DAM Scenario 13: Media Editing & Assembly

22-Feb-2019

The final Digital Asset Management business scenario in RSG's newly-updated roster of DAM vendor evaluation criteria concerns media editing and assembly services. It relates to the production and editing of audio or video in the corporate or ad agency environment, assts such as commercials, advertisements or radio broadcasts.

To that extent, it overlaps a bit with "Media Asset Management" (MAM) technology and desktop-based media editing suites. DAM vendors have been encroaching on both domains in recent years.

Video and Audio Review

In this scenario, the DAM system serves as a repository for audio and video, and helps manage the review between production and reviewers. The DAM stores a combination of raw footage, clips, and works in progress at various stages and digital forms.

You use it to move, upload, store, review, annotate, and transfer audio and video clips and works in progress. It provides a secure, controlled, and integrated environment to review the audio or video.

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Unlike the prior scenario, the DAM system here provides richer media services, including significantly deeper support for finding, selecting, editing, reviewing, preparing, and distributing A/V content.

Here are some other examples of deeper audio and video support for this scenario :

Extracting key frames and time codes from A/V files for quick visual identification, particularly of video content
Presenting key frames in the user interface for video in a “storyboard”
Visually displaying the first few words of an audio clip
Extracting existing audio as text, or transcribing closed-caption text
Playing a file from any point or frame in the file that you select, implying support for an A/V streaming server
Converting speech into text, or a text transcript with the text indexed to the particular frame
Defining video and audio “clips,” which are segments of video or audio defined by a start frame and end frame
Naming of clips for easy retrieval
Saving the clips as new assets
Creating a clip list, providing a “rough cut” or “rough edit” of an A/V sequence
Replacing clips, e.g., putting different “bumpers” or calls to action at the end of the video
Annotating the files by adding textual or graphical notations

A/V Editing Integration

In this scenario, a DAM should integrate tightly with A/V editing environments including Avid, Audacity, Premier, and Final Cut Pro (FCP). This implies that access to the DAM system and the ability to search for audio or video are either directly available from these environments, or the DAM system can format and deliver video for editing to these environments in an automated fashion. It also implies that these environments can easily submit and upload edited video back to the DAM system for review, approval, distribution, and other workflows

Additionally, you need to be able to transcode audio and video upon export into appropriate editor formats. The system should automate this step so that users do not need to think about how to do it. This is part and parcel of streamlining the workflow and being able to do full digital round trips between the DAM system and the A/V editing environments.

For most enterprises, only a few of today’s DAM systems are cut out for what’s needed to serve this use case. Is the vendor your looking at a good fit for you? Ask an expert, we'd be happy to help you asses the large variety of products available.