Digital Archiving in the Entertainment and Professional Media Market

Abstract

This chapter explores the current trends and drivers for digital archiving in the entertainment and professional media markets. Methodology and technologies utilized in digital archiving as well as future requirements will be explored. We will also examine the requirements for long-term content storage, look at various storage options and discuss how content administrators can create a reliable longterm archive. Growth in the Entertainment and Media Market To understand the demand for archiving in the Entertainment & Media (EM) market, it is important to begin with a discussion of the growth in content attained by all forms of EM companies from broadcast to post, animation to digital imaging and pre-press. For companies participating in the entertainment and professional media markets their assets are primarily the rich content that they create and manage. A movie, a piece of music, a television program, a documentary, a video or audio file for web download and news or advertising pieces all generate revenue. They also contain large amounts of data and consume storage capacity. It is important to note that the raw data collected to make these assets is much greater than what will be used in an actual product. For instance, a professional animal videographer told me that he shoots 10 h of high resolution video to finally get 5 min of selected and edited footage for a television documentary. Those 10 h of video were captured in 10–40 min periods over the course of many months while waiting in the open for hours at a time. There have been days when he did not get any images at all. Obviously, for content creation professionals there is a tremendous investment in the raw content. * The material presented in this report was largely extracted from the 2007 Entertainment Content Creation and Digital Storage Report or from the data set created in putting together that report. For more information or to order a copy of this report, please go to http://www.tomcoughlin.com/ techpapers.htm. D. Gerbarg (ed.), Television Goes Digital, 157 © Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009