Digital Media Facility, Meddin Studios Announces Ribbon Cutting

WEB: meddinstudios.com/

A ribbon cutting ceremony is scheduled for Meddin Studios on Friday, November 6, 2009 at 2 PM at 2333 Louisville Road, Savannah, Georgia 31415

Meddin Studios is located inside the historic Meddin Brothers meat packing facility built in 1917, located at 2333 Louisville Road, Savannah, GA 31415. This 22,000 square foot building is located on 2.5 acres, three miles from downtown Savannah, Georgia.

An outlet for advanced digital media technology, this innovative facility is the brainchild of Jon Foster and Nick Gant. Jon and Nick recognized the need to provide such a facility through market research and 30 years of combined experience in the film and television industry. Nick has worked in a wide range of industry roles, including Sr. Designer and Art Director for a Fortune 400 company, broadcast designer, interactive designer and producer, director, editor, animator, aerial cinematographer and military combat photographer. Jon brings expertise in technical service and design, developed through years of building and integrating large systems inside post production and production facilities across the southeast. Together, Foster and Gant have primed Meddin Studios to be a premier facility that will foster innovation in digital film and video production and distribution. They’ve developed, and currently have in place, an experienced management team to carry out the mission of the company: Staci Donegan, Location Manager/Producer; Jason Osterday, Production Director (Camera/Audio); Andrew Riggs, Production Director (Grip/Lighting) and Steve Smith, Director of Sales/Account Executive.

At full operating capacity, the facility will be outfitted with four 2,500 square foot sound stages (2 of which can be combined for a single 5000 sq. ft sound stage), all with independent entrances and green rooms, full lighting grids, compressed air, water and natural gas provisions; a full post production facility that consists of 3 complete editing suites, 1 color correction/edit suite, a fully equipped 1,600 square foot Pro Tools audio suite that includes a multi-purpose recording booth that can facilitate full ADR and foley recording capabilities (with an ultimate goal of obtaining THX and 5.1 Dolby certification); 2,200 square feet dedicated to camera rental; and over 1,800 square feet dedicated to equipment rental. It will also have a 2,000 square foot lobby, a kitchen and multiple restrooms throughout the building. The facility will connect in a 1,700 square foot, centrally located machine room to handle video and audio signal distribution in the facility, digital asset management, backup and archive, compression and transcoding, deliverables and digital, accelerated file distribution. Meddin Studio’s inventory will also include an extensive line of camera, grip and lighting equipment. This will include two and three ton grip trucks, a motion capture remote head, 24’ telescoping camera crane, full Steadicam packages, camera car, and wireless video / follow focus packages. Meddin Studios is also finalizing plans for expansion on this property for future growth.

One of Meddin Studios’ unique offerings is asset management; the organization, conversion and preservation of content in a digital format which provides numerous advantages for an individual or organization. Aging film and tape formats, deteriorating old photos and new digital media formats are just a few of the types of assets for which Meddin Studios can develop and implement a preservation plan. At its simplest, it is a visual, searchable catalog of media from years past, as well as the present and future. From a more complex standpoint, it could mean repurposing existing assets to generate new revenue streams, or potentially saving a corporation or municipality from a liability it knew nothing about, simply because it was buried away in a tape library that had not been accessed in years.

Meddin Studios fills an infrastructure void locally, regionally and nationally for the industries it services. With an aggressive state tax credit program already in place for film, television and gaming production in Georgia, Meddin Studios will feed the already explosive growth of this industry and the businesses that support it. The economic impact will be tremendous, while invigorating the emerging west end of Savannah with the development of a creative professional campus.

For additional information about Meddin Studios, contact Staci Donegan at s.donegan@meddinstudios.com.

http://www.thecreativecoast.org

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digital asset management forum

This is a one-day, exclusive event featuring real-world implementations with a focus on digital asset management (DAM) strategies and solutions. At this forum you’ll see how DAM enables those in the creative services industry to streamline their workflows allowing for greater creativity. You’ll learn about the benefits of centralizing your rich media files for easy organization, access and distribution of brand assets to your clients, sales team, and partners.

