Data

If you need a hint at the importance of metadata for the media and entertainment industry, look no further than UltraViolet.

The buy-once, play-anywhere digital content locker service relies on the metadata provided from nearly a dozen studios to move content between nearly 20 digital retailers in more than a dozen countries.

Today, UltraViolet has approximately 22 million users with 120 million rights tokens, “and every one of those rights tokens has a content ID … about 22,000 metadata entries in the system, title, genre, ratings … all provided by content [owners],” said Jim Taylor, CTO and head of product development for Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the cross-industry consortium behind UltraViolet.

Taylor added that while there are inconsistencies in title information on different UV enabled storefronts, content providers the DECE have made significant gains in providing a consistent framework for incorporating metadata.

Standardization, in fact, was a common theme among speakers at Metadata Madness, held in Los Angeles this week, with Ken Nevarez, manager of TV operations for Google/YouTube, among those praising the gains for video content distributors using standards like the DEG-EMA (DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group and Entertainment Merchants Association) Media Entertainment Core Metadata and EMA Content Availability Metadata standards.

In 2014, Google expanded its Google Play movies reach from 20 countries to more than 100, largely on the back of EMA’s avails standard, which allowed Google to automate processing “and [add] an unheard of level of accuracy and efficiency,” Nevarez said. A thousand-line item avail used to take up to 50 man hours to process. That’s down to 30 minutes with EMA’s standard, he added (joking that a fresh-out-of-college Millennial could be hired to input the data).

Craig Seidel, VP of distribution technology for MovieLabs, also praised the EMA avails standard, saying it’s helped streamline the process of studio content. To date, EMA’s avails program covers more than 712,000 titles (30,639 new releases, 682,345 catalog) in 141 countries.

However, the benefits of metadata standardization come with challenges, according to Mark Sgriccia, executive director of programming and distribution for Lionsgate. Systems and partner integration, master data cleansing, API testing with retailers and vendors, and partner workflow and ingestion are all areas that take up time and resources.

Still, metadata standardization is crucial and he emphasized to the audience that the longer our industry waits to adopt these standards, the greater risk we have in misrepresenting our content to our consumers.

Thomas Stilling, VP of worldwide home entertainment for 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, noted that metadata standards must be adaptive and require a flexible framework, given the industry’s rapid evolution. But the metadata challenges facing content owners are not insurmountable he added, stressing that the industry as at a point where it can look toward the future and be encouraged.

Metadata management requires a comprehensive approach and dedicated personnel within companies as well, according to Anthony Accardo, director of research and development for Disney and the ABC Television Group Anthony Accardo stressed. Consolidating systems from production to distribution to archiving, for instance, to make asset search easier, can create a daunting data integration challenge.

The job that used to be called “librarian,” or “archivist,” he noted, has been usurped by database engineers.

He explained how, with the switch to digital software and systems, the role of the “librarian” has been usurped by a database engineer.

Steve Cronan, founder and CEO of 5th Kind, stated that he thinks the title for content metadata heads needs to be changed. And, beginning at the production stage, by identifying and cataloguing metadata assets, asset managers are playing an ever-increasing role in generating revenue.

He also added that we’ve evolved to database systems that allow for consistency and structure, allow for automation, and leveraging databases to expand to allow ecosystems to communicate with each other and share information.

But while the benefits of content metadata may seem obvious, execution and follow-through are important. Todd Burke, principal solutions engineer for Adobe shared a story where he recently sat down with a customer and went over the client’s Web site. To his surprise, not a single image on the site had a single piece of metadata, he said. Burke explained that metadata systems are worthless if they aren’t being utilized.

The collaborative industry conversation about metadata continues at Metadata Madness East in New York City on March 31st