MediaBeacon R3volution DAM v3
Powerful administration, transformation, organic search, and flexible user experience of rich media assets.
MediaBeacon Digital Asset Management (DAM) is an award-winning digital asset management solution, providing the technology foundation to a suite of products that enable rich media like no other solution on the market.
Strongly Attached Metadata
Media files are mobile. They are enabled for organizations only if they are moving through a content supply chain. By having strongly-attached metadata through open standards like XMP and OpenSAMSN, the data travels with the asset in the file itself. MediaBeacon is the only DAM vendor that natively supports XMP. Any metadata changes are written to the media file itself throughout the life of the asset. MediaBeacon can also encrypt the metadata within the file so it is secure.
Value
Digital Rights Management – when assets leave
the system, all the applicable metadata is included in the file including the who, when and how information – and it an be encrypted to keep it secure.
Mobile Workflow – Assets move outside an
organization for work. Contract labor, vendors, customers – all of whom may be part of a workflow. With XMP, it is possible for people to understand what they need to do and track what has been done. Tenets of MediaBeacon DAM
Strongly Attached Metadata – that is
namespace aware through XMP enabling the ‘mobility’ of media.
User Experience –
Bringing
next generation web experience
through a configurable
Widget-enabled user experience.
Open Standards and platform – Open server
and client support with no browser plug-ins.
Manage all types media formats – Photo,
image, video, audio, compound documents, MS Office documents.
Video-ready out-of-the-box – Including an
embedded video transcoder.
Organic Search and Content Analytics –
Leverage any number of search capabilities to find the media.
Security – down to the user, individual asset,
and operational function.
Manage intellectual property – and digital
rights by asset.
Publish to any number of output channels –
Web, download, ftp, media, print.
International ready – all languages supported
at the client and within the metadata.
Easy – to administer and manage. Scalable – Start small and grow gradually.
Syndication Widgets – Allow users to define the
url to an Open social module or an RSS feed to display. Go to www.google.com/ig as an example of available sources.
Users can change the asset views, layout and color theme on the fly to best fit personal preferences.
Web 2.0 – The solution brings to rich media
management features like type-ahead in fields, drag-and-drop between widgets and outside of the browser onto the desktop, right-click menus for fast feature execution against an asset, frequent-function execution, star-rating of assets and mouse-over video preview.
Flexible Interfaces Value
Extensible – Allows new capabilities, new solutions
and any existing web site to be enabled very easily. With the HTML and Syndication widgets, it allows web-enabled content that exists outside of the DAM to be brought into the MediaBeacon environment.
Nimble – The ability to add and remove widgets is
a two-click process. Users are able to move widgets around on the screen.
Integration made easy – Integrate with the data
and not the application. For instance, Adobe CS4 reads and writes XMP so the metadata flows with the asset.
High Availability – If the relationship database
becomes corrupted, press a button on the
MediaBeacon administration tool and the database is rebuilt. No synchronization issues.
User Experience
MediaBeacon DAM brings the Web 2.0 experience to the browser through an open-standards based widget interface that was written using AJAX and HTML5 with the Google Web Toolkit. The interface allows users to add, delete and change the interface looks-and-feels - all on the fly. This is all made available without browser-plug-ins like Flash or Silverlight. A summary of the widgets include:
Organic Search – No other vendor gives you so
many ways to search for media files. Review the search section for more information.
Information Widgets – Widgets that display
different types of information about the assets. y HTML Widget – Author and display HTML pages. y Log Reports – Review log files by asset, user, group,
data, type and action.
y M3TAForm – Display and edit an assets metadata on the fly.
y Search Status – Show and change the current search.
Action Widgets – What processes users can execute
against assets can be defined to a very granular level. y Conversion Widget – Drag-and-drop assets onto this
widget for conversion into pre-defined output file types.
y M3TAForms Stamper – Allows drag-and-drop metadata changes by ‘stamping’ the asset(s) with new or updated values.
y Scratch Basket – Allows drag and drop functionality for batch actions like download, convert and delete. y Trash – To drag-and-drop assets for deletion.
LDAP security Support – If you have an LDAP server
(i.e. Active Directory, Open Directory, Oracle Internet Directory, IBM Tivoli) , it can be that single point of login for MediaBeacon.
Value
Platform Independent Operating Systems –
Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Apple OSX 10.4 and above, Red Hat and Suse Linux and HPUX, AIX and Solaris UNIX.