FEATURING:		Top Seattle Communications Strategy Firm, Methodologie Case Study: Maximizing the Value of Rich Media Assets in a Down Economy
DATE:		April 9th, 2009
TIME:		10:00am – 3:00pm
LOCATION:		Ignited Minds, El Segundo, CA

Join hosts Extensis and Ignited Minds to:

• Find out how Methodologie, a fast-paced high-end design firm utilizes DAM to save time and money for clients like The Coca-Cola Company, Boeing, Potlatch, Microsoft Xbox and Seattle Children’s Hospital
• Learn DAM best practices for creative agencies and corporate marketing departments with a focus on digital asset distribution
• Participate in roundtable and workflow discussions while networking with your peers

Who Should Attend

Creative, Management and IT professionals interested in maximizing the value of digital assets in creative agencies and corporate marketing departments.

http://www.extensis.com

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Video Asset Management In High Demand As Viewership Climbs and Marketers Use More Online Video.

Widen is seeing increased interest in Video Asset Management solutions to store, manage, access and deliver digital video for online video marketing purposes.

As Sean Callahan recently reported in the Marketers Make Move to Online Video article in BtoB’s Best 2009 special issue for Marketers and Creative, the “Internet has accelerated the creative use of video in b-to-b marketing, which is one key trend we saw in the submissions for this year’s BtoB’s Best.”

Online video has become an affluent medium for both b-to-b and b-to-c marketers alike. Online video is a key method of delivering and consuming information that educates, entertains, and/or inspires in ways that touch emotions static text on a page cannot achieve. Best of all, online video isn’t just for big companies. An abundance of devices and software for video capture and editing are becoming popular additions for many marketing departments. Furthermore, Web-based DAM technologies are making the management and distribution easier and cheaper for organizations of all sizes.

In terms of viewership, the Nielsen Company recently reported viewers have substantially increased the time they spend watching online videos with YouTube being by far the single largest provider of streaming video. Nielsen’s time-per-viewer metric rose to 195.2 minutes per month in September, a 25% year-over-year increase. Read Time Spent Viewing Video Online Up 25% per Viewer to learn more.

Continues @ http://blog.widen.com

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Growing need for digital asset management

Commentary - Digital asset management, or DAM, has often been described as a process or a tool for organizing the creation, management, distribution, and archiving of rich media assets. In the DAM world, the term “assets” generally refers to rich media files such as images, photos, video and audio, whereas a “file” generally refers to email, documents, records, or scanned images. Creative agencies, publishers and media outlets have long realized the wisdom of utilizing DAM solutions for producing media assets, managing digital rights, conferring with clients, handling review cycles, retouching images, and editing photos and videos.

The growing need for digital asset management
Today, it’s increasingly common for businesses of all kinds to produce corporate videos and podcasts, e-Learning modules, YouTube clips, training materials, brand identity graphics, and more. DAM systems bring order to the creative process involved with producing and leveraging these assets to their fullest extent.

A recent Forrester report noted, “With technologies like digital cameras and inexpensive authoring tools driving asset creation costs down, digital assets are greatly increasing in number and these rich media are being used across a wider range of enterprises. Inadequate management of these growing libraries, however, will make reusing and repurposing difficult, leading many organizations to take another look at DAM.”1 Analysts at IDC concur: “IDC believes the digital asset management market will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of more than 25 percent during the period of 2006-2010, outperforming the overall content management market…and the software market as a whole, by a wide margin…DAM will remain an independent and lively market…given the specialized requirements of DAM solutions.”2

The benefits of DAM Organizations deploying specialized DAM solutions typically realize the following benefits:

