Building Smarter Media Asset Management for Creative Teams

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This episode is brought to you by Studio Network Solutions. Media teams have enough things to worry about. Storage shouldn't be one of them. That's where Studio Network Solutions comes in. SNS makes your shared storage, media management and cloud workflows easy so you can focus on what you do best. Creating. See how SNS can help your team at Studio Network Solutions. Have you ever watched a production and thought, wow, that lighting is perfect. But then the host stares into the void like they forgot how to read. Yeah, that's because they didn't use icann. See, ICANN makes top tier studio lighting prompters and gear that keep productions looking and running smooth. So whether you need buttery soft LED lights or rock solid teleprompters so you don't forget your lines, or just pro level gear that won't let you down, ICANN has you covered. So if you want your production to look like a million bucks without spending a million bucks, check out iKann. Because great lighting and a good prompter can make anyone look like a pro. [00:01:07] Speaker B: Three, two, red one. [00:01:12] Speaker A: Welcome to Broadcast to post the show where we dig into the tech shaping how we produce, connect and communicate. Yeah, I'm still Michael Kammes and today we're diving into one of the most critical and and often overlooked parts of media content creation. Yes, I'm referring to media asset management. Here's the reality. Creative teams today are producing more content than ever before, but they're also wasting more time trying to find it. More content, more metadata, and more moments that we want to find now. According to recent studies, the Average employee spends 1.8 hours per day searching for files. Media teams lose an average of 1 1/2 to 2 work hours per editor per day, recovering or relinking lost footage and rebuilding edit timelines because of missing or mislabeled assets. An average marketing team loses seven hours a week recreating assets that already exist. And 83% of teams admit to rebuilding or redownloading files because they can't locate the originals. Now that's not just inefficiency. It's expensive lost time. And storing 40 copies of the same file is just insane. It's why the global digital asset management market is set to double from 5.3 billion this year to over 10.9 billion by 2029. With adoption now surging among smaller creative teams, it's not just for enterprise studios anymore. Mainly that's because every studio has some form of asset management already. They got the memo. Modern MAM and DAM systems are evolving from discovery tools to revenue engines. They surface your archives and your IP into documentaries, highlight reels and branded content. Now if we combine AI driven metadata harvesting and tagging, along with automated workflows and even rights management, creative teams can find, reuse and even monetize their old content faster than ever before. From sports franchises repackaging legacy footage, universities publishing lecture recordings, content creators finding ways to repurpose their IP to marketing teams reusing previous campaign assets for new markets, Media Asset Management has evolved from a back end tool into a frontline creative force. And that's exactly what we're unpacking today in this episode. Building Smarter Media Asset Management for Creative Teams now here's today's agenda. First, we're going to tackle key considerations before building a media asset management system where I'll break down how to evaluate when it's time to upgrade from shared drives and what features matter most. We'll then tackle how to monetize content for creative companies. KeyCode Media's Mike Cavanaugh, our CEO, joins to explore how better organization translates into real ROI. Then we'll have the tech trend shaping MAM in 2025 from AI powered search to hybrid collaboration and API driven integration with insights from one of our favorite folks, Jeremy Struvman of Iconic and the high def cowboy himself, the legend Bryson Jones of North Shore Automation. Whether you're managing a small in house team or running a full scale production department, this episode will help you design a smarter, scalable MAM workflow that actually works for your people, not against them. So let's dive in. This is broadcast to post Building Smarter Media Asset Management for Creative Teams before you choose a media asset management solution, it's important to step back and ask the right questions. And there are a lot of them. See Every creative team, from post production to marketing to corporate communications, faces different pain points. Some struggle to find older media while others deal with approval loops and many are simply outgrowing their mass of shared drives. Getting these details right early will help your organization design a MAM workflow that actually works for your people and your business. One that can scale, reduces wasted time and and turns your content library into a true business asset. We recommend using the following checklist to align your team, including it, creative marketing and leadership. Once you've discussed these questions, send your notes to KeyCode Media and we'll schedule a free workflow consultation to map your next steps, product options and of course, budget ranges. So without any further ado, here are the key questions to ask before investing in a MAM system for your organization Number one, you need to define the business problem, not just the technology. Start with the why. What's driving this project? Is the real pain with search, version controls, approvals? Or is IT compliance? Maybe it's about automating those tedious manual processes? Or are you looking at a MAM as a way to enrich your content using AI? Also, who will be the primary users of the mam? Is it your editors? Your marketing team? Your social team? Or is it external agencies? Maybe your ops and IT teams will use IT to tie into their processes as well. So keep in mind, a MAM system isn't just an IT purchase, it's a business tool. Your team, with that help of course, should be able to explain how it will save time, reduce risk, or enable new revenue streams. That clarity will guide every design and budget decision that follows. Number two Inventory and audit your existing media before you can organize your content, you need to know what you have and where IT lives. Are all of your assets scattered across shared drives, or are they on Dropbox or various navs, units or camera cards sitting in someone's drawer? First, you need to take stock of your ballpark total asset count and ballpark storage size. Also take note and be specific of your format, such as video, audio and graphics formats. Check in on the condition of your metadata. Does your media consistently have the basic metadata information location, shoot, date, camera type, et cetera? Also, look into