NAB2009 visitor saw real applications of SOA
Jun 3, 2009 11:44 AM, By David Austerberry
The move from physical media like videotape to file-based production allows broadcasters to consider changing their working practices. The IT infrastructure underlying file-based production offers the possibilities for a scale of automation just not possible when content is processed as physical media.
Outside the world of the media and entertainment, whole new ways of working have evolved to take advantage of the power of software. Much of the creative side of broadcasting must be left to a human operator, but pushing carts of videotape cassettes down corridors contributes neither to the quality of programming nor to the bottom line.
The media and entertainment sector lags behind other industries in the adoption of IT processes that could deliver efficiencies and cost savings. One area vaunted as the next step forward is the service-oriented architecture (SOA).
To quote from Footen and Faust in their book “The Service-Oriented Media Enterprise” (Focal Press), “SOA is an architecture of independent wrapped services communication via published interfaces over a common middleware layer.” A typical service could be transcoding. The advantages claimed from the use of an SOA include business agility, business visibility and a streamlined organization.
Why now?
Although broadcasters have been moving into file-based workflow for about 10 years, there have been many obstacles to constructing a truly advanced media workflow. Even today it can prove challenging to exchange “standard” formats such as MXF files between vendors. Remember how easy it was to plug analog composite equipment together? It was possible to sum up RS-170A in two pages; MXF standards run to hundreds of pages. It’s the sheer complexity that makes it difficult to achieve the vendor independence that broadcasters look for.
Before we can move to an SOA or some other IT-based architecture, all these nitty-gritty standards and interfacing issues must be solved.
The sectors that have moved forward with this architecture are often simply exchanging files. These are generally text documents; it could be information, quotes, orders, etc. For the media sector, the product is also a file, but that is where the complexity starts. The files include wrappers, containers, essence, metadata and codecs. To meet the needs of production, these cannot be reduced to a small set. A digital intermediate file will be very different from a desktop proxy recorded for compliance purposes.
2009 has brought into focus the need to improve efficiencies. To survive, the media and entertainment sector can no longer afford to continue with the luxury of working practices that belong more to a craft or cottage industry. To the parlous state of the economy is added the need to publish in multiple formats for multiple distribution channels. Plus, the established players have to compete with entrants from the new media sector.
SOA
To ask broadcasters to implement a change in the way they operate will naturally run into skepticism. This year is not the year to rock the boat, or is it? It may be rocking already. The SOA is not new; it’s just new to the media and entertainment sector. It’s a proven architecture; the risks are in the implementation.
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