• Consistent messaging and brand — With built-in revision control, asset repurposing, and approval processes, DAM systems enable organizations to maintain consistent use and re-expression of digital assets, from brochures to corporate videos to web content.
• Generation of new revenue streams — Many organizations have built new business opportunities around the creation of high-value content for internal and external clients by repurposing their assets such as using book covers to promote books online. Consider a photo that costs tens of thousands of dollars to create each and every time. With DAM, it can be reused. Without DAM, its existence may not be known and the re-creation costs are incurred once again.
• Cost savings — Organizations gain a return on their investment through the elimination of redundant asset creation efforts and the ability to quickly retrieve assets.
• Digital media management and distribution — DAM systems enable the efficient organization, indexing, and distribution of digital assets. Advanced DAM systems provide a distributed architecture and multi-site asset storage, as well as the ability to provide multiple repositories for self-synchronization of both assets and their associated metadata.
• Global web-based access — Organizations can distribute digital masters and other types of licensed assets via secure web access. Advanced DAM systems also provide asset ordering and fulfillment modules, and can easily integrate with existing e-commerce and transaction servers.

Vetting DAM solutions
Select a digital asset management system based on your creative needs. This may include management of your organization’s creative assets, managing broadcast and post-production workflows, media enhanced e-learning, video-on-demand repositories, multi-channel distribution, personalized publishing on-demand, and more. Most businesses today will find it beneficial to use a solution that also manages the video creation, editing, collaboration, and management process. This involves ease of integration with video editing applications, video usage standards, and broadcast workflows. Questions you may want to consider before investing in a digital asset management solution include:

• Does the DAM solution provide seamless integration with creative authoring tools such as Adobe Creative Suite and Quark or digital editing suites such as Avid and Apple's Final Cut Pro?
• Is “work-in-progress” supported by this DAM solution, or does it simply provide the ability to archive your organization’s assets? Some DAM and ECM solutions provide only the archiving capabilities.
• Is this a “best of breed” DAM solution? Be wary of vendors who try to be all things to all customers. Give preference to a best of breed DAM solution over an ECM or MRM (Marketing Resource Management) solution that also offers limited DAM functionality which may not meet your requirements.
• Can the solution scale? Be sure to select a DAM solution that has the ability to keep up with the growth of your organization and its requirements. And of course, if you are thinking of an enterprise-wide or global implementation, the ability for your DAM solution to easily scale is a necessity.

Conclusion
Until recently, many enterprises have not realized the great need for DAM solutions. The ability that DAM has to manage both documents and digital assets is extraordinary. While many general content management vendors offer basic DAM functionality, they have lost touch with the collaborative process that is so integral to the creation and management of rich media assets. These systems may support the ability to attach static images or even short video clips. However, the proper management of rich media assets requires a more sophisticated approach.

Forward-thinking organizations recognize the need for solutions designed from the ground up to support the creative process. Selecting the best solution that meets your requirements enables organizations to leverage the expertise of both knowledge management and artistic teams to their fullest extent.

biography
Hassan Kotob is president and CEO of North Plains Systems.

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DAM takes on many roles

The market for digital asset management (DAM) solutions remains robust, driven by increasing demand for rich media on Web sites, for marketing materials and in technical documentation. Ideally, assets for those purposes are managed centrally and published as needed to different destinations. "DAM solutions are extending both upstream and downstream," says Melissa Webster, program VP for content and digital media technologies at IDC. "It’s less and less about the repository and more about the workflow."

The annual market stands at about $600 million, and historically has posted double-digit growth. GSD&M Idea City is a full-service advertising agency with such high-profile clients such as AARP, American Red Cross, BMW, John Deere and L.L. Bean. Based in Austin, Texas, the company’s staff of 450 includes a large creative and studio art department.

The company used a cumbersome, paper-based photography tracking system listing the photographer, customer and other information about the asset. Employees had to leave their desks to retrieve the CD or other medium on which the archived working file was stored. If a piece of artwork could not be found, it might have to be recreated, adding more agency costs and time to the project.

After deciding to move to a digital asset management system, GSD&M Idea City formed a search team consisting of heads of several departments, including creative services departments and IT. "This was not an IT initiative," says Lisa McIntyre, digital asset management librarian at GSD&M Idea City. "We wanted buy-in from other potential users of the system." The company then narrowed down the choices to three vendors that included both pure-play DAM products and enterprise content management (ECM) systems.