redundancy. Do you have a lot of duplicate files that you want to get rid of or move? A proper audit helps define how much storage you'll need and what's worth migrating and what can be archived or even deleted. Number three Plan the basics for metadata and taxonomy now this is the backbone of every successful mam, but it can also be the most difficult and quite frankly, kind of boring. Luckily, the Keycode Media team can walk you through to the finish line. But first, you may want to make some note of some of the basics. Now, when it comes to metadata and taxonomy or the custom verbiage your team uses, ask yourself what you need to search by project name, client date, rights, talent, or maybe even a sku. Even if you plan to use AI auto tagging in the future, you need to define a baseline structure that's human, friendly and above all else, consistent. You also need to decide who owns it and who will maintain that taxonomy over time. Also, what do your other departments use so there is consistency across your company's processes and terminology. Number four Map your workflows. Now a good MAM used to simply mirror how your team already worked, albeit faster. But modern mams often take your existing workflows and enhance them with more robust search tools, Automation and combining multiple tools under one provider instead of trying to wrangle a dozen different platforms to get your project completed. To tackle this, you need to map out your asset lifestyle. Take ingest for starters. How do you get files for your projects? Is it directly from camera cards or is it from live feeds or maybe agency deliveries? Is the media you get in a format your team can work with natively or does the media need to be prepped? Next, let's consider edit and collaboration. Which of your creative tools should the MAM work with? Is it standard tools like Premiere or Resolve or Avid or even Photoshop or After Effects or are there others? And how are you handling review and approval? Are you still sending links over email or Slack or do you want centralized version control? Are you having to adapt to yet another third party platform for review and approve? Why not combine these? And what about distribution? Where does content go after approval? OTT, YouTube, Social or is it internal communications? Does it need to be published with loads of different metadata elsewhere? Defining this early ensures your MAM ties seamlessly into your creative process. Number five Identify user roles and access needs. Different roles in your team require different permissions. Editors and producers, for example, may need upload and edit rights, while marketers or clients may only need view or comment and approve access. So define who's internal or external, what data must stay private, and how many users you have today and your growth plans in the next few years. This helps us size licenses correctly and build a secure scalable system. Number six Consider rights management and compliance. Your archive isn't just storage, it's your valuable intellectual property. So make sure your MAM can track regional restrictions and usage rights for either talent or maybe even the media files themselves. For regulated industries, include audit trails showing who accessed or modified assets. And for marketing teams, brand compliance can be just as critical, ensuring only Approved versions get published. 7. Budget and ownership. You need to be realistic about total cost of ownership. See, a MAM involves more than just software licensing. You'll also need cloud or on prem storage plus integration and of course, support. While MAMs often knock it out of the park on their base, feature sets, often tweaked or custom integrations for your particular environment can really optimize your workflows. So decide who will own the system from day to day. Will it be administering it, or will a power user within your creative operations team take the lead? And don't forget ongoing costs such as metadata entry either via your staff or with reusing AI, plus the inevitable storage expansion you'll need as you grow and of course, periodic upgrades. Number eight Prepare for Culture and Adoption the best technology always, always, always fails without buy in. Creatives as well as leadership must support this change and also understand that your teams are going to need training. See, creatives make decisions based on what they can produce in a given amount of time. Leadership needs to support the fact that there is a period of adjustment until the updated workflows are as optimized as the legacy ones. Set these expectations early, establish these updated workflows and procedures and collaboratively work to foster adoption. And you know what? Celebrate those wins. Like finding a five year old clip in seconds instead of hours. That's how adoption sticks. Here at kiecode Media, we've helped broadcasters, agencies, universities, creative studios and content creators deploy scalable MAM workflows that reduce chaos and deliver measurable roi. Our process covers everything from design and installation to training and long term support, ensuring your system keeps working long after deployment. Now to make your planning easier, we we've outlined three MAM starter bundles that fit different team sizes, budgets and workflows. Our first is our free On Prem bundle. For many teams, the MAM journey starts with shared storage that already includes lightweight asset management tools. A great example of this is SNS EVO by Studio Network Solutions. EVO Systems come with ShareBrowser for media organization, Slingshot for automation and transcoding, and Nomad for remote editing. This kind of setup is ideal for small to mid sized creative teams who want to organize projects, collaborate efficiently and manage assets without investing in a full enterprise MAM platform. It could also be used in larger environments as a production peer solution within broader hybrid workflows. It covers the essentials including shared storage, search and remote access, while providing a flexible foundation that you can scale as your workflows grow. Best of all, it's included with the purchase of the EVO shared storage system. Our second bundle, Cloud Media Management Bundle, is for teams that operate remotely or across multiple locations. The Cloud Media Management Bundle offers flexibility without the need for on prem hardware see. This approach uses platforms like Iconic or CATDV Cloud providing browser based access, AI assisted tagging and integration with tools such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Avid Media Composer and more. It's ideal for hybrid or distributed teams that need centralized access, streamlined collaboration and secure storage without the burden of managing physical servers. You can log into it from anywhere, review and approve media, and push content directly to distribution systems from a single interface. Our next bundle is our Hybrid