DAM, MAM, Workflow Management…What’s That?

Image credit: TXT Polymedia

You probably don’t spend your time thinking about how DAM (digital asset management), MAM (media asset management) or Web Workflow (pretty much what it sounds like) fit into your media business, but you should.

(MAM is the more appropriate term here, as it’s mainly concerned with audio, video and other media content.)

Each technology aims to make sense of how to deal with quickly growing digital content (Twenty-four hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute), or finding ways to use software to support and supervise the things you do in your company.

Now it might not be too apparent why I’m talking about MAM and workflow management together. But both of these terms seek to use computers, software and some basically simple templates to add order to that unruly proliferation of media, or figure out how computers can help run your business in a smoother, more coherent fashion to save you time and money.

This first article only introduces what will be an ongoing series to help make sense of these important technologies. Although I’m be taking most of my examples from Fortune 500-level companies (they use MAM systems that begin pricing at $50,000), don’t think this is just an academic exercise—like most everything in our digital age, the software behind these technologies will be making their way to you sooner than you may think.

Along the way I’ll be talking about some of the cool concepts I discovered at the recent Henry Stewart DAM conference in New York, as well as what companies like Ceiton (recently in town, A&E tapped them for a cool workflow app) can tell us about how we can be smarter in using web-based technologies to manage our companies.

Please stay tuned. If you think of any issues or companies you’ve heard of that might be relevant, let me know (dan [at] nycppnews.com) and I’ll be happy to investigate.

About Dan Ochiva

New York City-based journalist and NYCPPNEWS founder Dan Ochiva writes and consults on film, video, and digital media technology.

Trackbacks

Tweets that mention DAM, MAM, Workflow Management…What's That? | NYC Production & Post News -- Topsy.com says:

06/25/2010 at 1:31 PM

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Henry Stewart DAM, Dan Ochiva. Dan Ochiva said: DAM, MAM, what's it all about? http://bit.ly/d7BlJs […]

Reply

Kami Asgar and Jessica Parks are post-production heavyweights who work with major studios, namely Sony. As a sound designer (Asgar) and as a post executive (Parks), their collective resume touches on everything from Apocalypto to Grandma’s Boy to Venom.

Parks has recently shifted her focus from supervisor to hands-on sound design, and we talk about how it’s never too late to pivot on your career path and find the thing you love doing wherever you are in life.

Click on this link to read the rest of the article on No Film School’s site.

The coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last.

To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

Phase 4 production guidance is available on the Film Permit website. All production activity, whether it requires a Film Permit or not, must comply with New York Forward Industry Guidance.

For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

NVIDIA Research has invented a way to use AI to dramatically reduce video call bandwidth while simultaneously improving quality

What the researchers have achieved has remarkable results: by replacing the traditional h.264 video codec with a neural network, they have managed to reduce the required bandwidth for a video call by an order of magnitude. In one example, the required data rate fell from 97.28 KB/frame to a measly 0.1165 KB/frame – a reduction to 0.1% of required bandwidth.

To read the rest of this article on Petapixel, click this link.

Law360 (October 9, 2020, 5:22 PM EDT) — The Motion Picture Industry Health Plan’s board can’t be sued under ERISA for allegedly flouting its duties when it relaxed plan rules in response to COVID-19, a California federal judge has ruled, nixing a proposed class action filed by two cinematographers who still couldn’t qualify for benefits.

In an order entered Thursday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the board of directors’ motion to dismiss Greg Endries and Dee Nichols’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit accusing board members of breaching their duty to treat all plan participants fairly.

Endries and Nichols, members of Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, said in July that the board left them and others “out in the cold” in its attempts to address the problems COVID-19 caused for plan participants.

But Judge Klausner agreed with the board’s contention that the case, which alleged a fiduciary breach, should be tossed because plan administrators don’t act as fiduciaries when they amend health care plans.

Read the full article on the Law360 site by clicking here.

Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo photographed at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles for the Variety Playback Podcast.

The Russo brothers, directors of the all-time top grossing film “Avengers: Endgame,” quietly secured a roughly $50 million cash infusion for their production company AGBO from Saudi Arabia earlier this year, multiple sources tell Variety.

In a deal brokered and closed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Russos received the investment from an undisclosed Saudi bank in exchange for a minority stake in the brothers’ Los Angeles-based shop.