Tag Archives: M&E

Stack to Win: A Powerful Solution for Sports Media Production

Post Syndicated from Dave Simon original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/stack-to-win-a-powerful-solution-for-sports-media-production/

A decorative image showing the text Stack to Win with Boomer Esiason. In the background, the logos for Backblaze, Suite Studios, and Iconik are displayed on media screens.

I recently joined an incredible group of thought leaders for a panel discussion on the future of sports media. Hosted by sports commentator and former NFL MVP Boomer Esiason, our Stack to Win panel featured Jeremy Strootman from Iconik, Jay Maxwell from Suite Studios, the NFL’s VP of Broadcasting Mike North, and me—Dave Simon from Backblaze. Together, we explored the complexities of modern sports content creation and how our integrated cloud-native solutions from Backblaze B2, Iconik, and Suite offer a powerful blueprint for radically streamlining workflows and unlocking new opportunities for efficiency, speed, and monetization.

The traditional, linear model of sports media production is a thing of the past. It’s been completely changed by new technology and a shift in what fans expect. Today, media teams are in a real-time battle for attention against every other form of entertainment. This new world demands a different kind of setup, one that’s built for the cloud and designed to handle the entire media lifecycle. The solution we’ve built, a powerful combination of Backblaze, Iconik, and Suite Studios, is exactly that. It’s the playbook for staying ahead.

Watch the full interview

There’s so much more that we could summarize in just one blog post. Check out the full video below:

The (data) problem

Game day content is immense—we’re talking 6–7TB of data nightly. In the past, this was a logistical nightmare. As Jeremy Strootman from Iconik pointed out, “It used to be we’d get a hard drive and I’d get a hard drive, and we made sure that we just took different flights on the way home. It was literally that archaic.” When speed is everything, old methods like shipping hard drives are a huge liability.

This pressure comes from fans who have an insatiable appetite for content across every platform imaginable. They expect teams to produce their own content in real-time for streaming and social media. For many, the “second screen” is now the main screen, with 73% of fans using mobile apps for real-time updates during live events. If your workflow is slow, you’ve already lost the competition.

The definition of sports content has also expanded. It’s no longer just about the game itself, but also the stories around it—the players’ lives and the team’s entire ecosystem. Jay Maxwell of Suite Studios captured this perfectly:

The product is not just what’s on the field anymore. It’s also what’s going on in these, you know, athletes lives, what’s going on in the peripheries of the team and the organizations.
—Jay Maxwell, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Suite Studios

This includes pop culture crossovers, fantasy sports, and in-game betting, all of which demand instant video highlights.

A great example of this is when Eagles wide receiver AJ Brown was spotted reading a book called “Inner Excellence” on the sidelines. The moment went viral, and the book, which was previously ranked 585,000 on the bestseller list, vaulted to number one instantly. As the NFL’s Mike North noted, this is how fans can instantly “go deeper” and connect with their favorite players. The ability to capture and distribute these moments instantly is a fundamental requirement for success.

A modern technology stack

An integrated, cloud-native tech stack provides a seamless workflow that removes risk and speeds up the content pipeline. It’s a powerful combination of three key layers:

1. Foundation: The active cloud archive

Modern media workflows are built on a cloud storage foundation that replaces old systems like tape libraries and shelves full of hard drives. The key is an active cloud archive that gives you instant access to your footage. This eliminates the costly delays of older solutions and offers predictable costs, so you never get hit with surprise fees when you need to access your own content.

2. Intelligence: Media Asset Management (MAM)

This is the smart layer that makes your vast archive searchable and valuable. Instead of producers manually sifting through hours of footage, a multimodal AI search engine can find the exact clip they need in seconds. As Dave Simon explained, you can use a natural language search to describe exactly what you’re looking for, such as “Jerry Rice catching a ball over his left shoulder wearing a white jersey”. AI tools in a media stack can automatically transcribe interviews, search for specific quotes, and even identify abstract concepts like emotion or reframe a video for different social media platforms.

3. Accelerator: Real-time cloud editing

This component handles the final stage of production, allowing editors to access high-resolution media without a download delay. This technology streams data directly from the cloud, so editors can start working immediately. This is how a remote team can instantly cut and create content from footage uploaded on the field. 

The real magic is all of these elements combined: A clip is only useful if an editor can work with it right away, and a huge archive is only valuable if you can find what’s in it. This is a single, cohesive system that manages the entire media lifecycle from start to finish.