Enterprise Bundle, which is for larger creative teams and it combines the performance of On Prem Storage with with the scalability of cloud infrastructure. This setup typically integrates platforms like Avid Media Central, editshare Flow, Iconic EMAM IPV or CAT TV Enterprise, depending on your organization's workflow. These support multisite synchronization, advanced rights management and API level integrations. Designed by the engineers at KeyCodemedia to connect production, post and distribution systems seamlessly, the hybrid model ensures high performance for creatives on site while enabling producers, marketers and remote teams to securely access content in the cloud. Now, each of these bundles can be customized with your preferred platform, storage type and of course, user count to align your creative goals and budget. So your next step is simple. Review this checklist, decide which model best fits your organization, and contact KeyCode Media for a free MAM consultation. Our engineers and maybe even me will help you define your requirements, recommend the right platform, and build a workflow that works from day one. So thanks for sitting down with us here at the show, even though this is going to be on the podcast, Mike. So couple questions for you. We've seen that a lot of folks utilizing, or we're thinking about utilizing asset management don't spend enough time thinking about it. They're so concerned with production and the next project, they don't consider about their assets and what media asset management can do for them kind of in more holistic way. Why is this a bad mindset? [00:16:43] Speaker C: Well, one of the real issues is having the team have access to all the content and able to find it easily. And you know, there are ratios of people could be spending five minutes a day to two hours a day or anywhere in between to get and find the right shot for the content. Media Asset Management allows everybody within the organization to more effectively find that content faster and get work done faster from an overall productivity standpoint. So whether it's five minutes and you have 100 editors or it's 30 minutes a day and you have five editors, that turns into real economic issues within the ability of production. So for an example, BBC has over 125,000 searchable clips at Century of Archive Footage and the ability to have global licensing businesses and more actively monetize what they've already created and established. But having it where that's accessible and searchable for the team is really critical. [00:17:44] Speaker A: So not all mams are created equal, right? So we have some mams that have features that enable folks to find things faster or to monetize their assets or to retrieve them in a certain way. So when we talk about asset management systems that can do this, what kind of features should users be looking for? What should leadership be looking for when trying to get a MAM to solve some of these challenges? [00:18:06] Speaker C: The real key challenge for the MAM world is what do you catalog, what do you tag? And more importantly, how can it be automated? And even more specific, how can you leverage AI to have searches on things that you never tagged in the first place? An example is really a matter of looking at the content that's there and being able to say a Netflix season could be an eight show season. The real question that everyone can start looking at is, okay, great, that's maybe the high end, but now maybe they want to create vignettes of a character of additional footage. They have to create content to monetize money that's already been spent and get even greater return on the production. And that's what a media asset management system can allow you to do. [00:18:54] Speaker A: So I was reading a report the other day that said something like 83% of users report lost time trying to find content. And, and over half, like 55, 56% report having to recreate assets because they're unable to find those. How does that present a challenge both financially and from a business perspective for organizations? [00:19:17] Speaker C: Well, the key aspect is if you have the shot that can work for you, you don't want to pay to have that shot recreated. You know, be it A background footage, be it B roll, be it an interview clip, being able to access and understand and have the team to be able to very quickly leveraging the media asset management system to find that clip is allowing them to get to production faster from an opportunity cost perspective, but more importantly, not have to pay the costs. And the entire process of trying to get a shot right again that you already have the shot, you just can't find it. [00:19:51] Speaker A: So a lot of this has been discussion around kind of the back end, right? Getting the content you need to create something to then output, right? But there's also the concept of taking your existing assets and then being able to remonetize them and using the MAM as the front end to do that. What do you think has more gravitas or what do you think has more something that should be paid more attention to right now? Is it behind the scenes or is it for the monetization purpose? [00:20:19] Speaker C: I think it's a hybrid and I think it's really a matter of every business has different content, different workflow, but the longer Tail is really the monetization aspects of taking content you've created and assets. Where we had one client, Kentucky Educational Television that they did a documentary on 250 years of Lexington, Kentucky. Now the concept really became what's tagged, what's on tape versus what's available on disc on how do you find the content to build the story? You know, they've invested in some asset management systems. You know, they're looking at even greater productivity of adding AI search that are more vector based on something that they may not have tagged. But that concept is, you know, their station's been existence since the 60s, you know, chartered to educate the, you know, the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the citizens that live there. So the concept is you have this content. How can you now refresh legacy content in a new way to make it newer and create additional content programming, whether you're doing it for public good or for financial gain. But that aspect of the content that you have is how to start mining and getting creative and using other tools that can allow you to say that's a popular angle that I can stream and drive much higher levels of revenue on existing costs that have already amortized and expensed out of my system. [00:21:53] Speaker A: So as a lot of viewers and consumers are moving to mobile streaming ott, how does that play into the MAM strategy and making sure that the right solution is chosen to satisfy those end viewers or those end users? [00:22:08] Speaker C: Well, a lot of it is recognizing that people are now viewing content