. As far as online video publishing is concerned, most online video is downres'd from 1080. So higher res will not get a push from online video management either.

My coworker also asked what the next "big" format would be. If you define "big" as something that will change the entire industry, including aquisition, editing, display, and broadcasting, I don't think 2K or 4K will be the next "big" format. There isn't enough of an advantage for large groups of consumers to make a switch.

I really think that the next "big" format change will be something regarding 3D. Something that does not require wearing nerdy glasses. We will also have to keep a close watch to see how it affects digital asset managment tools.

The growing popularity of video is well documented... There are a number of reports available. They explain the power and attractiveness of using video, specifically in the enterprise environment.

More than 65% of companies are using online video and that number is expected to continue increasing (VideoBloom, 2009). (Remember an earlier post, Gartner Predicts 25 Percent of Content in the Workforce to be Images, Audio or Video by 2013.) Online video is a key method of delivering and consuming information that educates, entertains, and/or inspires in ways that touch emotions static text on a page cannot achieve.

Director of research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab, Dr. BJ Fogg, writes that for a consumer to make a purchase, it requires a “behavior change.” Fogg’s behavior model talks about the convergence of three things that need to happen for the change to occur – a trigger, ability and a motivation. Motivation is strictly tied to “sensation.” Inherently, video combines the use of more human senses than most other traditional sales and marketing tools. Read more about the reason "why" video use is on the rise in business marketing.

How does that impact Digital Asset Management? Video is a digital asset. As its popularity grows, enterprises will struggle to manage the creation, storage, and distribution of it. Video files are exponentially larger than text documents. Multiple copies of a file in multiple locations use even more storage. Version control is nearly impossible since someone has to remember each file's location and update or renew it when a new one becomes available or when it expires. Plus, there isn’t always an easy way to search for the right video based on the content. Beyond that, an increase in video will also mean an increase in the amount of bandwidth required to serve the video – a requirement that many SMBs struggle with.

We can learn a lot just by looking at trends within Widen’s own organization and DAM software customer base. There are notable increases in not only the number of video assets being added to our DAM systems, but also in the rate of videos added per year. Due to the raw size of high resolution video, the percentage of the overall file size of our DAM taken up by video has grown extensively. Again, the rate of growth per year is also increasing as we choose to use video more and more for marketing, sales and customer service purposes.

From a sales and marketing standpoint, there are dramatic increases in the coverage of video as a topic in many of our sales calls, and in RFPs that we receive. There are a number of factors that are causing these increases. One is the growing popularity of video. Again, this is well documented. In addition, there is the entire social movement. For video, this requires organizations to not only produce video content, but to make it accessible and publish it to as many online video channels as possible.

An often unnoticed factor is the shift in video camcorder technology from “tape” to “tapeless.” Tape has been a crutch for video storage and backup for… well, for forever. With the new tapeless camcorders recording very high resolution files resulting in very large file sizes with no tape to put them on, suddenly, organizations are faced with storing, securing, backing up, and distributing files that are ten times the size of the files they are familiar with managing. And remember, it is GROWING!

Bottom line, the increasing demand for video will place demands on DAM software and digital asset hosting providers to make sure that video is handled seamlessly alongside all other assets.


Stats on video usage from VideoBloom's VIEW Index (Video-Enabled Web Index):
100 Web Sites Surveyed

In August of 2009, the VIEW main index for the 100 surveyed companies was 30-75-25, which indicates that 30% of the companies had video on their home page, 75% had video on their site, and 25% didn't use any video on their Web site.

• 41% of the 100 surveyed companies have placed their Web videos 1 click away from the home page.
• 25% of the surveyed companies have placed their Web videos deep into their Web sites, 3 clicks or more away from the home page.
• 25% use online video in an advanced manner: contextual integration of videos, variety of video players, call-to-action tied to the video.
• 32% offer a full-fledged "video center" comparable to a corporate TV channel.
• 21% give access to such video center directly from their home page (one click away).
• 12% display video ads for products on their site; 7% display video ads on their home page.
• 36% offer full-screen video option.
• 4% have video on auto-play (i.e. video starts as soon as the user lands on the page).
• 11% open video in a new browser Web page.
• 18% use a pop-up window to display video.

