Navigating the distribution maze
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM, BY TOM OHANIAN
- Security.
Data integrity and data confidentiality are implicit requirements of any digital media distribution system. Through a combination of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), additional media content encryption, and the use of a public key infrastructure (PKI), digital certificates can be issued and signed, and mutual port-to-port authentication can occur. Transmission of content can result in the issuance of a digital certificate for each piece of content sent, and reports can be generated, proving that a specific piece of content was both sent and received.
- Automation.
The automated processing and movement of content is also crucial to a scalable digital media distribution system. For example, a common workflow can be characterized by the following steps:
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Content is ingested and deposited into a folder on a storage volume.
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A process is run that interrogates the storage volume folder and upon detection of a file moves the file to an encoding system.
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An encoding system implements existing profiles to encode the file into multiple formats. These newly encoded files are deposited in a specific set of folders
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Finally, another process is automatically run which interrogates that set of folders, detects that new content is present and then transmits the files to their predesignated recipients.
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- Performance and scalability.
Another important aspect of a digital media distribution system is how many points of interest need to be served and whether the deployment is a client-server or managed peer-to-peer architecture. Fundamentally, how does the system need to be designed so that it can process not only the required job submissions but also handle the actual movement of content?
- Integration and interchange.
In practice
The use of SOAP- and XML-based APIs further facilitates the interchange with and integration to systems found in the media and entertainment ecosystem for metadata, essence and device communications. SOAP interfaces enable powerful Web services implementations for interoperation between systems.
In summary
Figure 4. An example of a centrally managed digital media distribution system. Click on image to enlarge.
Figure 4 on page 68 shows an actual deployment of a digital media distribution system. In this example, central management is a mirrored configuration between East and West Coast operations. Data mover software is placed at specific locations representing O&O stations and key affiliates. For transfers to and from vendor partners, data mover software is also located at key areas. Finally, for ingest and review of both user-generated content and in-field staff videographers, a Web-based upload/download capability, which provides for WAN-accelerated file transfers, is provided.
Increasingly competitive and stringent business demands placed on the media and entertainment industry to create more content faster, to deliver it in more formats, to more places and to more devices. This has raised the necessity to extend the management and control oversight of the process to a centrally managed digital media distribution system.
Tom Ohanian is vice president of product management at Signiant. He is an Academy Award and two-time Emmy Award recipient.
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