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iFind Media Asset Management - iMM

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IBIS introduces an intuitive Media Asset Management system for different user groups who deal with media wherever they are, whatever industry they work within. Web interfaces mean users can benefit from the advantages of a media management system with an impeccable pedigree from their desktop PC.

iFind – the intelligent multi-device search tool

Adding value to your media

iFind provides intuitive intelligent system-wide search, move, browse, and archive and restore-from archive management. With direct access to the essence, and to the versions and variants of that essence iFind tracks your media throughout your workflow.

iFind is highly scalable, providing access to captured audio and video files, metadata and documents throughout your facility or networked locations. Users can find media and related files directly from their desktop through a web interface. This media can be located on- or off-line, addressing cross-format storage. Archives, disk caches, video servers, newsroom computer systems can all be included in the iFind workflow.

With integration to NRCS and programme rights management systems, iFind gives the user a headline rights reporting on availability of media being accessed. Combine this with Audio Mining, clip genealogy reporting and workflow management and you have a powerful toolset.

Searching for media can be managed within small workgroups or large enterprise wide, multiple sites.

IBIS iFind provides a window on your media and using true ‘Free Text’ searching through individual words not just matching the field to search criteria. Full-text queries can include words and phrases, or multiple forms of a word or phrase.

iFind is designed to work with a wide variety editorial workflows, ranging from fast news production to long term content preservation of assets. iFind can be used to add media management functionality to a news or sports production department. The same application set can be workflowed to handle acquired programming in tandem with a Channel Management system.

If you need to establish an e-commerce media management workflow, iFind can be integrated with a customer management system in order that usage, or delivery, of media can be reported upon and billed for.

iFind provides media asset management functionality in partnership with IBIS’s established iBase Asset Core database. Providing a central and stable core to the full media management system, enabling business rule based workflows for archive, restore, clip movement & deletion.

Browse proxy support allows desktop clip management with the ability to add and maintain ‘points of information’ to enhance the clip annotation metadata.

Fully multi-language compliant with both fields and labels switchable between English, Spanish, Arabic or Japanese with other language on request.

iFind - intelligent multi-device enterprise wide media management. Cost effective, intuitive and scalable - precisely what you require.

iFind Option: Document Search

Adding value to your textual content

Document search is carried out across the many document sources within your workflow to which iFind has access. This could include scripts within an NRCS, research notes, and HTML pages. This means no information is ‘lost’ within the millions of words held within the broadcast facility.

iFind Document Searching is carried out extremely quickly making it possible to search large data stores and terabytes of text without affecting the global search.

Once the search is complete the successful hits are highlighted in where they’re found in html, xml and pdf formats.

Search queries can be formed from standard words and be set up to include and/or exclude certain words or phrases in addition to proximity, phonic, stemming, numeric, wildcard and fuzzy searching.

Search queries can be combined together further enhancing the search context, resulting in highly relevant search results.

iFind Option: Audio Mining

(available Q4 2009)

Adding value to your audio content

Audio / audio-video ingestion is carried out at up to 80 x real-time for search preparation, without the use of a finite dictionary. This means no audio intelligence is lost from the resulting searchable index. This many hours of audio data are able to be ingested.
iFind Audio Mining enables searching at tens of thousands times faster than real-time (up 80,000 times) for search queries, making it possible to search large data archives.
Search queries can be formed from standard words but more importantly can use people, place, organisation, product, and brand names without the application having to ‘learn’ new words. This means that you can search for jargon and slang terminology. Creating the possibility for contextual search queries which deliver highly relevant search results.
Search queries can be combined to further enhance the search context, resulting in highly relevant search results.
Direct access to the best matching hits within the audio library against your search query, making content review a more efficient process.
Compliant to various levels of original quality capture in US English, UK English, US Spanish and German.

iFind Option: Workflow Management

Adding value to your editorial and operational expertise

iFind manages your material from acquisition through to archive. All media in your facility, or networked facilities, wherever it is can be found, the metadata examined and viewed. Material can exist in many different forms and formats allowing parallel working to be supported. This means your editorial compliance viewing can be carried out whilst technical compliance is being actioned by the same or different operatives. If a proxy has been created it can be viewed at the desktop or at full resolution on a broadcast monitor with all the associated metadata on hand. The integrated workflow management tools mean that material can move between the various stages in a workflow automatically or manually. Building and amending the workflow is in the control of the system administrator just as it should be.

