58 May-June 2016

A broadcaster has often been compared to a human being ’ s body . You have the brains in the master control room , the stomach takes care of ingest , and plenty of extremities like camera crews in the field who can be compared to fingers and toes . One question that has always debated , however , is : “ Where is the heart ?”

Now , while the human body has taken tens of thousands of years ( some would argue perhaps longer than that !) to evolve , the traditional broadcast facility has been a bit quicker to get to where we are now from those initial daily experimental TV broadcasts in and around 1927 .

In fact , when you think about it in evolutionary terms , the broadcast world is still very much in its infancy — except it is not .

Fast forward to 2016 and we see that traditional linear playout and viewing on-demand has evolved more quickly than anyone expected into the concept of ‘ content everywhere ’ via smart TVs , tablets , smartphones and PCs , at least in digitally maturing markets .

To keep up with the pace of this evolving consumer behaviour , broadcasters need to have a number of key processes in place , including multisite , multi-format ( 4K / Ultra HD is becoming a reality now ), multi-platform delivery and increasingly , media business reporting .

And among all of this broadcasting , content consumption , content aggregation and more — through the wonders of modern technology — has been given a new heart . Its name is media asset management , or what we all commonly refer to as MAM .

MAM systems have come a long way very quickly . Whereas previously they were a complex bunch of software products , many of which simply did not work , they are now used by broadcasters all over the world , many of whom have MAM systems at the very core of their operations — and for good reason .

While it has been a relatively quick journey for broadcasting and broadcasters , the sheer amount of data and content we consume has increased at virtual light speed , especially over the past few years .

Until the advent of good , reliable and working MAM systems , managing this volume of data and content — along with additional data such as audio languages , subtitles and all the sidecar metadata — images and attachments needed for non-linear distribution would have been either impossible or at the least , very , very difficult and inefficient .

In an age of instant gratification , broadcasters require media tools that provide continuous access to content throughout their business . As we moved from DOS-based PCs to icon-driven GUIs , so have MAM systems moved from ultracomplex programmer-only environments to ones with simple , logical and intuitive solutions . These give broadcasters easy access to audio , metadata enrichment for packaging and delivery of content in the correct format and critically in our multichannel , multi-platform world — monitoring .

While there are many MAM solutions out there , Magna Systems and Engineering chose to partner with Tedial , so as I conclude I shall use Tedial ’ s award-winning Evolution MAM to illustrate my point .

Tedial ’ s Evolution MAM has driven media management to a new level by presenting a suite of scalable and flexible Media IT software modules that automates the preparation , movement and

distribution of media internally and externally . Built as a modern workflow engine with a world-class MAM tightly coupled to it , Evolution makes media “ workflow aware ”, enabling customers to costeffectively increase their media throughput to meet the needs of the market , where the consumption of content is growing year-on-year at an unprecedented speed .

What does this mean in real-life terms for a broadcaster ? It means they can grow as fast as the market grows , and wants to grow . It means they can efficiently ( that word is key here ) manage multiple channels on multiple platforms , in multiple markets . Most importantly , by using a MAM solution like Evolution , it now means that broadcasters can monetise their offerings better than ever before , which means they will lead a long , happy and healthy life .

In short , MAM is very much part of the future of broadcasters and broadcasting , and that truly warms my heart . q

PATRICK SO Director of Asia Operations , Magna Systems and Engineering

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