differently, be it, you know, the cord has been cut. There are still people that have cable that still watch linear based programming. But a lot more people are now saying I want to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it, and I want to watch it in the format that I'm familiar with, whether it's a 30 second clip or a nine minute video. But they may not have time to do a 22 minute 60 minute show or watch a movie. And the trends are showing that where YouTube has just destroyed the entire environment from a content level. And my concept to our clients that have the content is how to basically leverage technologies scraping the Internet and the social feeds of what's hot and correlate that with what you have to be able to create content to deliver that to the next level of viewers within the trajectory of how people now consume media. So a teenager views media very much differently than a 60 year old person. And if you have content that could be compelling, it just needs to be repurposed and refunctioned. An asset management system can allow you to do that. [00:23:24] Speaker A: Mike, that's an excellent point. Thank you so much for taking time off the show floor here at NAB New York 2025 for this broadcast to post recording. [00:23:33] Speaker C: Thank you very much. I love being on camera with Key Code Media and I think you guys are an amazing company. [00:23:38] Speaker A: Thank you. When we nerd out on this podcast, our goal is always the same. Bring on the best possible humans to share their experience, help you avoid pitfalls and to up for success with technology. And let's be honest, sometimes finding the right people can be very hard. But not today. When it comes to media asset management, it's an easy call. Bryson Jones and Jeremy Strudman are two of the most knowledgeable voices you could ever hope to hear of on this topic. Now in our pre call we wrestled with how to balance this conversation because believe me, we can talk about this for hours, but because we know what's on everyone's mind. AI. If you already own a median asset management system, you want to know how AI will make assets easier to edit and more importantly, easier to monetize. You want to hear about cloud vs hybrid vs on prem and which makes the most sense. And don't worry, we're absolutely going to get there. But before we chase the buzzwords, we're going to start with the basics. Who actually needs asset management? Because here's the truth. While it can be easy to set up a system, it's just as easy to screw it up. And many folks think they need enterprise level asset management. Oftentimes they don't. Sometimes simple is smarter. From there, we'll talk about what it looks like to set up your first mam. Think of it like your kid's first car. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it should survive a few bumps without much regret. Then we'll fast forward two to three years. You've got a system, it's working, but now you're bumping into limitations. What do you do next? And finally, we'll dig into the trends AI, automation, monetization and what's just a shiny but expensive distraction. So let's introduce our guests if you don't already know them. First we have Bryson Jones, who's the founder and CIO at North Shore Automation. With nearly 30 years of experience in MAM software development and system design, his team focuses on automating, production and making video sharing simple. Next we have Jeremy Strutman, who is the Senior Director of Global Channel Sales at Backlight, the company behind the well known MAM platform. Iconic with 20 years in the industry, most of it in MAM. Jeremy quickly learned that asset management, media processing and automation are just as critical as the story itself. Let's get to the interview. Bryson. Jeremy, welcome. [00:26:05] Speaker D: Thanks for having us. [00:26:08] Speaker A: So, as we said at the top, it can be easy to think you need media asset management or worse to overcomplicate things right from the start. That's why before we get into AI or cloud or any of the other shiny stuff, we should really start with definitions. What do we mean when we say mab and who actually needs it? So folks, how do you define media asset management in 2025? And Bryson, let's start with you. [00:26:34] Speaker B: I'm a little bit controversial because I don't deal a lot with production asset management. You and I for years have discussed digital asset management, media asset management, production asset management. Right. So North Shore tends to these days work a lot more for content owners. Right. So one thing I would say is that if you own content, meaning you own your license to your content, you definitely need media asset management. If you're producing content, you don't own television, stuff like that. I think it's a 5050 because you can do a lot of production, as we've seen with, you know, with a good pam or anything like that. I know that Struben has a much different definition of it, you know, but I, at this point I would say media asset management, just making your space form, able to find, to organize in some ways your media and then also being able to future proof and automate. Those are the key things for me. For a ma'. [00:27:25] Speaker A: Am. [00:27:25] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Media asset management, I mean, it's a noun and it's a verb and it's a, it's a job title and, and all of that. Right. So for, for me, I think one of the big things that I try to impart on people is it really all starts with storage and storage hygiene. Because there are folks that with the democratization of MAM in 2025, it's easier to get into. It's at a price point where that it's attainable for a lot of folks where in years past it probably wasn't within a budget. And it does a lot of stuff when you turn it on at first. So there's this misnomer almost that you can fire up a MAM and it's gonna fix all the disparate files that are just sitting out there in Dropbox or on your hard drives on a shelf still and all of that. Where to me, media asset management really does Start with storage hygiene. Still today, whether that's cloud or on premise, obviously we're doing a lot more hybridized stuff these days. But yeah, I think that's a good. [00:28:33] Speaker B: Point to mention that what MAM is not, right, MAM is not typically a full index of your storage. That's a different product called indexers. You can go find them. And then I will say, from our experience, the highest cost around media asset Management services is getting the media clean. So if you don't have a MAM right now and you're watching this and your media is a little disheveled, starting to clean that up and establishing all those, you know, like naming schemas, all your folder structures, all that, that's the best thing you could do because that's going to save you money and pain, even if you never buy a mam. But certainly when you do implement