Reshaping the business of sports

Adopting a modern tech stack empowers rights holders—leagues, teams, and athletes—to manage and distribute content on a massive scale. They can bypass traditional media gatekeepers and build direct relationships with their fans. This opens up several possibilities, such as: 

  • Archive monetization. Vast archives, once a simple cost center, have now become a major source of revenue. With an accessible, intelligent archive, organizations can unlock new revenue streams.
  • Licensing storefronts: You can create B2B portals for broadcasters and filmmakers to license and download footage, which essentially creates a self-service revenue engine.
  • Direct-to-consumer (DTC) fan platforms: Launch your own subscription services with exclusive access to historical games and behind-the-scenes content.
  • Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) channels: Program and launch FAST channels using repurposed archival content.
  • Creator economy partnerships: License parts of your archive to creators to reach new audiences and share in the revenue.
  • Enable the athlete as a media entity. This same technology is behind the rise of athletes as media producers. Today’s players are actively shaping their own stories and building media businesses. The low barrier to entry for these cloud workflows is the foundation of this movement, giving athletes the same scalable tools once reserved for major networks. A great example of this is Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, which started as a player-led media company and became a leader in the space.

The future fan experience

This revolution is transforming the fan experience from a one-way broadcast to something personal, interactive, and instant. The future of sports consumption is personalized feeds tailored to individual interests. As Mike North noted, “You don’t really need to watch the game anymore to still be a fan.” For a fan who wants to know everything about a player, a custom feed can be created. For a fantasy football enthusiast, clips and highlights related to their team can be pushed to them in real time.

The experience will also be interactive. Streaming platforms are already using augmented reality (AR) overlays and multi-angle camera views. The next step, powered by AI and accessible archives, is allowing fans to directly ask for content, like, “‘Show me all the Hail Mary plays from this season?’” and instantly get a custom playlist. This shifts passive viewing into active exploration.

For any sports organization, the biggest risk is standing still and maintaining the status quo. As Jay Maxwell put it, “The barrier to entry to try is, you know, cheap if not free.” An integrated, cloud-native workflow isn’t just a competitive advantage—it’s the fundamental requirement for survival and success.

Check out the full solution below:

The post Stack to Win: A Powerful Solution for Sports Media Production appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup

A Playbook for Migrating Your Media to a MAM System

Post Syndicated from Laquie TN Campbell original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/workflow-playbook-migrating-your-media-assets-to-a-mam/

A decorative image showing media icons over a cloud with the title "Easily Access Your Organized Media Assets."

Media asset management systems (MAM) have become a standard tool in the tech stack of many media organizations. MAM systems have evolved from basic file storage to sophisticated platforms with advanced organization features, increasing efficiency, collaboration, and distribution speeds. 

In this post, I’ll explain some media asset management basics and introduce five key plays you can put into practice to get the most out of your assets, including how to move them into a MAM system or migrate from an older system to a new one.

Why do you need a MAM system?

As a media professional, I’ve come across some, let’s say, creative file naming conventions in my day. While it’s hilarious, “Episode6-Final-final-v2.3_OH_YEAH_THIS_IS_DEFINITELY_THE_FINAL_ONE_2_LOL.mp4” isn’t going to be the easiest thing to find years later when you’re searching through hundreds of files for the (for real) final one.

Whether you make videos, images, or music, the more you produce, the more difficult those assets become to manage, organize, find, and protect. Managing files by carefully placing them in specific folders and implementing more logical naming conventions can only get you so far. At some point, as the scale of your business grows, you’ll find your current way of organizing and searching for assets can’t keep up. That’s where media asset management systems come in.

MAM systems explained: Key concepts

Before you start building a playbook to get the most from your creative assets, let’s review a few key concepts.

Assets and metadata

Asset: A rich media file with intrinsic metadata.

An asset is simply a file that is the result of your creative operation. Most often, it is a rich media file like an image or a video. Typically, these files are captured or created in a raw state, then your creative team adds value to that raw asset by editing it and creating a finished story that in turn, becomes another asset to manage.

Metadata: Information about a file, either embedded within the file itself or associated with the file by another system, typically a MAM application.

Any given file carries information about itself that can be understood by your laptop or workstation’s operating system. Some of these seem obvious, like the name of the file, how much storage space it occupies, when it was first created, and when it was last modified. These would all be helpful ways to try to find one particular file you are looking for among thousands just using the tools available in your OS’s file manager.

File metadata: Information about a file specifically pertaining to the technical attributes of the file. 

There’s usually another level of metadata embedded in media files that is not so obvious but potentially enormously useful: Metadata embedded in the file when it’s created by a camera, film scanner, or output by a program.

Results of a file inspected by an operating system's file manager
An example of metadata embedded in a rich media file.

