What is PAM (Production Asset Management)?

While sharing many features with a typical MAM (Media Asset Management) system, PAM (Production Asset Management) solutions have a number of unique requirements.
 

First of all, production workflows introduce some new “objects” to manage, most obviously the production projects themselves. Like other managed media, we need to be able to store, search and find metadata about projects but we also want to understand the relationships between projects and the media used in those projects. When a PAM (Production asset management) is able to understand the contents and context of a project, as opposed to very simply managing the project files, it enables some useful functionality such as archiving (and restoring) projects, including all associated media, and importing/exporting complete projects from/to external or offline systems.  In many cases, media will be used in multiple projects, so the PAM also needs to be aware of this to make sure that links aren’t broken by media being moved or deleted when still in use.
 

In many cases, it’s also possible for the PAM system to orchestrate processes that might otherwise have needed to take place in the video editor. A good example here would be the rendering and publishing of projects. Depending on the content and complexity of the production project, this can take a lot of time, and that’s time that the editor themselves isn’t able to do their primary task, editing.
 

Where multiple users in a workgroup are collaborating on production projects, a PAM should support this with collaboration features, such as being able to see which users are interacting with projects, or project locking to prevent other users making unwanted changes.
 

In order to preserve quality, the production processes also typically use the highest available resolution and bit-rate media. To reduce network and storage load, it is common for organizations to use lower bit-rate “proxies” in some editing and other tasks. The PAM needs to maintain the relationships between the high bit-rate media and proxies through all the processes mentioned above, as well as knowing when to direct users to a proxy (e.g. for preview) vs. the full bit-rate media (e.g. for render).  Finally, a PAM solution can incorporate a streaming server that enables those proxies to be delivered to the user, enabling remote workflows.
 

Depending on the size of the workgroup or enterprise where the production asset management is deployed, there may also be other requirements in addition to the core features mentioned above.

No matter the type of production environment, users such as project managers, editors, journalists, social media editors can all share, collaborate and deliver projects EditMate, the application at the heart of the Vidispine solution for Production Asset Management. As a fully featured PAM for Adobe Premiere Pro, EditMate adds full searchability and project collaboration, also centrally managing project templates, export presets and ingested media.
 

Complete control and synchronization are maintained between raw high bit-rate source media and constrained proxy media, that, combined with our advanced streaming service, VidiStream, enables remote and or cloud editing. In addition, the EditMate solution can also orchestrate rendering as a background process, ensuring you Adobe Premiere Pro edit seats remain available to editors.
 

EditMate can be used “standalone” for workgroup-style deployments, but can also be easily extended with other Vidispine applications and services to integrate your production asset management into the complete media enterprise.

When searching for the best media management tools, you often come across various expressions, and definitions that seem to all do what you need.

• DAM – digital asset management. An umbrella-like expression for managing all types of digital media
• MAM – media asset management. A broad term covering all aspects of media management, in cases referring to both online and offline media. 
• PAM – production asset management. Media management in a production environment
• VAM – video asset management software. A more niche term where the focus is primarily on video assets – where DAM, MAM and PAM may include other assets (including audio, stills and graphics) that have value in the media supply chain.

Well, as you can see, there are overlaps between the different definitions, mainly dependent on exactly what type of media you need to manage and the kind of platform and business model involved.

Video Asset Management (VAM) has quite a significant overlap in functionality to our definition of a MAM or PAM system. In the Vidispine portfolio, we have a number of applications and service available to design a VAM or PAM supply chain depending on your requirements and business model. 

Let´s take a look at some of the applications available for your VAM and PAM requirements in the Vidispine portfolio.

• EditMate – it all starts here with full panel integration in the Adobe Premiere Pro environment with shared media, projects, proxy editing, approval, and delivery workflows.
• MediaPortal – an intuitive interface that supports the next steps in the media workflow by incorporating advanced video & metadata tools for browsing, editing or logging of material across multiple locations.
• VidiEditor - the browser-based editing solution for journalists and video content producers who need to quickly and easily create short- and medium-form content

Vidispine ecosystem also includes services available to design customized and unique advanced metadata and transcoding capabilities and products for your media supply chain and business model. In our media service platform VidiNet, a growing number of services and applications are available at your fingertip to design scalable, high-performance hybrid and/or cloud-native VAM solutions.

• VidiCore – the advanced metadata modeling and management tool
• VidiCoder – the advanced configurable transcoder
• AWS Elemental MediaConvert – the industry-leading cloud version of the Elemental transcoder
• Bitmovin – a complete distribution toolbox for OTT workflows
• VCS Speech -to -text – detect spoken language and store as metadata for auto subtitling and elastic search capability
• VCS video and image analyses – detect the actual content, faces and environments of your content and store as metadata for any content related automation.

The benefits of the Vidispine portfolio are to be found in its flexibility to meet any customer requirement from the medium-sized production house to journalist editorial production, all the way to high volume VOD, Streaming and Broadcast.

When searching for the best media management tools you often come across various expressions and definitions that seem to all do what you need.