INFOTAINMENT: Digitize to Survive

According to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, this
is the golden era for the entertainment industry in the country. Having touched
a market size of Rs 60,000 crore and predicting an annual growth rate of nearly
50%, the mile upon mile of content reels are telling their own proud tale, but
for a new problem–managing this content. And lest one conjures up images of
packed warehouses and drumloads of film-cans, think again–we are talking
archiving, indexing and distribution of this content from various sources into a
common format.

"Digital content management is critical," insists Prasad V Medury,
managing director, SGI India. "You should retrieve and reuse in different
sequences the video and movie clips so that your returns on investment become
higher, he adds. K Srinivasan, Pentamedia Graphics echoes these views.
"Digital content management in the entertainment industry is going to play
the most vital role in the 21st century," he says. Of course, he adds that
this is not a problem singular to the entertainment industry today, but plaguing
any sector that uses rich media content.

Shailendra Jit Singh, CEO, Mumbai-based Jalva Media, agrees,
"Specifically for the audio and video world, and industries such as
entertainment, media, education, healthcare and defense, media management is a
big challenge. Specifically again for media houses and companies, which plan to
use or deploy direct-to-home, interactive TV, Internet streaming and wireless
multimedia, as consumers lap up such emerging technologies, this becomes a
critical issue."

Time to act

The transition to digital content is already underway in other parts of the
world. For instance, in the US, the television industry is facing pressure from
the Federal Communications Commission and other administrative bodies to
introduce digital TV broadcasting, and high-definition TV. Miramax Films, one of
Hollywood’s biggies, and airplane and satellite-maker Boeing have together
demonstrated a system that digitally transmits first-run films directly to movie
theaters via fiber- and satellite-based networks. India is still some time away
from all this because of the absence of high-speed networks, and content
produced may not reach its audience unless Indian producers do a fast catch-up
act.

Forget the high-speed network for transmitting digital content, back home in
India, a majority of the content is way beyond being called digital. Visit any
library and it’s not uncommon to see video records of advertisements and
movies still stacked manually. Physical archives of tapes in old formats are
either poor in quality or not supported even today, when the real challenge is
creating digital archives that can be moved as files on high-speed networks. The
formats that were used earlier, such as VHS or Umatic, are not the preferred
archival formats due to their short shelf lives and poor quality. "Most
media companies today have basic library management systems that often only
track information at the tape level. There is a long road ahead for them to move
to digital archives," Singh says.

Making old new

There are many options–technologies like MPEG, DVD, content authoring and
standalone systems…also companies like SGI and Jalva Media are offering
solutions. Moving Picture Experts Group 2 (MPEG2) allows archiving content in
broadcast or digital versatile disk (DVD) quality and store them on media such
as DVD disks, which allow for longer storage life and cross-platform
compatibility. DVD jukeboxes also make it convenient to play these archives and
mix and match media on the fly.

For websites that use streaming media, there are two ways of managing their
digital assets: as part of the content-authoring process and as standalone
systems. Content authoring covers a range of tasks, including creating computer
graphics, video and audio authoring, and website scripting. As standalone
systems, specialized multimedia database systems can support a whole range of
content management and archiving functions.

Cautions Singh, "Companies need to be careful while creating archives
because different kinds of content should be archived differently depending upon
the quality of the source and the nature of programming."

Considering the massive problem facing the industry, the flip side of the
coin is an equally huge opportunity for industry. Leading the charge among the
big name companies is SGI with Studiocenter, a centralized digital asset
management system developed by SGI in collaboration with DreamWorks of Hollywood
director Steven Spielberg. It provides a template, which allows amortization of
a certain content clip, which can be reused.

Mumbai-based Jalva Media provides solutions for media management, indexing,
content archival, distribution and deployment on interactive platforms. It does
so in partnership with companies like MediaSite, iBeam Broadcasting, Madge.web,
Microsoft, Real and Apple. Another Mumbai-based company, Recreate Solutions,
also provides end-to-end solutions like encoding, media management systems,
hosting, meta-tagging. Others include BeanBag and Homeland Networks.

Benefits

The old content can be re-used and re-expressed. There is also cost saving in
an entertainment project, as it is revised and refocused before completion.
There is also real-time collaboration and simultaneous access to material from
many sources. And to generate revenue, the content can always be licensed and
sold. One of the most promising markets for streaming media applications is in
enterprise intranet and extranet communications, especially for advertisers.

Srinivasan says, "As Indian companies take up many short-term projects,
many of them do not have repurposing rights to use the data. If they do,
managing these digital assets will be easy and will be more effective." It
will also eliminate the need for shipping tapes, and help to curb piracy in a
major way. Through digital content management, the movie- and animation-makers
will not need to depend on the studios for distribution but would be able to
reach the smaller players.

"Presently, all this has been the realm of the large studios who had
spent millions in proprietary software. Now with broadband, these can be shared
and smaller players will buy modules of what they require," says Bhaskar
Majumdar, CEO, Recreate Solutions.

The future is going to be interactive multimedia convergence. This will not
only put just text, music and video put together on the website but also
integrate them so that the content is offered via hybrid media creating an
enhanced viewing experience. Of course, all this can only be possible if the
first step is taken right–that of content management.

Bijesh Kamath in Mumbai