The Key Elements of Digital Asset Management

Peter D. Berry Principal Cerami & Associates, Inc.

The last decade has seen an enormous growth in the amount of digital content, stored on both public and private computer systems. This content ranges from professionally produced (Movies, TV, Music), institutionally produced (Lecture Capture, Digital Libraries, CCTV, Governmental Information) and consumer produced (Digital Photos, YouTube). As the volume and value of this content has increased, storage and management needs have risen proportionally, and this trend shows no sign of slowing down. As the worlds content is going digital, the needs for robust means of indexing, searching, retrieving and archiving these digital assets has lead to the development of dedicated Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems. This whitepaper provides an overview of the key elements of a DAM.

What is a Digital Asset ?

Broadly speaking, anything that can be captured in a digital format can then be treated as a digital asset. The most obvious examples are media files, such as video, audio, still images and graphics. However, the digital assets could equally be text files, telemetry or other data, and there are a number of scenarios where cross relationships may exist between one asset and another.

How are Digital Assets Managed?

Just as with physical assets, the key to managing digital assets is to know what exists in the inventory and how to locate it. To achieve this is, it is necessary to have a common means of describing the asset (Is it video? a text file? who created it? what is the subject? is it copyright?), a means of providing a unique identifier for each asset and a database to allow searches to be made either for a specific asset or one that has the characteristics that meet some or all of the search criteria. The description of the asset is called metadata and is crucial to the successful implementation of a DAM.

What is Metadata?
Metadata can be thought of as data about data. In its simplest form, it could be a short description, or thumbnail, of the digital content that can then be searched for in a database. The metadata will point to the appropriate asset, and once it is found it can be retrieved. In order to provide interoperability, a group of international standards have been developed for metadata, the most important of which is ISO 158356 2009 (Dublin Core Metadata Element Set). By always using the same core 15 fields to describe an asset, the metadata can be read by any DAMS that are compliant with this standard. In addition, Dublin Core Metadata can be incorporated into XML documents, and additional fields can be defined almost indefinitely. This has lead to the development of a number of XML based enhanced Metadata standards such as PBCore and NewsML which contain additional fields specifically designed to provide extra information about Audio and Video assets.

Technology Elements
The elements of a DAM architecture includes media ingest, logging, metadata creation, database management, security, transcoding, media storage support for post production and annotation, and integration with scheduling systems. Broadly speaking, the main components of a DAM solution are: Asset Repository: At the center of the DAM solution is a repository where the digital assets are ingested and stored - preferably in an automated process along with associated metadata and links. As soon as the original assets are ingested, the DAM will create lower resolution proxy files. The metadata will point users to the proxy files, unless they have rights to access the original. In this way, the integrity of the original files will be preserved and bandwidth requirements reduced. Typically, an institutional user will have a central storage array and servers. This equipment complex requires conditioned space and will most likely be located in a server room.

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Content Management: DAM Solutions require a powerful content management tool for search, retrieval, and asset management capabilities. Appropriate security levels can be created and defined to determine user access levels, as well as to track asset usage. Application Interface: The DAM can be deployed and accessed over a large network of distributed devices and user interfaces within the organization, as well as with external users using the internet. In this manner, teams can collaborate and contribute to the assets, and remote users can search and retrieve content. This is particularly relevant in the Broadcast/Media field, where the DAM may be required to integrate with Broadcast Automation (for scheduled play-out) and Post-production systems. It also has relevance in the research and legal fields, where physically separate groups of individuals may be working collaboratively.

What Markets Require a DAM ?

The prime users of DAM Systems are organizations that produce and store a lot of digital information. Not so long ago, this meant primarily Broadcast/media operations and digital libraries. However, there are many other potential users of DAM systems, including but not limited to: Government (Just about everything) Judicial (Courtroom proceedings, Evidence, documentation) Security (CCTV Post event forensic analysis) Higher Education (Lecture capture, Student projects) Healthcare (Digital Patient records, Simulation/Training) Corporate (Videoconference records, Training videos) Museums (Virtual Collections, Visitor/Fundraising Data) In fact, the advantages of being able to retrieve information easily are such that it is hard to think of an industry that wouldnt benefit from better organization of its digital assets.

Planning a DAM
When planning a DAM, the following questions should be asked: Who will have access to the system? What are the bandwidth limitations of the underlying network? How fast must material be located and retrieved? Is there a requirement for integration with existing databases? Is there a requirement for integration with post-production and/or annotation systems? What formats will be chosen for storage and distribution of the material? How much storage is required? Will storage be centralized or distributed? To what extent will content be stored on-line, near-line or off-line? What Long-term storage solutions will be viable? Who will assume the role of System administrator and/or digital curator? Does the content have to traverse more than one network type? What locations must have access to the content? Will content be available only on secure networks or made available over the public Internet? How will Intellectual Property be protected? If the system will be used to generate revenue, how will asset usage be tracked?

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Storage/Archiving
From a cost and functional standpoint, the most important of these questions is How much storage, and of what type, should be provided? The type of storage will fall into one of three different categories; online, near-line or offline. Deciding on the type of storage will mostly be based on the availability needs of media. For instance, if daily or fast access is required to assets, then online storage is the best alternative. If archiving all assets with no time constraints is the application, then offline storage is the most economical option. Really, it is storage access time that must first be considered.

Online Storage Overview

Online storage is a storage option that allows media to be quickly available to the user typically within fractions of a second. It utilizes different hard-disk drive (HDD) configurations including internal disk drives (within the main DAM server itself) or external drives with fast connections and configurations. However, online storage is the most expensive method of storing media. Typically, high performance disk drives with a fast interface are utilized. Costs also increase when RAID (redundancy) configurations are used. The common RAID 5 configuration, for example, has distributed parity for drive failure protection, but at the cost of only 63% storage space efficiency. In order to size the online storage component appropriately, it is essential that the users agree and adhere to policies on file formats and how long assets will remain online. In addition, reasonable space must be left to allow archived files to be placed back online.