• Video uses: 48% of the surveyed web sites use video for promotional purposes, 24% use it for informational purposes, 20% use it for demonstrative purposes, 6% use it to deliver news, 5% use it for entertainment purposes, 1% use it for other purposes and 0% use it for UGC (user generated content). (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because many sites use online video for several different purposes.)

• Video formats: 61% use Flash video, 21% use Windows Media Player, 8% use QuickTime and 4% use Real Player. (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because some websites use more than one video format.)

In light of a recent post that zappos.com reported a 6 to 30% increase in sales on items that are accompanied by a video, I wanted to talk about “why” that is. There are a number of research reports on the rise in popularity of online video publishing use within the enterprise. Aside from the obvious answer of “increased sales,” the question of “why” is not so easy to answer. That is probably because we first need to definine "how" it works.

I have been reading the research of Dr. BJ Fogg lately. He directs research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab. He writes that for a consumer to make a purchase, requires a “behavior change.” His behavior model talks about the convergence of three things that need to happen for the change to happen.



There needs to be a “trigger” (cue, prompt, call to action, request, etc.), the consumer must have the “ability” (financially, access, simplicity of UI, etc.), and they have to have “motivation.”

One of his key concepts within motivation is “sensation.” Video, by default, combines the use of more human senses than other tools used in traditional sales and marketing scenarios. The more senses you, as a marketer, can stimulate in your audience, the more emotion and sensation you can evoke, aiding in motivating your customers.

IMHO, I also feel that a video evoking emotion or motivation in a potential customer could also serve as the trigger. Two for one. That should help your ROI if you are looking at adding online video to your marketing efforts and needing a video asset management system.

Of course, as more businesses realize the power of video in their marketing campaigns…those videos will need to be managed in a Digital Asset Management system. Have you ever heard of Widen? ;)

Unfortunately, my wife lost her battle to cancer earlier this year. In her memory, myself and other local musicians organized "Funk Out Cancer" a memorial benefit for Kate Gates Falaschi. All proceeds were donated to the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center for cancer research. When I started contacting local radio, tv, and newspapers, I knew they would want pictures, and audio and video of Kate for news stories that they would create. I sectioned off a portion of Widen's demo online digital asset management system and posted assets featuring Kate. I needed digital asset hosting as I knew I would be contacted often about these...and didn't want to spend my days fulfilling requests for assets. Not that a one time event has a "brand," but it also served as brand asset management software. It made it so easy to retrieve assets, that everyone grabbed the hi res approved assets that I determined were fit for public consumption...not low res, right click/save image as garbage from myspace.

I'm happy to report that over 50 different organizations logged in and placed orders for assets. That would have been a lot of emailing. Thank you Widen DAM software. Here was a video promo created from the assets I hosted in the digital asset library.


If you would like more info on the event...or to make a donation :) go to http://www.funkoutcancer.com.

I had a little fun with the 12-second Widen segment from the SIIA OnDemand 2009 Day 1 in Review video. In this video segment, Widen CEO Matthew Gonnering, preaches “Service is equally, if not more, important than the technology itself” when it comes to delivering Digital Asset Management Software as a Service. Check it out…




Catch the original video here: SIIA OnDemand 2009 Day One in Review


Keywords: DAM SaaS, Digital Asset Management Video, Digital Media System, Digital Asset Tracking, Video Hosting Service, Media Asset Storage.

I have been asked by many potential clients as to what is the best way to store video in a digital asset management system. There are a couple different ways to answer this. "Highest res," "high enough," and "this is all I have."

