No. 309 (January 2007)

Bookshelf Archive

Digital Asset Management

This book is a useful and interesting read for any broadcasters and content producers who plan to modernize their production facilities. Modernization will be critically important to achieve the "produce once, distribute many" approach. Broadcasters will need to produce a number of versions of the same content to be transmitted over different "channels" – ranging from mobile TV, internet TV, standard TV, interactive TV, IPTV to high-definition TV and e-cinema. Receiving devices may vary from small handhelds via computer displays to very large screens for the home or cinema halls.

Today, content creation requires a different workflow for each target pipe. This is inefficient and costly. In future, an integrated production process will be required, involving a large degree of automation while retaining high quality standards.

This is the exactly the point where the digital asset management described in this book comes in. It is all about improving programme productivity, reducing costs and ensuring security. The word "asset" is important here – it implies not just the content but also its value and associated copyright.

The book shows that such integrated production is a very complex process but can be significantly simplified and streamlined if IT (information technology) networks, disk storage and servers, standardized file-based formats, agreed metadata systems, cataloguing and indexing are used consistently right across the whole production process.

The key elements are the file-based workflow and the service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Many broadcasters still use videotape for archiving, acquisition and distribution of their programmes. They should migrate to "tapeless" production, using a suitable file system from ingest right through to transmission. Of course this transition to server-based, tapeless production is not a simple process but it really must be done sooner or later. Some tapeless islands already exist in many broadcast facilities, mainly in post-production and playout, but should be gradually expanded to all other elements of the value chain.

This book was first published about two years ago. As the advances in digital rights managements have been significant, a new edition was necessary. The book is now aimed more at the professional broadcast community than was the case in the first edition, addressing all relevant areas of digital asset management. The main value of the book is that is supports and promotes open, internationally agreed standards and "horizontal" system solutions for application interfaces and file formats, as opposed to closed, proprietary solutions. The latter have been the main barrier to early adoption of digital asset management systems.

The book is highly recommended for both beginners and more advanced readers, although perhaps not for engineers who are involved in digital asset management on a daily basis. The book is up-to-date, informative, relevant, comprehensive and accurate.

Digital Asset Management – second edition
David Austerberry
Bound volume of 344 pages
ISBN 0-240-80868-1. Price: £28.99.
Focal Press, 2006
Web Link

Franc Kozamernik

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Video Systems in an IT environment

It is useful for someone who often writes book reviews (such as myself) to check at the Amazon website to see what other people think about a particular book. To this end, after having read this book in quite some detail, I reviewed the opinions offered at the Amazon bookstore and compared them with my own view. What I found was that this book consistently enjoys the highest 5-star grades.

I agree with the high grade but for slightly different reasons.

First of all, the book successfully breaks with the preconceptions and prejudices of some traditional video engineers who have been strongly opposed to IT – claiming that IT is not able to meet the exacting demands of AV workflows. This is a rare achievement. Even 5 years ago, IT servers were not considered appropriate for the professional studio environment to carry, process and store video and audio files and to preserve AV lip sync, video keying, video and timecode frame accuracy. At that time, there was a lack of standardized, horizontal market solutions. The security, safety and reliability of the whole IT installation used to be insufficient. In the meantime, most of the above problems have been sorted out. As the processing/storage power and economy of IT has increased, video can now be integrated in the IT environment more easily.

This book is timely. It comes on the bookshelves at the right time when many broadcasters eagerly need it. The book provides an excellent guide to the RAID and RAIN storage systems to be used in the studio, and the necessary software systems used (service-oriented applications, middleware, etc). Protection (security) for networked AV systems against viruses, worms, Trojan horses and malware, as well as prevention strategies/tactics, are very well explained.

The book usefully contains some introductory tutorials on networking (useful for video engineers!) as well as video/audio basics (useful for IT experts!). It is an "all-in-one" repository of useful information. A comprehensive glossary of AV/IT terms and acronyms helps enormously.
Equally effective are the frequent references to the consumer world and the indications of vendors and their types of equipment. This information helps broadcasters who would like to compare the different vendors' products. Even if such commercial information becomes obsolete soon, it is a useful indication of the pros and cons – of course for more updated information the user can always consults the vendors' websites.

A precious enhancement to the book are the various real-world case studies (chapter 10).

What I especially like in this book is its lively style, which make its reading a pleasurable experience in spite of its technical depth. For example, the analogy between a vacation on Hawaii and the storage array data throughput is very amusing and helps the reader to retain the concept.
I would like to emphasize that the figures, illustrations and tables in this book are exceptionally numerous and of high graphical quality. They help the reader understand the sometimes complex concepts.

In summary, Al Kovalick's book is really a must for any broadcast engineer charged with implementing an IT studio production/archive/playout environment. What is more, it is also an enjoyable read. More information is available on the book's web site: http://www.theavitbook.com .

Video Systems in an IT environment – The essentials for professional Networked Media
Al Kovalick
Bound volume of 600 pages
ISBN 0-240-80627-1. Price: £37.99.
Focal Press, 2006
Web Link

Franc Kozamernik

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