Nearline Storage Overview

Nearline storage is an intermediate type of storage that is generally considered to be a compromise between online and offline storage methods. The advantage of nearline storage is that it does not require the interaction of a user to physically retrieve the media. The location of media is readily accessible by utilizing a mass storage device such as a robotic tape library or a Blu-Ray jukebox. The tape cartridge or disc where the content is stored is quickly and automatically retrieved and the media copied to the local online storage. While access times are not as quick as online storage, nearline storage is significantly faster than manually retrieving offline media (one less step). While the upfront cost of a robotic storage library may be quite expensive, the cost advantage of quickly retrieving media can be significant. The advantage of nearline storage is a savings in high energy costs from spinning disks and the use of inexpensive, long shelf-life tape or an optical storage medium. Nearline storage is useful in applications where there are massive amounts of data.

Offline Storage Overview

Popular forms of offline storage include data tape (LTO), and optical storage such as DVD or Blu-Ray disc. While it is possible to quickly search for media that is stored using offline storage retrieval (using the same methods as searching media stored using online storage) of high-resolution content is a lot more time consuming. This is due to the fact that offline storage is typically done using a storage medium that is not directly accessible to the MAM server. Offline storage requires physical user interaction, i.e., physically retrieving a storage unit and inserting into a drive to access the requested media. For instance, it may be necessary to insert an LTO tape cartridge or Blu-Ray disc into a reader where the media will be retrieved and usually transferred to online storage for quick access. However, it may be very time consuming for this to occur. Offline storage is useful for media that is used infrequently.

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There are several benefits of offline storage, including lower media costs, increased storage density, reduced power consumption, and in the case of non-volatile media like tape and optical, increased data overwrite security. The Write Once Read Many (WORM) characteristic of some tape and optical media gives added protection to being modified and/or deleted. However, it must be noted that there are no long term guarantees that any of these formats will last more than 7-10 years. Therefore, any archive strategy should plan conservatively around the expected lifetime of the media. Another valid concern that arises is obsolescence of the archive technology itself. For example, there is no guarantee that a DVD drive able to read todays archived DVD may be found 10 years from now. Just consider having to look for a floppy drive today to read a floppy disk created in 1990. Hence, any archive strategy will assume an entire technology refresh rate of 5-7 years to prevent being outdated. In addition, the physical location of the archive must be considered. Ideally, at least 2 copies of all archive materials should be maintained in physically diverse locations so that a catastrophic event at one location will not destroy the archive.

Cloud Storage
A fourth storage option is the rapidly emerging field of Cloud Storage. In a cloud storage model, storage space is hosted remotely by a service provider, with access typically provided across the internet. Users pay for the amount of storage and bandwidth used, similar to the way that an electric utility charges for power consumed. The obvious advantage to this approach is that it reduces the investment required for maintaining dedicated storage infrastructure and moves costs from capital expenses to operating expenses. In addition, the remote service provider is likely to have multiple storage centers in diverse physical locations, so the use of cloud storage introduces additional protection against disasters. The field of Cloud Computing is still evolving, and Cloud Storage should be approached conservatively for now, with the cloud being used primarily as another option for offline storage, or as a hosting location for low bandwidth proxy files.

Linking/Annotation
For a DAM to be truly useful, it is a given that it must be possible to easily find assets. However, this process can be greatly enhanced if linkage between assets can be established. For instance, a law firm may have a video file of a deposition, a separate text file of a transcript of the deposition and related other digital assets. If they can be linked together, then the record becomes vastly more useful. Fortunately, XML lends itself to this kind of linking, and the establishment of links can be automated to some extent during the ingest process. Further manual annotation can provide rich opportunities for data mining.

Curation
Just like a physical asset collection, a digital asset collection requires curation. Because digital curation and data preservation are ongoing processes, a DAM user must plan for preservation throughout the lifecycle of digital material. Preservation actions must be planned and then realized to ensure that the authoritative nature of digital material is protected for the long term. Such actions include validation, assigning preservation metadata, assigning representation information and ensuring acceptable data structures or file formats. Together, these preservation actions ensure that digital assets remain authentic, reliable and usable whilst at all times maintaining their integrity.

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Intellectual Property Management

Strict attention must be paid to the maintenance of Intellectual Property (IP) housed on a DAM. If any assets are copyright, they must be marked as so, and if they are unique assets produced by the DAM users they should be digitally watermarked. Regular audits must be performed to ensure that no copyright assets belonging to other organizations have been ingested unless there are specific agreements in place to allow sharing of IP. This is a curation activity.

Usage Tracking/Billing
The DAM must support usage tracking by all users of the stored assets. Depending on the nature of the stored assets, an efficient billing system should be a fully integrated sub-system of the DAM.

Conclusion
The market for DAMs is a continually growing one. Depending on the industry, there are certain key players (manufacturers and system integrators) who can deliver turnkey solutions. However, the common underlying element to a successful implementation is good needs analysis and planning. This is where a specialist consultant can help By bringing together the various stakeholders, analyzing existing workflows, identifying any legacy databases that require integration and otherwise assisting with the decision making process outlined herein, a specialist consultant can identify best of breed solutions and provide bid documents to enable competitive procurement. In addition, the consultant should remain involved after the initial deployment, so that as system usage evolves they can provide additional guidance. In this manner, a DAM can be implemented that will be maximize return on investment and remain useable and upgradeable for the foreseeable future. ____________________________ Peter D. Berry is a technology subject matter expert and Principal at Cerami & Associates, an acoustic, audiovisual, and technology design consulting firm.

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