Highest Res: Whether the video is HD, or standard definition, it was acquired, or shot, on a video camcorder that recorded the footage in a specific format. This changes a bit if you take into consideration editing and effects, but based on just the video footage alone, the format the video was shot in is the “Highest Resolution.”  If it was shot on a standard definition camcorder in the DV format, then that is the highest resolution (assuming it has not been recompressed). If it was shot on an HDV camcorder, then that is the highest resolution available, and typically what is stored as the master format. No additional recompression has been done that could degrade the quality. If you are making footage available, through your DAM, or your video asset management system, this is what they will want.

Here is a screen capture from a file off the camera:




High Enough: This could also be called a “Mezzanine format,”  or “Proxy.” High resolution video can have very large file sizes, that in high volumes, can make digital asset management cost prohibitive.  In many corporate marketing asset workflows, editing has already taken place, and the goal is access and distribution of finished video assets. Compression can be applied to video files to reduce file size while maintaining an acceptable level of quality. As video compression technology has gotten better over the past 10-15 years, some compression methods can reduce file sizes by 50-75% while maintaining a virtually indistinguishable visible difference in quality. So for the purpose of either viewing the video, or converting it to smaller, more compressed versions for email, or powerpoint presentations, a mezzanine format provides good enough quality while taking up 50-75% less disk space and bandwidth. This option gives you the high resolution viewing, and repurposing, while minimizing file storage. It will be the best option for most corporate marketing department's media asset storage and repurposing needs.

Here is a screen capture of a Mezzanine format. Notice there is very little difference:



This is all I have: It is common that marketing departments find or stumble upon video files that they would like to repurpose. All too often, they have “found” a highly compressed low resolution version of a video.  If there is no way to go back to a master tape, or find the company that produced the video, then essentially you have the highest resolution of a video that just isn’t very hi res. That does not mean that it can’t be viewed and repurposed. This is unfortunately all to common, but it is ok.

Here is an screen capture of a highly compress video. It is not great, but it will work if it is all you have.

As I field questions from potential customers about adding video to their digital asset management system, I tend to field the same type of question. “I have a QuickTime file. Is that good?” That is really a loaded question. The next statement is….”It is 100 Megabytes. Is that good?”

I will attempt to explain how video bandwidth is the intersection where time length avenue and storage size street cross. Unlike an image file, video is a time-based media. It not only has a resolution, but it has a time length, over which the resolution is maintained. Compression is used to help keep quality up and files size down, but that is for another blog topic.

“Storage” is static….a 100 MB video file sitting in your video asset management system is much like a one gallon bucket of water sitting on a counter. “Bandwidth” has motion to it. If the video is 1 minute long, and you are watching it online, your internet connection (or pipe) will have exactly 60 seconds to pull through 100 MB of data. If we think of the water in the bucket, we will poor that water into the sink. The opening of the drain will need to be wide enough to let exactly 1 gallon of water through its opening in 60 second. Anything less will result in stuttered playback of the video.

Therefore, “bandwidth” is simply storage size divided by the total run time (TRT). For example, let’s say 10 people want to simultaneously watch a 7.5 MB (storage size), 60 second video (TRT). One thing to note is the difference between Megabyte (MB) and Megabit (bit). Storage is usually expressed in Bytes, and bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second (bps). Note the use of lower case and upper case letter “b.” Also, there are 8 bits in one Byte.

Here’s the math for our example:

7.5 MB (total file size) ÷ 60 seconds (TRT) = 0.125 MBps X 8 (there are 8 bits in one Byte) = 1 Mbps (bandwidth)

1 Mbps is the “bandwidth” of the video. If 10 people simultaneously watch the video, you will need 1 Mbps X 10 people = 10 Mbps worth of available bandwidth for all 10 people to watch the video without stuttered playback. If we convert this to water in the sink, we would have 7.5 MB (file size) X 10 = 75 MB worth of water in the sink. The drain opening would need to be sized to allow 10 Mb of water through the drain per second (or 10 Mbps). This would allow all 75 MB worth of water to flow through the drain in exactly 60 seconds.

