Month: September 2023

Categories
Digital Asset Management Digital Media MAM Technology

Multi-Faceted Media Systems Integration

On the journey from inspiration to a finished video, your creative team will have their hands on quite a bit of technology. There are many specialized, robust software solutions for every step, from production to postproduction to transcoding and distribution. You may have several capture devices and may have unique ingest needs. Everyone on your team works with media files, so a good Media Asset Management (MAM) solution is essential. Team members may be spread all over the globe. Some are on location, others in on-prem studios, and others work from home.

Many small and medium-sized video production teams find that they have loosely connected a hodgepodge of software, hardware, and media storage solutions into a fragile and overly complex system. A system that has evolved may be inefficient and easily broken.

The organic and haphazard adoption of tools may have left your team with ineffective, poorly documented workflows. These workflows may have evolved without ever being designed for efficiency, creativity, or high performance. With so many innovations on the market promising to transform your editing process, you may wonder how to get the greatest efficiency and quality. It may be time to take a good look at multifaceted systems integration.

When properly engineered, these disparate solutions can work seamlessly as one. Multifaceted media system integration is the process of combining all these tools into one system. The result is a powerful single-source content supply chain.

When you commit to multifaceted media systems integration, the first step will be to get a picture of the current hardware and software, all the locations where files are needed, what team members require access, what software applications are used in their work, and the related hardware at each step of preproduction, production, postproduction, and file distribution.

A system integrator will partner with you to dig deep into an analysis of the system architecture and assess how the components work together. While many new innovations are available, there is often the need to continue preserving and using valuable legacy systems. A customized and personalized system integration strategy will allow you to implement new technologies while benefiting from legacy systems.

Workflow analysis is also essential. Once workflow issues have been identified, the workflow engineer can design fresh solutions that will bring your team the greatest efficiencies and free up time and energy for creative work. Once the needs have been assessed, the next step is architecting and deploying systems that incorporate all essential aspects. The result is a reliable, properly integrated system.

Investing in a media system and single-source content supply chain integration brings operational efficiencies to your team, including automation, streamlined workflows, improved access to assets, powerful search capabilities, and better collaboration and sharing.

 

Advantages of Single Source Content Supply Chain Integration

A content supply chain is the system to plan, produce, and deliver content. Integration into a single source brings tangible value and benefits to any organization. When your infrastructure aligns with the content your customers want, your team will create high-quality videos efficiently.

  • Single-source content supply chain integration improves efficiency by reducing the time it takes to produce and distribute content.
  • Your creative team will spend less time searching for assets and are freed up to create content.
  • Having a single source of content makes it easier to manage workflows.
  • Versioning control ensures that everyone is working on the same version of the media files, reducing delays and improving content production speed.
  • Single-source content supply chains can reduce storage needs by eliminating the need for multiple copies of the same content.

Effective multifaceted media systems link the tools so that these many different components function and act as a single coordinated solution. Creative applications can be set up to interact with other software, hardware, network, storage, and media asset management systems to facilitate and streamline workflows.

 

Contact Us Today

CHESA can evaluate your current setup and ensure the proper infrastructure is in place to meet your needs and deliver your product with quality, speed, and efficiency.

CHESA has a passion for the nuances of media workflow integration. We have strong partnerships with the best-of-breed technology providers in the creative IT industry. We take a holistic approach in recommending solutions that bring real value and benefits to your organization rather than selling technology for technology’s sake. Our team comes to the table with deep knowledge of the tools and vendors. It is ready to address the demands and requirements of your environment and advance your business goals. Contact us today to learn more about how a multifaceted media systems integration can enable your creative team to create high-quality videos efficiently.

Categories
Digital Asset Management Digital Media

Media Workflow Automation in Adobe

A workflow is a sequence of tasks or steps that take a video project from inception to completion. There are workflows for every stage of the project, from ingest to distribution, and for every type of activity, including editorial work and review and approvals. Every project has workflows, whether they are documented or not. Media workflow automation is an effective strategy to enhance productivity, improve quality, and ensure consistency.

Adobe’s video applications are designed for workflow automation. Adobe Premier Pro has built-in workflow orchestration, but it is also designed to integrate with other apps and workflow orchestration tools. Helmut by MoovIt Software Products (MSP is an incredibly powerful orchestration tool). MSP is a German-based product developer and an Adobe Video Solution Partner.

We’ve been impressed with the power of Helmut right from the beginning. Helmut’s Streamdesigner is a powerful and flexible low-code workflow builder that allows creatives to design workflows that are tailored to their exact needs. In October 2021, we invited David Merzenich of MSP, one of the creators of Helmut, to CHESA’s workflow show. Our conversation with David is worth checking out if you would like to explore more about the power of Helmut.

 

Striving for Consistency and Flexibility in Post-Production

Sometimes, editorial teams are racing towards completion without stepping back first and taking a hard look at workflows. Ensuring consistency can be challenging, with so many players having a role in video production and post-production. Well-defined workflows provide a framework for editorial work that ensures consistency.

When automating workflows, you should explore automating repeatable tasks, especially if they are labor-intensive. This automation will have a measurable impact on streamlining your project. For example, ingest and tagging are labor-intensive processes that lend well to automation.

Another area to look at is multistep processes with significant variability. By streamlining and standardizing multistep processes, you can ensure that all team members use the most efficient approach. When the whole team uses the same process, coordination and collaboration can be enhanced, and handoffs are more predictable and easy to schedule.

Automated workflows can expedite the review and approval process, ensuring that feedback and approvals are provided promptly at each critical point and that work does not proceed until review and approval have been completed. This optimization can prevent costly reworks when unapproved assets are used in a project.

Sometimes, there’s a worry that consistency will be adverse to creativity. The opposite can be true. When workflows tackle the pieces that need to be consistent in an efficient manner, they carve out time for the creative aspects of the project.

There are many places where consistency is essential in a video project. Brand consistency is one example. Workflows, branding, and templates can ensure that all branding guidelines are in place.

When designing workflows, the importance of flexibility should not be overlooked. When workflows are too rigid, you force creators into a one-size-fits-all approach, which can backfire. Systems Integrators and workflow engineers should consider the creatives’ needs, skills, styles, expertise, and preferred ways of working. When editors are empowered to adjust workflows to match their creative style and needs, they can gain the efficiency and consistency they seek while still having workflow solutions that enhance creativity.

Consistency and automation are keys to production efficiency, yet flexibility is often essential for creativity. Striking a balance requires a deep understanding of the creative process, the tools, and the systems. Integration and workflow development within Adobe Premiere Pro keeps editors focused on editing. Helmut by MSP further enhances the ability to create powerful, automated workflows that balance consistency and flexibility within the Adobe ecosystem.

 

Contact Us Today

CHESA has a passion for the nuances of media workflow automation and integration. We have strong partnerships with the best-of-breed technology providers in the creative IT industry. We take a holistic approach in recommending solutions that bring real value and benefits to your organization rather than selling technology for technology’s sake. Our team comes to the table with deep knowledge of the tools and vendors. It is ready to address the demands and requirements of your environment and advance your business goals. Contact us today to learn more about how automating workflows in the Adobe ecosystem can bring greater efficiency and free up your creatives for their best work.