For example, this image taken in Backblaze’s data center carries all kinds of interesting information. When I inspect the file, I can see a wealth of information. I now know the image’s dimensions and when the image was taken, as well as exactly what kind of camera took this picture and the lens settings that were used.

As you can see, this metadata could be very useful if you want to find all images taken on that day, or even images taken with that same camera, focal length, F-stop, or exposure.

Going through files one at a time to find the one you need is incredibly inefficient. Yet that’s how things still work in many creative environments—an ad hoc system of folders plus the memory of whoever’s been with the team longest. Files are often kept on the same storage used for production or even on an external hard drive.

Teams quickly outgrow that system when they find themselves juggling multiple hard drives or they run out of space on production storage. Worst of all, assets kept on a single hard drive are vulnerable to disk damage or to being accidentally copied or overwritten. Even if standard protocol is a redundant backup process, natural disasters can become a serious threat depending on the location of the physical tapes or drives.

Why your assets need to be managed

To meet this challenge, creative teams have often turned to MAMs. A MAM automatically extracts all of the assets’ inherent metadata, helps move files to protected storage, and makes them instantly available to MAM users. As time has gone on, we’ve seen MAM systems be powerfully enhanced by AI. In a way, these MAMs become a private media search engine where any file attribute can be a search query to instantly uncover the needed files in even the largest media asset libraries.

Beyond that, asset management systems are rapidly becoming highly effective collaboration and workflow tools. For example, tagging a series of files as Field Interviews — April 2019, or flagging an edited piece of content as HOLD — do not show customer can be very useful indeed.

Inner workings of a media asset manager

When you add files into an asset management system, the application inspects each file, extracting every available bit of information about the file, noting the file’s location on storage, and often creating a proxy version of the file that is easier to present to users.

To keep track of this information, asset manager applications employ a database and keep information about your files in it. This way, when you’re searching for a particular set of files among your entire asset library, you can simply make a query of your asset manager’s database in an instant rather than rifling through your entire asset library storage system. The application takes the results of that database query and retrieves the files you need.

A MAM Case Study: Complex Networks

Complex Networks was running out of space. Whenever local shared storage filled up, they had to pull assets off to give everybody enough room to continue working. They moved all of their assets to iconik media asset management software and backed them all up to the Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. They’re now free to focus on what they do best—making culture-defining content—rather than spending time searching for assets.

Read the Full Story ➔ 

Asset migration playbook

Whether you need to move from a file and folder based system to a new asset manager, or have been using an older system and want to move to a new one without losing all of the metadata that you have painstakingly developed, a sound playbook for migrating your assets can help guide you. Below we’ll explain five plays you can use to approach your asset management journey:

Play 1: Protecting assets saved in a folder hierarchy without an asset management system

In this scenario, your assets are in a set of files and folders, and you aren’t ready to implement your asset management system yet.

The first consideration is for the safety of the assets—backup and archive. Files on a single hard drive are vulnerable, so if you are not ready to choose an asset manager your first priority should be to get those files into a secure cloud storage service like Backblaze B2.

Then, when you have chosen an asset management system, you can simply point the system at your cloud-based asset storage to extract the metadata out of the files and populate the asset information in your asset manager.

How to run it:

  1. Get assets archived or moved to cloud storage.
  2. Choose your asset management system.
  3. Ingest assets directly from your cloud storage.

Play 2: Moving assets saved in a folder hierarchy into your asset management system and archiving in cloud storage

In this scenario, you’ve chosen your asset management system, and need to get your local assets in files and folders ingested and protected in the most efficient way possible.

You’ll ingest all of your files into your asset manager from local storage, then back them up to cloud storage. Once your asset manager has been configured with your cloud storage credentials, it can automatically move a copy of local files to the cloud for you. Later, when you have confirmed that the file has been copied to the cloud, you can safely delete the local copy.

How to run it:

  1. Ingest assets from local storage directly into your asset manager system.
  2. From within your asset manager system archive a copy of files to your cloud storage.
  3. Once safely archived, the local copy can be deleted.

Play 3: Getting a lot of assets on local storage into your asset management system and backing up to cloud storage

If you have a lot of content, more than say, 20TB, you will want to use a rapid ingest service similar to the Backblaze Fireball system. You copy the files to the Backblaze Fireball, Backblaze puts them directly into your asset management bucket, and the asset manager is then updated with the file’s new location in your Backblaze B2 account.

This can be a manual process, or can be done with scripting to make the process faster.

How to run it:

  1. Ingest assets from local storage directly into your asset manager system.
  2. Archive your local assets to Fireball (up to 90TB at a time).
  3. Once the files have been uploaded by Backblaze, relink the new location of the cloud copy in your asset management system.

