Overview

Media asset management is the generic term assigned to the administration of the various forms of materials, conveyed as inventories and made up of various elements (referenced in the SMPTE metadata dictionary as "essence"), and to the metadata associated with that essence.

Essence can be as elementary as a single video frame or graphic, or as complex as video (as text images, moving images or static full or partial frame images) or audio (narrative voice channels, wild or natural sound, effects or supplemental aural tones). Metadata is the information about the essence (or "the bits about the bits.")

In our emerging digital age, it makes good practical sense for organizations involved in the business of media content delivery to understand how they will manage essence and metadata elements. Whether in the broadcast market or the production chain, media management is crucial to protecting and preserving the industry's assets. As new, future, and legacy elements of essence begin to make their way into the digital domain, systematic control that is extensible into the future will prove invaluable.

Eventually, media asset management will be applied to nearly every form of digital asset whether the intent is for long-term preservation or for repurpose and adaptation in the content creation (production) or distribution and delivery (broadcast) process. As a starting point, the focus in this chapter will be geared toward how media asset management fits into the media server space, and in particular, we will use the broadcast and content distribution operations as...