Archive of the Digital Asset Management Category

The Digital Content Producer and millimeter bloggers—Editor at Large Trevor Boyer, Senior Contributing Editors David Leitner and Dan Ochiva, and Contributing Writer Jan Ozer—discuss the upcoming show and what they’re looking forward to seeing and hearing more about. Listen to the exclusive NAB Show podcast

(music provided by Dead Girls Ruin Everything, Reignition Recordings)

Check out part two

Digital asset management (DAM) is an amorphous concept to many in the production and post communities. Having heard that it‘s the coming thing, and further, that implementing it could make your business more efficient, saving money in an increasingly competitive environment, well, no matter: jumping in to such high concept stuff that isn‘t a part of your day-to-day world can still be scary. Where do you start?
That’s why latest version of Xytech System‘s Xytech Enterprise software might be just the thing to make you take the plunge–rather than starting out with all sorts of abstract database concepts, the company backs into DAM, building out from its familiar schedule sheet structure to, in Version 10, transition to a file-based system that integrates digital assets (media files) and physical ones (staff, rooms, hardware). more

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this whole holographic storage thing. I’d heard about it, of course, written a little bit about it, but until I got to NAB and visited the Maxell booth to talk with both Maxell officials and In-Phase Technologies officials about their joint holographic venture, I really didn’t fully appreciate the potential of this mysterious, Star Trekish storage technology.

Maxell’s Holographic Recording Media and In Phase‘s Tapestry 300r holographic media recorder/player, of course, are still in the prototype phase, but they are far enough along to have been used in live-to-air playback tests at Turner Broadcasting and to have numerous orders on file, particularly from broadcasters interested in the next generation of digital storage solutions for their massive libraries of visual data. more

A brief visit to Panasonic‘s booth today reminded me how far we‘ve come when it comes to codecs. Their AVC-Intra, based on H.264 a/k/a MPEG-4, is twice as efficient as DVCPRO HD. In a split-screen demo on the show floor, video compressed using AVC-Intra at 50 Mbps (1440/4:2:0/10 bits) matched identical video compressed using DVCPRO HD at 100 Mbps. Differences in resolution or artifacting were undetectable. In another split-screen, AVC-Intra at 100 Mbps (1920/4:2:2/10 bits) matched D-5 HD (north of 230 Mbps). Same impressive result.

Where this gets particularly interesting is in the case of Panasonic‘s new P2 flagship, the AJ-HPX3000. The shape and size of the chic black 3000 affirm its lineage to 3-CCD ENG camcorders, yet resemblance ends there. With 2.2 million-pixel CCDs (1920 x 1080) and 14-bit, 4:2:2 signal processing, the 3000 is a spirited thoroughbred more in league with Sony’s F900 than a Varicam. However at $48K list, it‘s half the cost of an F900. more

Thomson Corporate Research General Manager Henry Gu, PhD, was an enthusiastic fountain of information a few minutes ago about the company’s research division, and some of the prototype technologies coming out of that division that are being revealed for the first time publicly at NAB.

We at Millimeter and Digital Content Producer tend to write frequently about the goings-on at Thomson’s systems’ division (Grass Valley) and service division (Technicolor), but Gu suggests research is where the action really is. He also points out that the research division (400 researchers worldwide, “most” of whom are PhD’s, according to Gu) also impacts not just the Thomson bottom line, but the industry as a whole, since much of the technology eminating from the group will eventually get licensed to manufacturers and users outside the Thomson umbrella. more

Ready to move media management to the next level?
Microsoft is. At this point, the Redmond giant may only have a tentative presence in the creative content creation arena (although that‘s changing; stay tuned for a later blog on Silverlight) but that doesn‘t mean they don‘t have some interesting ideas of what might be useful for integrating media production and business chores.
One example: Microsoft Interactive Media Manager, a just announced digital content management package that combines digital workflows and media application integration, all of it accessed via a collaborative front-end Web environment. more

I paid a visit this morning to the Focus Enhancements booth, and they were excited to discuss a new initiative for the company–their dive into digital asset management tools. I sat down with Robert Caldeira, Senior Product Manager, and he gave us a quick runthrough of some of the offerings. Click here to listen to my chat with Robert.

–Michael Goldman