a. [00:29:07] Speaker A: Mam, if there was a group of folks that you could say, this group of folks needs a MAM system, how would you define that? What do you think the good fingerprint is of someone who actually needs a MAM system and the exact opposite, who doesn't need a MAM system? [00:29:27] Speaker D: That, I mean, that's from. From my standpoint, you know, every company, we've been starting to use this phrase around the backlight world. Every company is a media company. So really, any organization that's, you know, driving content, whether it's like, you know, like Bryson said, you know, folks who own content libraries or folks who are just using content and the content they create to drive their core source of revenue or whatever, whatever that is selling tickets in a stadium or selling a T shirt, right? So everyone needs it now, not every Persona in the building needs it. Right? That's the thing. And there are a lot of. Usually when we get into opportunity and we start talking to key stakeholders, you have the audience member, the business user in the room who's defining, you know, why they think they need a ma'. [00:30:20] Speaker A: Am. [00:30:20] Speaker D: And it's a lot of the good qualified reasons. And then it's kind of like, I think when we were talking before, I told Bryson about I bought a Shop Vac the other day, for the first time in my life, I needed a Shop Vac to basically unclog a drain. And now that I had this thing, I started walking around the house with it. Like, what other stuff can I kind of suck into this thing? Like, what am I doing with the Shop Vac now? I want to use it more. And sometimes mam that approach will actually happen when deploying a mam. It's like, I need it to give me a single source of truth for what's in all of my storage. But hey, while I have it, the graphics person, they should use this. And it's like, ooh, do they really need the mam? Do they actually need the mam? So really evaluating those Personas and making sure that you're providing the right tool to the right person inside the org is a big deal. [00:31:19] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:19] Speaker B: And I should mention that in Jeremy's previous life, he worked for other MAM companies. He and I have worked together for literally decades now at this point. And so we have a lot of common views on that. So, yes, every company, every organization needs a mam. But like, for me, who doesn't need a mam? Editors. Editors typically don't need a mam. People get crazy when I say that in a meeting, the first meeting, because the editors are like, we're ready for the mam. Like, man, you guys know where the media is. Go to sport. You ask somebody about the highlights for the current season. Those editors and producers know it like the back of their heads. But however, five years ago, once you move on, once you're the head of the department, once you're the, you know, no longer in that role or you, you know, whatever happens, oh, then the organization. So I tend to work for organizations and look at their goals and then try to stay out of the way of those people and those roles in there. Right. Like, I don't want to mess up your work. And that's a big one that people, I think people over boil. I know you mentioned in the, in the setup, the number one thing that people. For me, in my career, and probably you too, Struman, the number one thing that drives your first ma' am is typically archive. You need to archive. You need to secure your media and put that together. So that's where that starts a lot of time, which, you know, leading you towards the next, you know, your next. Our next topic. But basically you sort of have to. And I would say also, like, if you want a MAM and you don't need a mam, beware, beware. Mams are for people that need them. A man will not give you processes, but a man will make you rethink your processes. And so that's a great thing to remember is that, is that if you think you're going to get a ma', am, it's going to solve your problems. It will solve some problems, but what it mostly will do is give you an excuse to address why are people putting that stuff in Dropbox. Right? Yeah. Then you can all have the arguments over all that. [00:33:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:33:01] Speaker B: But we joke. It's like an argument starter. You throw it in the room and everybody goes, ah. And then what comes out? Hopefully if you have a great process and a great partner, you're gonna, you're gonna come out better regardless of the MAM itself. [00:33:13] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, it's. It's funny because oftentimes you get that question being the ma' am guy, you know, it's like, what are the best practices? How should I do this? And I'm like, whoa. I'm definitely, you know, like Bryson will tell you, I'm definitely not the guy who should tell you how all of your processes should work to, to make your business successful. But what I can do is I can clean up a lot of this mess that just kind of got crazy created throughout the growth of a business. [00:33:38] Speaker A: You know, let's get into. If you're a company looking to get my first ma', am right, let's say you're a big youtuber with 300 videos and maybe a small creative team and it's time to grow up from labeled hard drives which are lying around the office or disparate dropboxes for ma'. Am. Think of this stage like that starter car, right. It's not supposed to be a Ferrari. It's something that you can afford, something that can take a few bumps and some that lets you learn the basics. Right. But here's the thing, is that even at that stage, you can overcomplicate things, as you mentioned, or make mistakes that haunt you down the road. So let's talk about what a successful stage one MAB looks like and where people tend to go wrong. Bryson, you want to tackle that first? [00:34:21] Speaker B: Yeah. The quick version of it is that you define what I term my COIN called media context. You know, what your media categories are and, and whether it going to be managed in the MAM or not, you define that you work on your naming schemas and your organizational structures. Again, not necessarily with the mam, but the MAM can help you. So for that and then hopefully you put in some form of mild automation, whether that's probably an archive, something like that. So defining what assets go in, defining an ingest process, a minimal metadata tagging set up, do not go crazy. And then some sort of form of success for the beginnings of automation. That's your phase one and you live through that high five and think about what you want to do next. [00:35:00] Speaker D: I'll Kind of echo that. I mean, stay within the scope. And like I kind of alluded to before, you know, don't try to boil the ocean the first time around. Really think about the audience for the mam versus an audience just who needs to access a file system. So don't, you know, give