DMAM: digital media, metadata and management

For over a hundred years, cinema has produced and continues to produce millions of kilometers of film. Since the middle of the 20th century, television has generated hundreds of thousands of hours of audiovisual programs. Radio and the music recording industry also own and produce considerable sound archives. And photographic agencies and museums generate vast quantities of photos.

The advent of digital technology means that all these media can now be stored on computerized media. This is the role of Digital Media Asset Management, or DMAM (or simply MAM, or DMM), i.e. the management of digital audio-video-photo media. To ensure this management, DMAM implements and controls a chain of functions: Acquire – Analyze and Index – Manage data and processes – Search and distribute. DMAM thus becomes a strategic challenge not only for media companies, but also for businesses and institutions.

To achieve this, additional data, or metadata, will be associated with the data representing the sounds or images, to identify them and describe both the content and the container (format). Digital media can then be managed throughout a digital production-distribution chain.

The applications of Digital Media Asset Management range from the professional to the institutional and the general public:

• in the field of professional production: digital media management in an audiovisual production studio; managing digitized audio or video archives; searching for still images in large photo collections; ...

• in the field of consumer "production": managing a personal collection of digital photos; managing MP3 music files; ...

• professional distribution of digital media via digital TV bouquets, interactive TV, the Internet or Intranet, multimedia telephones or PDAs, DVD, etc.

• consumer distribution to sell and buy music online (e.g. Apple's iTunes Music Store); programming and personalizing TV viewing with the magnetic-disc Personal Video Recorder; ...

This article is the first in a series of four. It defines the aims and objectives of Digital Media Asset Management, presents an overview of digital media, describes the associated metadata and current standardization, and then situates the DMAM functions and system within the environment of an all-digital digital media production-distribution chain.

The following three articles detail each group of functions in a DMAM system:

• Acquire – Analyze and Index – Edit (article ) ;

• Store and serve – Manage data and metadata –...