iFind workflow is integrated with editorial acquisition processes for ingest of commercials, promotions and programme material.
In order to ensure your material makes it to air on time iFind gives a step by step overview of the creative workflow.
User folders show daily tasks on operator log in.
Supervisor log in allows monitoring of individuals’ performance in addition to an overview of the workflow.
Automated tasks remove the requirement for repeated tasks.
Audit trails of operator log in and tasks alongside material status.

iFind Option: iMove – integrated media transfer management

Adding value to the delivery process

iMove is designed to provide an automatic mechanism for moving material between many broadcast devices. This can be via ftp file transfer over Ethernet or fibre channel transfer. This move process could be augmented to trigger the automatic generation of browse proxies, typically to H.264 standard. Triggers for automatic moving of media and/or generating proxies can be referenced in key metadata fields identified in the iFind workflow.

iMove is ideal when used in the acquisition workflow alongside the capture of new material. As new material appears on a server the associated metadata is checked against pre-defined business rules.

If specific parameters are met the clip and its metadata are copied or moved to the required destination which may be another server, an archive or a hot folder for format conversion. This background trigger function means iMove can be set to monitor a watch folder to move ready-to-air or edited material from one server to another automatically. Last minute promotions for example, can be finished and then approved for tx with iMove ensuring that the completed version is moved to the transmission videoserver and then to air.

iMove can also provide the ideal trigger mechanism in mission critical workflows for the complete mirroring of videoservers. iMove can be configured to produce by automatically transferring material between the servers, a complete mirrored pair. Because iMove is embedded within the iFind workflow, providing a full-time hot standby system is achieved extremely effectively with minimum disruption.

iFind Option: Browse Clip Manager

Adding value to browse proxy management

Enabling the management of browse proxies in your workflow, the iFind Browse clip manager allows you to work with proxies at each stage of the workflow. The iFind interface allows the use to search for media across the broadcast workflow and associated devices. Once located, the Browse Clip Manager allows the creation of H.264 browse proxies.

These can then be used to mark Points of Interest on the clip. Whether your workflow requires the identification of material which needs to be removed, or material which needs to be included in a

subsequent edit, iFind Browse can do both. With iFind, these points are held with the browse, archive and hi-res versions of the clip as long as you need it. Alongside the Points of Interest iFind holds custom metadata so that not only do you hold the edit decision points or highlights in the system but also details about what makes those points worthy of note - players’ names in a hockey game; horses, runners and riders, or edit notes can be held against the clip and its points of interest.

iFind Points of Interest can be used in an editing workflow as a method of shot listing for further editing.

An EDL can be produced from the shot listing in a variety of formats – Final Cut Pro or XML for example. If required, iFind can generate thumbnails of these points of interest as they’re created. There is also an option to include automatic scene detection - can work with supported third party proxies.

iFind Option: Archive

Adding value to archived assets

IBIS iFind Archive & HSM Library Management enables the automatic or manual transfer of clips in a video server system to an archive. The application combines moving material into an archive with the flexibility and power of the IBIS iFind database to track material and so report on its present location. This means that all metadata associated with that asset is always associated with the original media, irrespective of where or when it is restored to from the archive. Material can be archive and then restored many months later knowing the key metadata associated with that asset will be ‘reunited’ with the restored media.

Material required for archiving and transfer can be initiated either automatically based on a set of pre-defined station rules. These rules could be as straightforward as adding a tag in the title field such as ‘TX’ which triggers the archive process. Or it could be a manual process carried out by a librarian who feels that in this case, although the material does not fit the ‘usual’ rules for archiving, this is an asset they feel is worth preserving. This flexible workflow takes the repetition out of the daily archiving process which is typically carried out whilst allowing for those daily professional, editorial decisions which inevitably need to be addressed.

Interfacing to both VTR and XDCam, this application provides a highly efficient cost effective means of transferring material to a useful physical storage medium, such as Beta SP or XDCam disc. Upon transfer of the archived material, details of the tape number and location of the material on that tape are logged in the iFind database. This information can be queried using comprehensive metadata search tools to enable retrieval of the physical storage medium a straight-forward task.

Compatible with HSM middleware from SGL and Front Porch.
Please note: Moving media to a Xendata archive device can be accomplished with IBIS iMove.
Archiving to a multi-cassette machine style archive, such as a Sony XDCart or a Data Archive like Petasite.