the, give the access to the file system to creative people. Don't give access to your file system to, you know, just everyone in marketing and the lawyer and the, the sales guy or whatever like that. That's not what you do. But you think about the audience for the ma'. Am. And then Bryson mentioned what I would call what he called mild automation. And I'll repeat something that he told me once. [00:35:42] Speaker B: Yeah, nobody, no, here's a statement for you. Nobody knows what they want to do with a MAM until they've owned a MAM for three months. [00:35:47] Speaker D: That's a great point. [00:35:48] Speaker B: What, whatever you think you're going to do right now, you're not. And then, and so if you spend all your money up front, you spend all your effort up front, you end up with something that everyone goes, ah. And, and if you're the stakeholder, you look bad because it was your idea, you know, so just want to point that out. [00:36:03] Speaker A: Plus, I mean, if you're going to perform an automation that takes an hour, why not spend 10 hours trying to automate it? [00:36:09] Speaker C: Right? [00:36:10] Speaker B: That's a big one. And vice. Well, the weird thing is like. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? Is the juice worth the squeeze? Right. And there's another thing. I don't really want to mention it now, we probably should mention it now is that for a beginning, ma', am, there is only low and high. There's no middle ground. And the reason we mentioned this is that either set the bar low or do a full project. Jeremy and I have done gigantic MEMs for multinational corporations and those are super successful. And we have a lot of success in that space with this really big enterprise mam. We also have a lot of success with people that have a very small like, survivable first phase, as I call it. Right? [00:36:47] Speaker D: What? [00:36:47] Speaker B: We don't have success with this when the person sort of buys the small one, but is thinking about three times bigger. That's why I said observe the scope. Because if you're like, well, I think we might. If you say the word just when you're rolling out your ma'. Am. Michael, just. I just wanna, I just. If you say just want it, I tell you to probably anybody on this call, we're Gonna stop you and be like that. That word doesn't exist. So I would say like think about it. Low, high, find where you are. But like really like be successful then live to live to fight another day because your your value. We used to say that North Shore automation is phase two. We used to say we are phase two. And the reason was is because when you really know why we're there. But start developing the why. If you put a MAM in and leave it in phase one, you also will not succeed long term because no one will know why it's working and what it does. The next step is what does it do for me, who can use it go from there. [00:37:41] Speaker A: If we move on from the first MAM purchase maybe three to five years later. And you've already talked about how to approach things in a certain measured way. But this is the point where cracks start to show, right? You've got users depending on the system every day in various roles and now people want it to do more. Maybe not spicy automation, but some slight automation. They may want integrations, deeper metadata use cases and those nice to have features quickly turn into these are must haves. So what usually breaks first Scale is. [00:38:14] Speaker B: Always an issue Scale, right. Also, your organizational structure wasn't thought out. One sentence that I do a whole deck on. [00:38:21] Speaker A: And before you move on A.D. bryson, can you elaborate on what that organizational structure is? Are you talking files and folders or. [00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to set this thing on fire right now. Here's the deal. [00:38:33] Speaker A: Because normally down Bryson. [00:38:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Everyone lets the editor because the editor are the first people that really manage the media. And everyone lets the editors in. In traditionally because the way storage was developed and I have a whole deck on this. They let editors pick how the media is organized. And guess what? Editorial, please everyone spam me on on LinkedIn. Editorial is actually the smallest part of the product. Like video life cycle. What? It's huge. It's important you matter. We see you, we love you, editor. However, the person that edited Snow White for Disney, they did that a long time ago and there's been money made with Snow White for decades. And so I will say that. Think about that. That's the number one thing that happens is the editor goes, I know how to do this. But the editor doesn't sell that content. They don't reuse that content in that way. And so I would say that separate your context from your editorial work to your actual asset management libraries. Right? So that's, that's the biggest thing I see and then also people, like I said, picking the wrong product and really diving into the product. We do a lot of MAM migrations and we end there. We. Because of that, North Shore is dedicated to keeping your data, your data and keeping your structures separate. If you guys know, Avid Interplay was amazing. Hey, Avid, you did a great job. It's awesome. Still awesome. But you get a proprietary media format and you get a very unusual auto ingest and metadata structure that's great for production and, but really needs to be rethought when you do a long term thing. So I would say those sort of things that I think very long term and that's really my job. And your role is to say, hey, I've seen this play out a couple hundred times and I know where we're going. You know, I know what you'll hate in five years. So what do you see? Like, what's your, what's your, like growing pain in your stuff. [00:40:25] Speaker D: Okay, now we want to get into some stuff that is like not out of the box. We have some requirements and it's more semantic. It's not anything that's in the MAM database right now. It's more how the users who now have experienced the MAM for three years and now how they're coming back and going. It would be nice if we could also sort on this type of data model and this type of data set and it's not in the MAM and there's not really a way to search for it in the mam. Does that kind of make sense? [00:41:03] Speaker A: It sounds like the overriding factor is that the things that are being asked for after three to five years are things that couldn't have been foreseen accurately three to five years prior. So it could be a mix of automation, metadata or integrations, but most likely it's something that wasn't even thought about three to five years prior. Yeah, it's hard to plan for those step. [00:41:26] Speaker D: Yeah, embracing Bryson, maybe you can talk to it. It could be like a net new need for the data. [00:41:32] Speaker A: Like, oh, we