Your video asset management system may have enough storage to keep every video asset you have, but do you have enough bandwidth to facilitate the number of viewers you may have?

I have other posts regarding a "Mezzanine" format for video...something that is high enough quality for repurposing, but more compressed than the original to save on storage space in your digital asset management or video asset management system. H.264 is an excellent video format to use as a mezzanine, but with compression, comes "loss." One of the main issues with H.264 is a loss of color saturation. Here are a couple helpful tips to give your video a little "bump" if choosing H.264 as your format.

When rendering or exporting your video, depending on which encoder you use, you should add a couple filters. You can play with the settings to fine tune it, but when rendering, I tend to lower the brightness a couple clicks, up the contrast a couple clicks, and increase the saturation between 10-20. If I am feeling spunky, I will add a level of sharpen to it as well. Below are before and after frame grabs. The first is a straight H.264. The second is the H.264 with the above enhancements. As you can see, it is a much better looking image, which will repurpose better in a video asset management system.

Regular H.264

H.264 with Filters

With the proliferation of tapeless video camcorders, the entire video management industry is currently facing a fundamental shift in workflows and processes. It started with the shift from analog to digital video, but has really become a hot topic in video asset management with the widespread adoption of the Panasonic P2 HD camcorders...IMHO the best bang for your buck for HD video acquisition.

Panasonic HVX200A

The different model numbers and brand names may move into the top spot, but the fact that after you shoot footage on these cameras, you need to find something other that a $1000 flash card to store it on. For old school video people, you shot on tape, digitized, or captured your footage, which was stored on hard drives while you were in edit. Then you dumped the footage off the hard drives and relied on the tapes as your archived copy. It made sense. The tapes were not going anywhere, and you already paid for them. Fast forward to today. Now you shoot onto P2 cards, transfer the footage to your editing station’s hard drives, then clear off the P2 card to use it on your next shoot. After you are done editing, you……..do what with the footage? Where’s the tape? My company wants some sort of digital asset management software system, but how do I store all of this footage?

Now what do you do? So far, most websites, blogs, articles point to LTO tape being the most inexpensive way to store video footage shot on tapeless camcorders, more so than putting the footage on disks. The more I thought about it, the more that did not seem to make sense. Not only did it not make sense mathematically, but there is a fundamental difference in shooting tapeless that makes it more efficient than shooting tape based….making it even more of an apple to oranges comparison.

First the math. If you shoot tape based DV on miniDV tapes, a $6 high quality dv tape holds roughly 13 gigs. That roughly equates to 77 full dv tapes equaling 1 TB for a cost of $462/TB. Keep in mind that this is assuming all 77 tapes are 100% full….which never happens. If your tapes are 75% full on average, the cost jumps to $618/TB.

If you shoot tapeless and are considering archiving on LTO tape, first you need to purchase a LTO drive (LTO4) which is $2500. Tapes are $75 per TB.I will use 18 TB as an example later, so for 18 TBs of LTO storage, it is $214/TB. Much better than tape.
 

Polywell NetDisk 8000V

If you shoot tapeless and archive onto spinning disk, like a NetDisk 8000V NAS, your math would look like this: 18 TB NAS is $4000, which is $222/TB. “But Al, isn’t that is more expensive than LTO tape?” Technically yes, but the NAS is raid 5, which protects the data from a disk failure. It has an operating system that emails you if and when a disk fails, notifying you to replace the faulty disk. If the LTO tape fails, you are out of luck. Which means to have a fail safe, you would have to make 2 copies of each tape. So double your price. This does not even get into efficiencies gained by having the footage instantly available and searchable on a network drive, verses having to wait for tapes to rewind, locate and transfer data at a slower rate….oh, and you have to find the tape, put it into the tape drive as well.

