feature automation & asset management
In recent years, two of the most common ways of maintaining brand awareness and differentiation for media businesses have been multiplatform delivery and ‘speed- to-air’ with new material. Both of these drive the need for a more automated end-to-end workflow to deliver results in a cost-effective manner. Many organisations still struggle to generate sufficient revenue from a multi-platform/non- linear environment, with some bringing the commercial handling of these businesses back into their core business, so the pressure to optimise costs and gain efficiencies will continue to drive overall solution choice and deployment. Chris Simons, vice president of automation and asset management at Harris Broadcast Communications, reports.
Automating the automation process
I
n the past, when someone in broadcast used the word ‘automation’, visions would inevitably appear of a system that controlled the ingest of content from tape followed by playout. But our world has changed, and the reality is that we need to automate much more than just the capture and playout of content. Systems that used to function satisfactorily in disparate environments now have to do more than just interface. They need to have the ability to function seamlessly together, automating steps based on rules and business logic rather than just presenting data for manual decision-making. In this new media world with multiple formats, platforms and delivery methods, the term ‘automation’ needs to cover everything from initial acquisition of rights through to delivery of the content.
Automation today needs to connect sales, scheduling and operations to provide the agility to capture more revenue, make more time and do more than just go to air. Solutions should always be delivered based around tight integration among media products (for example, the Broadcast
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Master sales and programme management), asset management (with solutions such as Invenio) and automation (in the case of Harris, either ADC or D-Series). This allows for complete, seamless ‘business automation’ - from sales and scheduling to content delivery - while allowing the customer to build as many or as few manual check or intervention steps as is right for their business model(s).
Chris Simons, vice president of automation and asset management at Harris Broadcast Communications.
The opportunity to ‘automate the automation process’ begins at the initial acquisition of rights either by purchase or commissioning. These material rights will dictate and drive the complete set of workflows for any piece of material it is for: SD, HD, regionally restricted, terrestrial or satellite, web and mobile. In some instances, the rights vary for individual programme segments. Each new platform or distribution mechanism increases the overall complexity of material handling, driving the need for automating processes to support these business models in a cost-effective and successful manner.
The initial acquisition of rights can be used to generate the business rules
that will dictate the processing of that piece of material and also to provide a basic set of metadata shared across the systems that will allow each stage of the operation to complete. Each step in the workflow supplements and shares the metadata so that users have access to the data in whatever system they are working on, and overall visibility is maintained.
The first stage in processing the actual media is normally the acquisition of the essence, be it conventional baseband ingest or file delivery from either internal or external sources. Workflows or task lists can be automatically triggered based on the combination of rights information and material availability. Ingest can be manual or fully automated, and can include automated quality control processes using tools like the Harris QuiC media analysis server. Once the material has been ingested and accepted, fully automated workflows can then be triggered to manage the flow of the material through the plant. The file-based workflow tools can read metadata associated with the media and use that to generate the necessary copies in the required formats and
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