Platform Independent Database – all JDBC
enabled databases including Oracle, Sybase, SQLServer, Postgres, MySQL, Informix and DB2.
Platform Independent Web servers – IBM
Websphere, Oracle BEA Weblogic, jBoss and others.
Client Independence – Because MediaBeacon is
using GWT, there is never a concern about browser support including mobile devices like Android, iPhone and the tablet devices like Apple iPad.
Secure – By using open standards, there are fewer
security issues. Flash and Silverlight create security and stability issues within a browser environment.
Integration – Integration to an existing security
infrastructure, file systems and storage and other information systems is designed into MediaBeacon Manage all types of media formats
No matter your media formats, MediaBeacon knows how to thumbnail, manage, convert and publish them. This includes all photos/images, video, audio, compound documents (Adobe, Quark, etc) and office documents (MS Office, Open Office, etc).
Full embedded metadata support – EXIF data for
photos, IPTC for video, RDF, XMP, JPEG, MXF, etc. MediaBeacon will map any images in a Microsoft Office document if the assets exist in the database.
Thumbnailing – MediaBeacon thumbnails any
visually-centric file type. For multi-framed or paged assets like video, PDF, Adobe InDesign, Quark or Office, a multi-page or storyboard view is generated.
Section 508 enabled – Even though the solution is
browser based, it allows for keyboard controls, font adjustments and touch-screen to maneuver search results and execute actions against those assets.
Customizable - Create the user interface to fit the purpose and a user’s capabilities or permissions –
using the widgets as ‘user interface building blocks’, it is now possible to build a user interface in minutes that fit the needs or capabilities of the individual user.
Light Client/No Plug-in – By not using Flash, Flex
or Silverlight as a plug-in, MediaBeacon DAM runs against any browser without concern for security risks or corporate firewalls blocking plug-ins. It also means, that MediaBeacon will run on the next generation clients like the Apple iPad without issue. Open Standards and Platform
MediaBeacon DAM adheres to open standards in programming, metadata management and user interface development.
Development platform – MediaBeacon DAM is
built using J2EE as the application platform with the primary components self-contained so they can be moved onto other servers allowing greater scalability.
User Interface – The solution’s user experience is all
widget-based and is developed using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). This utilizes the native JAVA libraries that exists in every browser to enable the user experience without any plug-ins. MediaBeacon has also taken advantage of GWT’s capabilities to optimize the code to make it faster and more network efficient.
Metadata – MediaBeacon supports the open XMP
standard of placing metadata about the file in the file itself that is also namespace aware. The solution can also read any other file data like EXIF, IPTC, Adobe and Dublin Core.
Open and Extensible SOA Architecture – Allows
for easy integration with MediaBeacon with other applications and web sources.
Utilizes the file server – MediaBeacon uses the file
Video – MediaBeacon comes with a video transcoder
to convert videos between formats. It allows proxies to be created upon ingestion.
MS Office documents – Can be converted to
another format like PDF, JPEG and text. Users pick which PowerPoint slides can be chosen to create a new file for download.
Value
Intuitive – MediaBeacon DAM makes it easy to
ingest, map, render and output assets the way you need them for all use cases.
Saves Time – All of the activities in managing
media takes place real-time. The conversion process happens using a ‘shopping basket’ approach behind the scenes; it allows users to do their job. The ability to pick and choose only what is needed from videos and Office documents make it possible to maximize users’ value and reduce ‘busy work’.
Saves Money – As MediaBeacon ships everything
to manage all media types, there is no need to spend money for other technologies like video transcoders, image libraries or desktop applications. With capabilities like rendering Adobe and Quark documents in the browser, now everyone can review these complex documents without needing the desktop application or have a PDF file generated and emailed to them.
Video Ready out-of-the-box
MediaBeacon DAM includes everything needed to enable video files.
Ingest – MediaBeacon DAM automatically creates
a thumbnail, a story board and extracts any closed captioning. The closed captioning is available for searching. It is an option to pre-process proxies for fast download as video transcoding can be a time consuming process.
Integration with authoring tools – MediaBeacon
offers drag-and-drop from Apple Final Cut Pro and other video editing tools.
Rendering and Transcoding – MediaBeacon shows
a video in a storyboard or textual format. The solution includes a video transcoder to convert video proxies from any format. The solution supports working with other transcoders from vendors like
Collaboration – Users can collaborate on assets
and place ‘sticky notes’ on them with comments for people to review and respond. These notes can also spawn workflows to others to engage their action.