sold the show that that's so. [00:41:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So the number one thing that like really kicks North Shore in is when somebody needs to do something in scale. Right. So the good news is the worst thing that can happen to you, by the way, we, we've been. Jeremy and I've been telling people for 10 years to please just go buy any mam. We don't even care if it's something we support. Don't have to buy from us, just buy any Ma'. Am, because we can do something with your data. If you have unstructured data across everything, you have a problem. Once you have it everywhere, though, there's really cool. So two of my customers came to me and said, hey, we distribute content. And hey, this is great. We got on a new platform. One of my customers has something like 8,000 titles in their library. And they were like, man, we got good news. We're on a new hot platform that's coming out. We got a special promo. We're going to be there for the holidays. And they were like, that's cool. Because the last time you onboarded, it took you a year to onboard to the last platform. We came in and we made that happen in three months. Why? Because the data was clean. The data was in a system where it could be automated. Right. And we knew what it was. So that's one is scale. Right. Oh, my gosh. We got acquired. And everything needs to go into AWS right now because the home company wants it in aws, you don't start scrambling. Your bag is already packed. You just ship your bag. That's a. Yeah. [00:42:53] Speaker D: And I've been in the opposite scenarios with somebody who doesn't have a mam. And they've really just backed everything. They call it a backup, but they've archived everything onto LTO tape. And then someone comes sniffing around and wants to buy their business in your library, and they can't show them the product that they have. They. [00:43:14] Speaker B: I've seen two acquisitions fail. [00:43:16] Speaker D: I've seen two acquisitions fail because of that as well. And then it's like, how fast can we restore every single thing we've ever shot and shove it into a mam? It's like, not fast enough to get your deal done. That. That's. [00:43:30] Speaker B: So that's a big one now. So if you're looking for a reason your boss would pay for a mam. That's a big one there. The second one is, we're going into this interview. Michael, you mentioned integrations. People figure out that their data. So before you. And right now we're going to get to AI, but before you get to AI, Jeremy. I love Jeremy Simmons. [00:43:46] Speaker A: You just need. [00:43:46] Speaker C: I. [00:43:47] Speaker B: You just need intelligence. And so the classic one is that people. This is. This is the Jeremy Bryson phone call that happened. [00:43:54] Speaker D: Farm to table. Yeah, this is not artificial intelligence. This is Farm to Table. Organic. [00:44:02] Speaker B: Organic intelligence. And so Jeremy will call me and he goes, hey, the guy wants to be able to search by the products in the video. And they always go, I'm going to use AI to identify my products. And I go, whoa, hold on, hold on, hold on. Do you have a coordinator? Well, yes. Do you use something to track your jobs? Well, yeah, yeah, we use Monday.com or wrike. Okay, great. So when you build that product and you have a work order that someone's going to pay you to do this, right? Yeah. Do you know what product you're shooting? Well, yeah, it's for the 7 11, blah, blah, blah. You're like, okay, cool. Then how about if you just took that data, right. And associated it by something as simple as the shoot date or the whatever into your mail. And that's when you call the cowboy hippie. Because then you need to go, you need my team of wizards to come in and go, where's your data now? Let's bring it in. And that's the thing we find over and over and over. When we do our consultant people have critical data that they don't realize is about their video because it's often the marketing coordinator or it's often the product skus and it's in the catalog or whatever and getting that. So that's probably the biggest thing that we come into is people who go, you know, I have all this data and without a mam, there's no way to associate it. Because with a mam, you get things like, oh, what day was it ingested? Well, that happens to be the date of the game. Right. Well, then I can take all my videos from 20 years of my sports team and associate them the game information because I know what day they were shot and that I know what happened in that game. And so that kind of taking unstructured data that's not in a mail, if you start with two sets of unstructured data, you're lost. But if you start with structuring your video data, you know, that's. Then you can start to integrate. So those are the integrations that become most popular. And those are the things that's when the heads start nodding and singing along with the tune. They're like, yeah, I like it. Because then the marketing people, then once you're going that way, you can be like, hey, when you finish, yeah, could I get the master into Reich or Monday or something? Absolutely. I could publish straight to it. Oh, you can have a link to the iconic asset right there in your system. And it doesn't matter if it's spreadsheets or it's the biggest, you know, Zytec system in the world. Integrating that stuff with your mam is Key. And that's when people really get into it. And that's also very funny. That's when the person who is the long suffering media manager becomes a rock star because someone who writes the checks is using your work. Big deal. [00:46:32] Speaker D: God, if this was a Catholic mass, this is the part where you'd step off and we'd all pray. That was great. That was beautiful. [00:46:42] Speaker A: We haven't talked about AI and that is what I'm sure all of us have the most questions about day in and day out. And to your point, Bryson and Jeremy, that sometimes you don't need AI when your existing processes and databases can get you most of the way there. But where do you see AI mixed with asset management being an ROI positive ROI number? [00:47:05] Speaker D: I mean it's just now getting to the point where it's no longer just parlor tricks and magic tricks on a street corner and it's actually turning into usable technology. You know, right now the biggest bang for your buck with, with AI is transcription and translation. Transcription and translation, really? That's the biggest roi because it's now at a price point where it's like not crazy to throw a whole library at it. [00:47:33] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I would maintain that. Like I maintain that there's three places where our ROI is that for transcription on video. The cheapest, best data you can get. It's amazing if you have it. Facial recognition is probably a close second because that's super helpful when you're doing especially like documentary and