Digital Assets
Generally, a digital “asset” being managed is collected and stored in a digital format. There is usually a target version – referred to as “essence” – generally the highest-resolution and highest-fidelity representation. The asset is detailed by its metadata. Metadata is the description of the asset and the description depth can vary depending on the needs of the system, designer, or user. Metadata can describe, but is not limited to, the description of: asset content (what is in the package?); the means of encoding/decoding (e.g. JPEG, tar, MPEG 2); provenance (history to point of capture); ownership; rights of access; as well as many others. There exist some pre-defined standards and template for metadata such as Dublin Core and PBCore. In cases of systems that contain large-size asset essences, such as MPEG 2 and JPEG2000 for the cases of images and video, there are usually related “proxy” copies of the essence. A proxy copy is a lower-resolution representation of the essence that can be used as a reference in order to reduce the overall bandwidth requirements of the DAM system infrastructure. It can be generated and retained at the time of ingestion of the asset simultaneous or subsequent to the essence, or it can be generated on the fly using transcoders.
Types of Digital Asset Management Systems
The following broad categories of digital asset management systems may be distinguished as:
- Brand asset management systems, with a focus on facilitation of content re-use within large organizations. Here the content is largely marketing- or sales-related, for example, product imagery, logos, marketing collateral or fonts, to give a few examples.
- Library asset management systems, with a focus on storage and retrieval of large amounts of infrequently changing media assets, for example in video or photo archiving.
- Production asset management systems focus on managing assets as they are being created for a digital media production (video game, 3D feature film, animation, visual-effects shots, etc.) They usually include work-flow and project-management features coupled with the storage, organization andrevision control of frequently changing digital assets.
DAM software may be open source or proprietary.
Avaali DAM
Avaali is a Canto Certified Sales Partner (CSP) with Silver Status. Avaali offers advisory services, implementation and support services for the Canto Cumulus solution to enterprises. Our consultants come with deep understanding of global best practices in management of rich media assets. Our engagement typically starts with fully understanding the business drivers for such investment, to be able to then focus our implementation efforts to help customers derive early business value.
To know more, click here or mail to: info@avaali.com