Digital content management—Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Digital content management—the capability to load, manage, and prepare digital content for delivery—is key for any online video service. Content Managers need to make content available for distribution in the most efficient manner, while Executive Producers want to maintain the flexibility to adapt workflows to support new or enhanced existing services.

The solution providing this key business function needs to streamline operations by automating processes and making human workflows more efficient. It needs to integrate with existing

desktop PC productivity tools and business systems, and it needs to integrate with a wide array of third-party services like media encoders, editing tools, video conversion engines, DRM encoders, and large file transfer services. Also, it needs to enable metadata management for technical processing, cataloging, rights management, and contextual advertising.

Microsoft Services‘ Digital Content Management offering extends Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to enable the development and deployment of integrated digital content

management systems, leveraging core Microsoft products and technologies like Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server, .NET, Silverlight, AJAX, and Visual Studio.

Provides user interface elements for rich media digital content management

Microsoft Services‘ Digital Content Management offering adds the following user interface elements (Web parts) to Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Table 5):

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Web Part Description

Media Library Presents the library of available content objects in an intuitive visual

interface, with animated thumbnails and customizable metadata views. Users can view assets, edit metadata, and reorganize their content. In addition, many powerful workflow tasks can be started right from the Media Library, applied to one or many assets simultaneously. Content Managers and other users would use the Media Library to access the rich media (video) objects in the system.

Silverlight-based Media Viewer

Displays all types of Silverlight supported content whether it is audio, video, or still images and graphics. It also shows information such as SMPTE time code. Provides a full set of playback controls, with the option to add other custom controls for manipulating content during playback. Support for multiple browsers and operating systems like

Microsoft Internet Explorer® Internet browser, Firefox, and Safari on

Windows and Mac operating systems. Content Managers would use the Media Viewer to play back (proxies of) the rich media (video) objects in the system.

Annotations Makes it possible for groups of people to collaborate on media assets

through video annotations, digital inking, and discussions. Content Managers may use Annotations to log quality concerns and compliance issues. They can also use Annotations to mark up the video timeline with ad keywords, driving the insertion of contextual advertising. For example, if a luxury car is visible in a shot, then ―luxury car‖ may be entered as an ad keyword, creating an opportunity to place advertising on luxury cars or related products in the appropriate editorial context.

Ontology Editor The Ontology Editor provides rich capabilities at the project level for

teams to use the power of the semantic metadata store without

compromising the integrity of the main database on the back end. This tool would be used by Content Marketers to view and edit metadata. Silverlight-based

Rough Cut Editor (RCE)

RCE enables users to load proxies of selected video objects (with the proxies relating directly to the master assets—digital tape, SD, or HD digital video files) and edit them in a lightweight browser experience with the power to generate frame-accurate edit decision lists (EDLs). These lists are for use in professional non-linear editing systems like Avid‘s Media Composer, Apple‘s Final Cut Pro, and/or Adobe Premiere. RCE would be used by Content Managers to prepare QC, conformance edits, and trailer and promo edits. RCE enables server-side editing and does not require additional client-side downloads or the installation of a desktop application.

69 Figure 51:

Media Library, Media Viewer, and Annotations Web parts

Figure 52: Rough Cut Editor Web part

These Web parts provide the user interface for key digital content management processes, and they are customizable to meet specific requirements.

Powerful, standards-based metadata management

Microsoft Services‘ Digital Content Management offering introduces a powerful, XML-based, semantic metadata model that uses the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) specifications from the World Wide Web Consortium. Whereas traditional metadata merely lists characteristics, RDF allows users to make descriptive statements about resources and to create links and associations within the content taxonomy. Also, it enables rules-based inheritance of metadata properties to new objects, adding nuance and intelligence to metadata management beyond SQL Server.

70 Gathers information with Microsoft Office InfoPath

The Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007 information-gathering program provides an efficient method

of capturing targeted metadata about media assets. Office InfoPath 2007 forms reflect the needs of individual roles so that relevant questions are automatically routed to people based on their

Active Directory® service status and assigned a role in SharePoint Server. For example, companies

can configure workflows to send targeted business-oriented forms to producers of video content, while the editors of that content receive different forms directly pertaining to the editing process. The Digital Content Management offering includes a semantic metadata store, which uses RDF and enables computers to automatically understand complex relationships between content objects and categories based on those objects‘ metadata properties. Most important, the RDF model overcomes traditional barriers to metadata sharing between systems by using a standardized way of describing the metadata structure.

Enhances workflows

SharePoint Server uses Windows Workflow Foundation to provide support for manual workflows, automated machine-based workflows and provide better insight into workflow status. As a component of the Microsoft Office System, SharePoint Server integrates with Microsoft Office

Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client, enabling workflows that reflect the way

people actually work. SharePoint Server pushes tasks and forms directly to a user‘s Inbox, facilitating review and approval processes, for example. Behind the scenes, SharePoint Server provides powerful tools for quickly building complex workflows and monitoring the performance of those workflows. SharePoint Server offers built-in workflow reporting functions that show the status of ongoing workflows, and also the time spent on workflows and the steps included. Windows Workflow Foundation and Microsoft SharePoint Server-based technologies simplify the creation of workflows incorporating both human and automated processes. Microsoft Services‘ Digital Content Management offering includes workflow samples for importing and transcoding content, gathering metadata, reviewing and approving content, and staging content for

distribution. Developers can use these samples as a reference for building customized workflow designs that support media and entertainment companies‘ unique business processes.

Works on multiple browsers

SharePoint Server and the extensions included in Microsoft Services‘ Digital Content Management offering work on Windows Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari, making it possible for creative workers to access the same information and systems as people from other

departments and companies. Also, the extensions included in the Digital Content Management offering support cross-browser video playback with Microsoft Silverlight.

Enables easy customization

SharePoint Server and the extensions included in Microsoft Services‘ Digital Content Management offering are based on an open architecture and can be customized easily to meet specific

requirements. The software development kit (SDK) available for the extensions follows the same patterns as the SharePoint Server SDK and provides guidance and tools for customizing existing functionality and building out new components, data models, and workflows. The SDK provides a set of Microsoft .NET-connected class libraries, Web part templates, and workflow samples, and

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Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 forms. Developers who want to build new or customized existing Web parts can also take advantage of ASP.NET AJAX integration for the SharePoint Server 2007 platform included in the SDK.

6.2.2.2 Digital content distribution—Windows Media Services, Internet Information