So the math points to storing on disks. But as I said earlier, there is a culture shift. We are shooting more video today than ever before. Projects further down the totem pole are finding that video is now an affordable tool to promote, train, demonstrate…these projects are not the “Zapruder film.” They have a lifespan of usefulness that is rather short. Depending on your type of footage, after a certain amount of time, the cost of keeping the footage is more than what it would cost just to reshoot it.

As far as Digital Asset Management is concerned, it is much easier to access video assets on spinning disk. It is easier to open, move, convert, and run reports. Start there. 

Being the gatekeeper for video here at Widen, I decided to piece together some clips of our client interviews that deal with how Digital Asset Management and Video Asset Managment has helped our clients reduce costs, increase efficiency and increase capabilities.  In the current economic climate, we often hear companies say that they have a freeze on new spending.  The reality is that most of our clients don't consider our web-based digital asset management system a "new spend." They are reallocating budgeted dollars from other areas that DAM will free up resources or cost spending in.

Jim Scarlata from Knaack Manufacturing talks about saving time and cost of burning CD/DVDs and shipping.  Doug Rammel, formerly of Reebok, talks about how they would not even be able to produce the amount of physical samples needed to support their current sales.  DAM and Digital Sampling not only reduce their production costs, but support their current sales volume which would not be able to be supported with out it.  John Wernecke from Motorola talks about how there would need to be four more employees to do the amount of work he can do with the Widen Digital Asset Management tools.  How's that for an ROI?

Take a look at the video compilation titled Reallocate in a Down Market.

We recently interviewed Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator.  There are six segments to his video, but I was truly impressed with one comment that he made about their brand recognition and brand asset management systems and processes.

InSinkErator - Brand Control

Jim showed me their recently completed Brand Guidelines document which was a very detailed description of exactly how they want their brand portrayed globally.  Innovation was a key part of their branding.  Jim made the statement that not only does InSinkErator strive to have the most innovative products, but they also strive to have the most innovative methods of marketing those products.  He specifically calls out Digital Asset Management as the answer.  Not only does DAM software help with digital media management and marketing personnel efficiencies, the use of it as a technology also becomes part of your brand.  If innovation and efficiency are part of your branding guidelines, it just makes sense to use DAM as the delivery method for your brand assets.

Video is the hot new topic and tool for marketing departments everywhere. Many dream of a viral video that costs next to nothing to make, yet vaults your company image through the roof, with sales increases being able to be directly attributed to your little "video idea." While most realize how rare this occurrence is, video is still an increasingly popular tool used to not only promote your brand, but to demonstrate, train, meet, archive....the list goes on and on. Video management however, puts an enormous strain on normal corporate web servers and structure. IT departments are reluctant to "retool" the whole works in order to start hosting "marketing videos."

Digital Asset Management based Embed Links allow you not only to quickly add video and images to your site, but because they are served by a Content Delivery Network that specializes in the mass delivery of files over the internet, they also provide instant scalability. You will not see any hits on performance because 100, or even 1000 people are accessing the same video at the same time. Your normal web servers would slow to a crawl. Also, the file only exists in one place while it is "linked" to by all other sites. If you update an image or a video in Digital Asset Management, it will automatically be updated and refreshed in all the other sites that have linked to it. Santa, I'll take one of those please!

Coming at'cha from Streaming Media West again. It has been a great conference and I have learned a great deal about one of the destinations of the video files that we store for our Digital Asset Management clients. While it seems that DAM has not been mentioned much, it is implied when talking about corporate content management and structure. CDNs are a target destination for web video, and many CDNs have APIs that allow for integration. As long as that continues, DAM systems will remain the central repository for all company branded assets, including video, then be able to push content to the CDNs as part of its delivery process. After searching for a video, a user will be able to view, order, download, or have authored to a DVD. And permissioned users will be able to push content to the CDN of choice. From a Widen standpoint, expect to see some cool changes to the way we present our videos on our main website. I have also been cooking up some other ideas of how to use video throughout the enterprise. The conference is now over, so it is back to Madison to figure out how internet video will continue to affect digital asset management workflow solutions in the future.

