and in many languages. As a result, archives have expanded exponentially, with each title spinning off versions with a variety of audio and dialogue tracks and sets of metadata. Digital technology makes it easy to store, duplicate and send things, but this all presupposes that you can find them in the first place. “What surprises me, is that the studio may know it has a requested version of a title, but doesn’t always know where all of the elements of that version are, in order to make that delivery. That’s a challenge we’re helping studios solve, by consolidating their archives in the cloud and moving towards component versions or IMF (Interoperable Master Format).” KEEP ONLY WHAT YOU NEED Breaking out media into components has become an effective way for companies to best manage and leverage content assets. Maintaining separate video, audio and subtitle tracks, as well as metadata, enables easy assembly of various versions. IMF – SMPTE’s standard for distributing media files – allows versions to be assembled out of available component parts, obviating the need for storage of every possible permutation that might be required. Ateliere’s cloud-native media supply chain platform, Ateliere Connect, is used by studios to package and deliver versions of titles globally. The platform ships with templates of over 100 of the most common OTT, broadcast and cable destinations. “There’s no need to keep around a lot of duplicated elements in a cloud-based presentation system,” says Carson. One of Ateliere’s most useful tools for keeping archives not only manageable, but searchable, is its Deep Analysis feature. This allows archives to be checked frame by frame for duplicated material. Rather than searching through folder upon folder of duplicates – wondering whether that German track you sent in the spring to Munich is really different from the one you sent to Zurich last week – you have a clear assessment of exactly what you have right in front of you, with all the noise and waste cleared away. Carson notes that, for most clients, often 70% or more of the archive is fully duplicated. A clean-up of archives not only helps companies get their titles out to market faster and simpler, it also comes with inherent benefits. “As you consolidate an archive, you can eliminate a lot of that information that used to be on a spreadsheet or in someone’s head, then move to a single system of record that tells you exactly what you have. It’s easy to give your sales and media services team a quick view of whether or not they can make a sale in a particular region.”
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DEMO OF ATELIERE’S DE-DUPLICATION TECHNOLOGY
ENVIRONMENTAL STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION Clearing archives is also part of a company’s environmental responsibility. Duplicate files sitting on a server or in a tape library are using electricity for power and cooling, whether they are being used or not. When you’re reducing your load of files – be that on- premises or in the cloud – you’re reducing your carbon footprint. Small companies, or those still building up content libraries, may not have to deal with this problem – yet. They haven’t moved to the cloud, or their on-premises archive may still be manageable in-house. But the lesson studio archives can teach us is to establish best practices now and prepare for growth to come. ”Because you do have a cost of storage, managing everything in the cloud starts to pay off after you have more than about 1000 hours of HD content. And that’s a huge chunk of the industry that has that size of archive or larger.” THE CLOUD STARTS TO PAY OFF AFTER YOU HAVE MORE THAN ABOUT 1000 HOURS OF HD CONTENT
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