Site visits

Each of the finalists made on-site visits as the last stage of the search process. "We worked through several scenarios to make sure the software could do what we wanted," McIntyre says. "We did not want to change our work processes, just the means through which we accomplished the work." At the completion of the evaluation, GSD&M Idea City chose EMC Documentum Digital Asset Management solution from EMC.

Attractive features

An important capability was EMC’s extensibility. "We were able to put DAM into play right away, but we can also broaden into content management and records management if we want," McIntyre explains.

Integration with other products was also a major consideration. "The software has tools that allow users to work in their native environment, which for our studio artists is generally Adobe Creative Suite," McIntyre explains. "The DAM system shows as a file share on the desktop, and users can continue working as they always have." Business users can search for assets from a browser interface.

Now that the system is in place, users can find their assets much more quickly, and search criteria can

be used to locate files instantly. "Archiving used to take two days and now has been reduced to just one afternoon," McIntyre adds.

GSD&M Idea City is also working on an integration with SharePoint to allow a job jacket to be created in the DAM system when a JobSite collaborative workspace is created. "Eventually we hope for a seamless environment that draws from multiple repositories through a single interface," McIntyre adds.

For companies that anticipate needing an ECM system along with their DAM repository, a platform such as EMC’s offers a good path. "We can provide a unified system from day one," says David Mennie, senior product marketing manager at EMC. "Customers can have one system for the rich media, Web content management and enterprise content management, rather than silos."

In addition, EMC’s platform has some unique capabilities, adds Mennie. For example, a 3-D image solution provided by an EMC partner and incorporated into the platform can unlock computer-aided design (CAD) files in 80 different formats. That ability is helpful for creating marketing collateral, technical publications and maintenance manuals that need to include 3-D interactive models, animations or views of consumer products, as well as more complex structures such as airplane landing gear.

Rich media assets

UNICEF was founded by the United Nations in 1946 to help save, protect and improve the lives of children through immunization, education, healthcare, nutrition, clean water and sanitation. It delivers those services and material resources on a regular basis, and responds to emergencies throughout the world.

The UNICEF Web site is the primary means of conveying information about activities in which the organization is involved. With nearly 200 offices operating in 156 countries, and fundraising partner organizations in 36 industrialized countries, UNICEF has deployed a Web content management (WCM) system that allows distributed editing and publishing of content, and localization of field office Web sites.

As rich media, particularly video, became more prevalent, UNICEF also saw a need for a DAM system that could help staff members deal more effectively with the increasing number of digital assets.

http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/DAM-takes-on-many-roles-56214.aspx

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An Enterprise Evolution

Why implementing a DAM system could be the next logical enterprise solution.

By Vanessa Voltolina

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Digital asset management (DAM), a process in which a secure central repository helps streamline the creation, management and monetization of digital assets, is one that publishers are continuing to adopt even in a down market. With origins in prepress and production services, DAM aims to integrate asset management and production seamlessly, particularly while working with design programs Quark and InDesign.

“The greatest asset is that it dramatically improves organization, task automation, and content repurposing,” says Jeremy Carlson, Advanstar’s manager of digital prepress, digital imaging and media operations, “which ultimately should equate to any publisher’s bottom line of reducing labor costs associated with asset trafficking, reducing design cycle time, and increasing revenue by simplifying the content repurposing process.”

Bringing It In-House

The pros of a DAM system are such that publishers even seem to be bringing systems in-house “rather than sending out this work as a way to reduce the time to press,” says DAM vendor Xinet CEO Scott Seebass. With hardware requirements becoming significantly less expensive, “there is no longer a huge barrier of investment to doing it yourself,” he adds. Implementing a DAM could even be a savings measure for publishers, although most likely won’t see savings in the first year.