Collaborate with comments
Compound document support – When an Adobe,
Quark or Office document is added to MediaBeacon, the relationship between all applicable files is maintained. An image asset can be owned by multiple parents and relationships are managed through the repository.
Complex documents can be viewed in browser
Conversion – MediaBeacon installs everything
needed to convert all media types from one format to another.
Images/Photos/Compound Documents –
MediaBeacon supports over 100 source and destination image formats. Output images into any other format needed for all your business use cases. This includes full Open prepress Interface (OPI) support, colorspace conversion, and ICC color profiles.
Facet Filter –Search through metadata and discover
relationships between metadata fields.
Featured Content – Content that is ‘featured’ for
review, work or other activities.
Keyword Search – Search by keywords and show
frequently used keywords based on font size.
Places Tree – Metadata- driven virtual directory tree. Quick Search – a quick search of pre-defined
metadata fields.
Saved Search – Pre-con-figured advanced searches
by you, your team or administrator.
Saved Selections – Pre-configured search results. Taxonomy Browser – Search by hierarchical
metadata fields defined by your taxonomy.
Color Analytics – An added facet in R3Search
allowing search based on an asset’s primary color profile.
Search that fits a person’s needs Value
Easy and Intuitive – It is easy to enable or remove
a search option by adding the widget to the user interface.
Accurate – Use the search that makes sense. A
‘quick search’ is not the only paradigm that should be available to find media files.
Complete – Just as important as being accurate,
search results should be complete. Knowing you have all your client’s assets is an imperative.
Storyboard with Closed Captioning
Mouse-over preview – MediaBeacon allows a
simple playback option from the main screen just by placing your mouse over the video, it can start a low-resolution playback for quick review.
Output – Users can decide how they want to
download or publish video. This includes download, publish to a WCM, public services like YouTube, or video streaming server, or have it be auto-authored and burned to DVD/Blu-ray with a Rimage system.
Value
Tightly integrated – As video support is tightly
integrated into the MediaBeacon DAM product, there is no need to worry about integration, security or output issues.
Cost savings – MediaBeacon DAM is the only vendor
that ships a video transcoder and has this level of seamless integration of video with other assets.
Enable Multichannel output – Web, hand-held
devices and 3G offer so many new publish options, From high-definition broadcast to iPod podcasts. Organic Search and Content Analytics
MediaBeacon DAM brings to market the most flexible and complete search options for media. With the widget-based user interface, it is possible to enable only the search options that make sense for a user. Unlike other vendors, it is possible to empower users as much, or as little, as is needed.
Date Search – Drill down and around date fields. Directory Tree – Search assets using a directory tree
IP management of licensed content – Media files
can have rules to make sure licensed content is only used by those who should have access, only used in certain proxies and only for a certain timeframe.
Watermarking upon publish – Support for visible
and invisible water marketing. With encryption of XMP data, downloaded assets are traceable.
Drag-and-drop security – No matter how someone
extracts an asset out of MediaBeacon, the XMP metadata is maintained.
Value
MediaBeacon’s ability to manage, control and report back on all intellectual property needs is as detailed as a client requires. The ability to automate this aspect of media management saves clients time, headcount and money.
Publish to any number of channels Media has the greatest number of potential destinations for use, re-use, publish, viewing and licensing.
Quick Desktop download – For quick download of
assets.
Convert and download – The ability to convert an
asset from the host format to any other format. This can be done to individual assets or in batch. With drag-and-drop capabilities, it is possible to create pre-defined proxies and drag any number of assets into an ‘action palette’.
Drag-and-drop to the desktop – Drag-and-drop
from the browser to the desktop tool of choice.
PDF catalog – Have a PDF file catalog created
with asset thumbnails with URL links back to the asset. The recipient of the PDF can click on the PDF thumbnail and, once they log in, they are taken to the extended view of the asset. The PDF file is their ‘saved search’ they can click to access the files
Burn to CD, DVD or Blu-ray robotic system –
Integrates with the Rimage robotic burning and decorating systems to create a CD, DVD and/or Blu-ray and decorate the top of it in color. The media can be burned to be either a data disc or playable DVD.
FTP site – Media files are big and generally not
something attached to an email. The next best thing
Extensible – MediaBeacon continues to extend
search options to better enable media analytics and search. Partners and clients can easily develop widgets to their own needs.
Security
MediaBeacon DAM brings a very granular level of security.
User Privileges – Role based security and privileges
can be assigned for individual users. Administrators can also control what functions a person is able to execute against an asset down to the user level. Example, A user may ‘convert’ between formats while another can only ‘download’ the source file.