I'm coming to you from the Streaming Media West Conference in San Jose, CA. I have never heard the letters CDN mentioned more in one day. However, I did notice that most sessions focus on the mad dash of many enterprise marketing efforts to create and distribute online video. Most mention nothing about where to store, add metadata and repurpose these assets amongst all the other digital assets a company owns and maintaing. Digital Asset Management seems to be missing in the discussion. The term Video Asset Management has come up several times, but in reference to managing the compressed videos that are uploaded to CDNs, not the original video asset, nor image assets that may have been used within it. As CDNs are a tool marketing departments use with other marketing software, It seems as though integration between Digital Asset Management and CDNs would be more popular. As part of an enterprise content management policy, DAM would be the central repository of video, which would then be pushed to a CDN. I hope to talk to more people about this tomorrow.

Before anyone deals with video asset management systems, or plans strategies for adding video to digital asset management systems, standing at the edge of Lake Itasca in Minnesota where the Mississippi river begins, stands a person with a video camera ... the beginning of the video stream. When he/she presses record on the camera, he/she is creating the first asset of many that will become part of the video river. As the video flows south, tributaries start to feed the mighty river. The Wisconsin River joins in by adding a project file from video editing software, like Final Cut Pro and Avid. Later on down stream in Iowa, the Iowa River brings in graphic files, or still photos. The Illinois River brings in audio files like narration tracks, and music beds. As more tributaries bring in more files, the stream grows not only in size, but in the number of people viewing or working with the files.

By the time the Missouri River starts to feed the beast, we now have a finished high resolution video, with all of its parts. Draw a line in the sand. The main focus so far had been the creation of the video. Above this line, video asset management has very different needs than what is going to come next. Below the line, viewing, access, and distribution are key. This is where our digital asset management service comes into play. Although, stay tuned for future enhancements to our system that will venture into the upper Mississippi.

Then we hit the Mississippi Delta, which has many distributaries. You guessed it. A distributary is the opposite of a tributary. Instead of feeding the river, a distributary flows away from it. In its lifespan, the high resolution video file will feed many different work flows. From it, mpeg2 will be created for DVD production. Quicktime and WMV versions will be made for download and local playback. FLV files will be made for embedding into websites.

As you can see, an overall media asset management strategy has a lot of ground to cover. From little old Lake Itasca in Minnesota, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico ... from a person with a video camera, to millions of views of a web video. Most marketing departments are like the Mississippi Delta. Web based DAM is an indispensable tool.

Video files are large. There is no way around it. But Widen can help determine where in the delta your work flow starts. My preceding blog discusses mezzanine formats as a way to help reduce overall storage size. Determining where you are at on the Mississippi River will help determine what kind of Mezzanine format will work best for you.

We all know beavers build Digital Asset Management systems, right?

Beavers are best known for their natural trait of building dams in rivers and streams. In our case, the rivers and streams are the flow of marketing materials to and from Marketing, Sales, engineering, development, production...

They are essentially aquatic in their habits, never traveling by land unless driven by necessity. The days of film negatives and video tapes shipped via overnight carrier are long past for us. With storage and bandwidth prices continually falling, we much rather "travel" our Marketing assets via the internet.

The beaver works as a keystone species in an ecosystem by creating wetlands that are used by many other species. A keystone species affects many other organisms in an ecosystem and helps to determine the types and numbers of various others species in a community. Such an organism plays a role in its ecosystem that is analogous to the role of a keystone in an arch. While the keystone feels the least pressure of any of the stones in an arch, the arch still collapses without it. Digital asset management solutions, once implemented, becomes a keystone resource for corporate image libraries, video asset management. Remove it, and it collapses.

Beavers always work at night and are prolific builders. They can rebuild damaged dams overnight. There is nothing like having a team of beavers always working on making sure your DAM is up and running strong. Maybe we can rename it BaaS instead of SaaS?