Historically, weeklies have been avid DAM adopters due to their need to quickly process and track huge amounts of photos. “This market pushes the limits of technology amazingly, since it’s all about who can get their magazine out first,” says Seebass. And now, in addition to weeklies, a number of other publishers that are integrating user generated submissions and content into their offerings are also opting for DAM.

When Advanstar purchased its system in 2002 through Xinet, it was used mainly as a tape archiving system. True implementation didn’t come until 2006, when they discovered and expanded the full functionality to serve company-wide across all of editorial locations. But before implementation, Carlson explored a number of key company considerations:

1. Ease of integration with the prepress systems. Does it dovetail with our design application?

2. Is the cost structure designed at an enterprise level, or per seat licensing?

3. Will a system integrator support both our DAM and other prepress systems under one umbrella?

4. Does it follow open standards allowing customization, or is it proprietary?

5. How far can we push the automation as to save staff from doing repetitive tasks?

6. Is it platform neutral?

Advanstar’s system now houses XMP metadata, image tracking, a low resolution FPO/OPI workflow, a centralized image repository, as well as a self-serve Web portal for external downloads for content repurposing.

Digital’s Backbone

New to the scene is F+W Media, which began DAM implementation around 18 months ago with vendor Mark Logic. “It is not a single build, but rather an evolutionary process based on different types of content we offer, the ways in which we deliver that content, digitally, and the different businesses we wish to enter,” says John Lerner, executive vice president of e-media. “We really looked at the business plans for the new products, and revenue that we could generate from our content, and then looked at the platforms that would enable us to get there,” he says.

They anticipate their DAM to be the backbone for new digital products. “We recently launched a report service on OldCarsWeekly.com that leverages our archived content and pricing data to generate unique reports on Old Cars that includes photos, car features, values based on car condition and recent auction prices realized,” says Lerner. “As we continue to update this content through DAM, we will continue to grow the online service and we are now able to create new print products based on the reports generated.” F+W Media plans to use its system as a tool to innovate digitally while leveraging both archive and current content.

Expanding Archived Content

An early adopter, Rodale implemented its full DAM in October 2005 with vendor North Plains’ Telescope. But prior to this, Rodale relied on “internal systems to manage some components of our content as a work around,” says publishing systems manager Sandie Roberts.

In addition to housing six years of books and magazine archives, its DAM system includes all design files, images, extracted text, multiple resolutions of the PDF for the full product, correction information for reprints and various other formats. It has a “recipe repository that captures recipes from our printed products, as well as ones submitted through our online tools, with over 10,000 recipes with a rich metadata model,” says Roberts. It also includes article abstracts, original content prepared by staff librarians, and an image repository of photo shoot outtakes.

Enterprise Is the Future

For his part, Carlson would like to see DAM integrate on an enterprise level with other publishing systems. “This way, our ad booking system can identify incoming ad materials submitted through our ad portal, then relay that information to our DAM, which could then submit to our prepress workflow system and finally flow into a folio system (used for ad/edit mapping) for print, and a CMS system for Web.” While this is currently possible with Advanstar’s DAM and by using XML/metadata, “It’s just a matter of investment in system customization to fit the pieces together,” he says.

Improvement in the rights management arena is key for Roberts, as is the ability to link that information to the appropriate assets. “This is an area that is getting more complex and publishers need a tool to capture and manage all the possible rights scenarios for a product and its related assets. We’re looking at workflow tools to streamline the production process.”

http://www.foliomag.com/2009/enterprise-evolution

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Idea7 : Solutions of Digital Asset Management

Discover the software of D.A.M. and eCatalog


Whatever the size of your company, Idea7 enables you to manage, organize and diffuse easily and quickly your numerical documents thanks to the solutions Cumulus Server.

Come to also discover the new versions of professional module WebSuite Log, WebSuite Order which are integrated into the interfaces web of Cumulus.

Find on Apple Expo Remix'08 the new version of the solutions of eCatalog, FSI Viewer and FSI Pages, which propose an interactivity and a simple interface, in addition to powerful functionalities of zoom, until with the maximum resolution, and of integral research as well as other powerful innovations.

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