Secure Web administration – All administration of
users and security is done through a secure web-based user interface.
LDAP support – Allowing for single sign on and
centralized user management.
Search and Security – When a search takes place,
the available options that are shown, any type-ahead and all interim results are only for those assets a user is allowed to see based on their privilege.
Metadata encryption – MediaBeacon supports
128, 196 and 256 bit encryption on any number of metadata fields.
Logging and audit trailing – of actions to the user,
asset and function.
Value
MediaBeacon allows clients to map users to certain assets and only enable certain functions. Transparency to the user is paramount in any large organization where multiple customers may be running on the same machine or within an instance of MediaBeacon. The logging allows organizations to extract what they might need for charge-back or client billing.
Manage Intellectual Property
If publishing assets for use by others is the true enabler of rich media, the largest concern is also making sure that the value of the intellectual property (IP) is enforced and managed.
Interface allows end-users to change data to their localized preference – Change the name of fields,
workspace tabs and other areas of the screen to your local preference.
Support for double-byte characters in all search options – Every search option supports
any language set, including the faceted search capabilities enabled with MediaBeacon R3Search.
Value
There is more need to engage globally.
Fewer errors – As media is mobile, in being able to
send a file from the US to, say, Korea to get printed would be best done with the metadata in that local language so there is less chance of translation and printing errors.
Enable the global user – Searching accurately and
completely can only be done for any user if the metadata and search is just as enabled and capable with all global languages.
Easy to administer and manage
DAM solutions should be easy to administer. Organizations who implement MediaBeacon do not need a ‘DAM administrator’. This is because:
Tight integration with the operating environment – The application takes advantage of what each
operating system offers when it comes to image libraries and security. If something is missing, MediaBeacon supplements it.
Assets are managed in the file system – The file
system is used to manage the assets. This allows any kind of storage to be used, any kind of backup strategy, any kind of high availability or disaster recovery tool to be used.
Simple Administration Tool – Developed with the
lightly-technical person in mind.
Tightly coupled video enablement and
management – The setup of the types of proxies,
how storyboards are created and other video-centric configurations are tightly integrated into the administration environment.
MediaBeacon Distribution Portal – A tightly
coupled web-content publishing portal from MediaBeacon.
Web Content Management system – ATG, Day, IBM
Websphere, IBM Lotus WCM, Drupal, etc.
Public sites like YouTube, Flickr, etc – More
content is being viewed and enabled through public domain sites like YouTube and Flickr.
Print – The need to understand colorspace (RGB to
CMYK), support ICC color profiles and other areas of the digital print process.
Value
Save money – Automate different publish
destinations so your organization can focus on higher-value work is key.
Make money – Maximizing the “routes to market” to
better enable the monetization of assets. Also, the ability to publish content to your supply chain will create greater sales with less overhead.
International Ready
MediaBeacon’s DAM is fully international ready and able to extend to the special needs of any language. This includes:
User Interface available in English, Kanji, Spanish, French, and German – The solution is immediately
available in these languages with more to come.
Interface mapped to any language – For clients
who have unique language support needs
All languages are supported
Double-byte metadata – It is possible to insert
any character set in a metadata field and it will be strongly attached using XMP.
Componentized Scalability – The solution has
been modularized to enable the placement of components on separate servers when the need arises. Transcoder servers, preview servers and web servers can all be placed on their own hardware.
Federated Search – When more than one
MediaBeacon server is in an enterprise, MediaBeacon’s federated search makes them look like one to a user. Supports a heterogeneous operating system environment.
Value
DAM systems generally start small and grow over time. The technology needs to grow with you.
One-button database rebuild –Strongly attached
metadata allows information about the assets to be maintained in the files themselves. The relational database itself can become unstable or corrupted for any number of reasons. If that happens, MediaBeacon will automatically correct and bring back to normal state the database with one button.
Web-based Application management – The
“logical” administration of users, groups, permissions, metadata is done through a web based user
interface. This administration extends to help setup and manage the more complex activities like dictionaries, thesauri, RSS feeds, Workflows, taxonomies and workspace management.
Straightforward administration Value
In many organizations, the DAM system needs to run like an appliance – little administration, no full
time person keeping it running. Scalable
MediaBeacon is engineered to go from the workgroup to the enterprise.
For more information, please contact us at:
Website: www.mediabeacon.com Phone: 612.317.0737
Email: [email protected] Address: 123 North 3rd Street
