People that know me will be aware that file-based workflows are a passion of mine. Ten years ago I was co-author of the MXF (Media Exchange Format) specification and ever since I have been engaged in taking this neatSMPTE standard and using it to create a business platform for media enterprises of every size and scale. This is why I’m so excited by the Digital Production Partnership (DPP):
it represents the first ratified national Application Specification of the MXF standard and is set to revolutionize the way that media facilities and broadcasters work.To explain what I mean, let’s compare life with a DPP ecosystem to life without.
Less pain to feel the gain
In a standardized DPP world, there would be a limited amount of pain and cost felt by everybody but this would be shared equally amongst the organizations involved and it would be a limited cost, which is incurred only once. After this point, our industry has a fantastic common interchange format to help encourage partnerships and build businesses.
In an unstandardized world, where different facilities have decided to use different tools and variants of MXF or other formats, the major cost becomes the lack of third-party interoperability. Each time content is exchanged between different facilities, a media transcode or rewrap in that format is required.
This means that all vendors in all the facilities will ultimately support all the file formats andmetadata. The engineering required to implement and test takes time and costs money on an on-going basis.
Interoperable metadata helps the content creator
In a world that has adopted DPP, media and metadata interoperability is not an issue since the format is built on a strong, detailed common interchange specification. In this homogeneous scenario the resources that would have been used in the interoperability engineering process can be used in more creative and productive ways, such as programme making.
Programme making is a process where most broadcasters utilise external resources. In a world without DPP, whenever a broadcaster or production facility receives a new file from an external facility, such as a Post House, the question must be asked whether this file meets the requirements of their in-house standard. That evaluation process can lead to extra QC costs in addition to possible media ingest, transcoding, conformance and metadata re-keying costs that need to be taken into account.
Building a business platform
This heterogeneous environment is an issue not just for interaction with external facilities: often different departments within the same major broadcaster will adopt slightly different file standards and metadata making interoperability a big issue to them. As a result, today only about 70 per cent of transactions within companies are file-based – the remainder employ tape. However, this is much higher than where external agencies are involved – here, only 10 – 15 per cent of transactions are file-based.
The essence of the problem is the lack of a common interchange format to enable these transactions. DPP is the first open public interchange format that is specifically designed to address this issue. DPP is intended to transform today’s 20 per cent trickle into an 80 per cent flood in the shortest time.
To find out more about DPP and how it can transform the way your operation works and also your effectiveness working with other organizations read AmberFin’s White Paper on DPP.