corporate work where you're like, I need Bob Johnson from 20 years ago. And then, and then the other thing is you can do full analysis if you want on photos. That works pretty well on photos. The reason I don't love, just so we know I don't love full analysis yet is because I don't need to know there's 15 red bicycles. I don't need every marker where there's a red bicycle. And we joke about that all the time, is that's an orange balloon. It's an orange balloon. That's great. So I would say that at that point there's that. And then I want to say to everybody, the big thing for me about it is is that if you don't have a ma', am, well then please don't talk about AI because if you want to do AI, you should get a ma' am. Because you're not. Because you. Well, yeah, yeah, but I don't need one because I'm just going to put everything in it. No, because it's going to burn your credit card or it's going to burn your processors. You need everything and analyze, but so you need a way to sort and sift and filter to get there. Second thing is, is the minute, you know all those clips, you're going to want to do something in the MAM to those clips and automate. So that's one piece. The second part of that for me is that we are in this awkward, like, hallway right now, and Thomas and I talk about this all the time. Michael, I really appreciate our conversations. I got probably four or five people. We are somewhat cranky about AI because what's happened right now is that we're at a point where people aren't people. People think that OpenAI chatgpt. They think that, that Claude, all these things, Gemini, they think all those are like, what AI is for media, entertainment. It's like, no, no, no. Those guys all have 100 billion. They went out and raised billions, and guess what? There's probably only one or $2 billion companies in our whole industry. So we don't have the resources for that. So we're not going to do what VO3 does. We're not going to do what Gemini does yet. We can't do that. So I hate when people are selling on that. And so also, a lot of the mams have not evolved. So we have this horrible thing where we have AI that is magic that we can all access in our phones and we have these tool sets that are not really completely ready for AI. So I think the most successful mams are the ones that are bridging that, hitting that sweet spot of enough, but not overstepping. [00:49:48] Speaker A: Bryson, you and I have spoken about this quite a bit. Is that mams. A lot of mams were built before AI really took prominence. So you have these old. Not to get really into the weeds, but this old database strategy that's good for structured data, but it's not good for AI generated metadata content discovery, as we call it. [00:50:07] Speaker B: Right, yeah, yeah. [00:50:09] Speaker A: Trying to combine these together and have, you know, a federated search to search for everything or a way to sift this. Or the new mams coming out, which are tagless, but don't talk to the mams that you've deployed, people have spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on. And now these two systems don't talk to one another. [00:50:28] Speaker B: That. Yeah, I mean, yeah, go ahead, Sherman. [00:50:30] Speaker D: Yeah, well, yeah, they think about it. Just a simple, simple use case that could really happen in the real world. Right. You know, I'm looking for the time the lead singer in the band, look directly at the camera, did the thing right. Well, that's not in the mam. The logger didn't put that in the mam. So you search one of these AI tools and it's like, I found it, now I go use it. But the proper protocol inside the organization is to say, remove that from access control to all other editors because we don't want 15 of the same looking in the camera shot, right? [00:51:06] Speaker B: Or better yet, Jeremy, you find that shot, but then you're like, but I need to filter by year. Guess what? AI cannot do a great job of show you only things from a certain year, right? Like that weird math that seems so simple and built into a MAM is not built into these tools. So there are. [00:51:20] Speaker C: Right? [00:51:21] Speaker B: You do need both. You really do. [00:51:23] Speaker D: The source of truth for some people is not the same as others. So editor found that great shot. Gonna keep doing this, right? Editor found the great shot. [00:51:34] Speaker B: Hey, all right. [00:51:36] Speaker D: And all of that, but the licensing guy, the project manager and all that, that data has to show up then in Monday.com or wrike or whatever. And it's like the tie, it's not all tied in there. And that's really the challenge we're having now because we're doing these neat tricks and it's like, once we get this cool trick out there, how do we actually integrate that magic into how our business runs? And that's the challenging part right now. [00:52:06] Speaker A: Gentlemen, this has been a fantastic conversation. I would love to record more, but this would be one of those 24 hour podcasts that would just keep going on and on and on, and people have to digest this. So I greatly appreciate you joining us today. So, as a recap, we started with the basics, what MAM is and who needs it. We walked through the starter phase, the growing pains, and then tackled the big buzzwords that everyone's talking about. And the through line here is pretty simple. That MAM isn't one size fits all. It's about right. Sizing for where you are now and then planning for where you want to be in the future, and of course, aligning yourselves with folks who can help you in that phase and what is going to come out in the next several years. So, Bryson and Jeremy, thank you both for sharing your experience with us, and I can't wait to have a talk when the cameras aren't rolling and see more of Jeremy's visual aids. [00:53:02] Speaker D: It's all the same stuff, but with more cussing. [00:53:09] Speaker A: Thanks, guys. [00:53:09] Speaker B: Thanks, man. [00:53:11] Speaker A: This episode is brought to you by Ros video from video switchers, graphics and routing. Whether sdi, IP or even in the cloud, ROS makes live production easy. Trusted everywhere from the biggest sports stadiums to city council meetings, newsrooms and more. Are you ready to upgrade your workflow? Kiko Keycode Media offers the best ROS video pricing and a free consultation so you get the right products the first time. Trust the experts at Kikod Media and book [email protected] this episode is brought to you by Avid Technology, the industry standard for storytellers. Hollywood editors, chart topping musicians and newsrooms rely on Avid. From Media Composer to Pro Tools, shared storage to newsroom tools, Avid keeps productions moving. KIE Code Media delivers the most competitive Avid pricing plus a free consultation to ensure your workflow is built right the first time. Count down the trusted team at Keycode Media. Book [email protected]. [00:54:28] Speaker D: It.