Play 4: Moving from one asset manager system to another without losing metadata

In this scenario you have an existing asset management system and need to move to a new one as efficiently as possible. You want to take advantage of your new system’s features and safeguard in cloud storage in a way that does not impact your existing production.

Some asset management systems will allow you to export the database contents in a format that can be imported by a new system. Some older systems may not have that feature and will require the expertise of a database expert to manually extract the metadata. Either way, you can expect to need to map the fields from the old system to the fields in the new system.

Making a copy of your old database is a must. Don’t work on the primary copy, and be sure to conduct tests on small groups of files as you’re migrating from the older system to the new. You need to ensure that the metadata is correct in the new system, with special attention that the actual file location is mapped properly. It’s wise to keep the old system up and running for a while before completely phasing it out.

How to run it:

  1. Export the database from the old system.
  2. Import the records into the new system.
  3. Ensure that the metadata is correct in the new system and file locations are working properly.
  4. Make archive copies of your files to cloud storage.
  5. Once the new system has been running through a few production cycles, it’s safe to power down the old system.

Play 5: Moving quickly from a MAM on local storage to a cloud-based system

In this variation of Play 4, you can move content to object storage with a rapid ingest service like Backblaze Fireball at the same time that you migrate to a cloud-based system. This step will benefit from scripting to create records in your new system with all of your metadata, then relink with the actual file location in your cloud storage all in one pass.

You should test that your asset management system can recognize a file already in the system without creating a duplicate copy of the file. This is done differently by each asset management system.

How to run it:

  1. Export the database from the old system.
  2. Import the records into the new system while creating placeholder records with the metadata only.
  3. Archive your local assets to the Backblaze Fireball (up to 90TB at a time).
  4. Once the files have been uploaded by Backblaze, relink the cloud based location to the asset record.

Bonus play: Using cloud storage to scale a media heavy workload

Fortune Media’s tech stack was expensive, difficult to use, and not 100% reliable. They migrated over 300TB of data, mainly video files, to Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, which integrated with their preferred MAM system, Primestream Xchange, removing the need for archiving middleware and simplifying the tech stack.

A diagram showing data flowing through historical buckets to the active storage bucket by way of a media asset manager.

Wrapping up

Every creative environment is different, but all need the same thing: to be able to find assets fast and organize content to enhance productivity and rest easy knowing that content is safe.

With these plays, you can take that step and be ready for any future production challenges and opportunities.

The post A Playbook for Migrating Your Media to a MAM System appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup

The Philadelphia Eagles Make Real-Time Content Production a Reality

Post Syndicated from Laquie Campbell original https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-to-migrate-mam-to-cloud/

A decorative image showing a football helmet with the Backblaze logo.

Media and entertainment professionals have long debated how and where cloud services best fit in their workflows. Archive was initially seen as the most natural fit. But end-to-end cloud workflows and cloud-based production were viewed with skepticism due to the network bandwidth required to edit full resolution content. Now, as more organizations lean into REMI workflows, and new cloud-oriented creative tools enable real-time content production, the cloud is playing a role at every step of creative workflows.

Of course, it’s one thing to talk about real-time production in the cloud and it’s another thing to show how the cloud has transformed an actual workflow from end-to-end. But that’s exactly what the Philadelphia Eagles media team did by building a streamlined work-from-anywhere solution with cloud storage and cloud-delivered asset management. The best part was that rolling out the new cloud workflow was just as painless as it was transformative for their business.

We went from frequent LTO crashes and long restore times to near-instant access for every stored clip.

—Stacy Kelleher, Director of Production, Philadelphia Eagles

Archive availability sidelines production efforts

The Eagles were using a portfolio of different storage systems to store petabytes of content with different availability for each tier. The best they could hope for when restoring clips from LTO, for example, was half real-time. So, a three hour clip might take an hour and half to restore—and that’s if the LTO system was working at all. It became so problematic that they stopped archiving content to LTO altogether, opting to max out their SAN to ensure fast access.

The desire for faster file-sharing led the business requirements for overhauling their storage infrastructure. They needed to:

  • Consolidate their storage infrastructure.
  • Improve remote access faster for sharing content internally or even monetizing it outside the organization. 
  • Improve the reliability of their backup and archive solution.

But migrating data and setting up a new system is no small feat.

Migration can’t run down the clock

Anyone who’s ever done a legacy migration knows moving to a new system is a quagmire. You can’t tell IT: You need to stop syncs and backups for three weeks while we do a migration.

—Ryan Lakey, Principal Lead, Solutions, CHESA

There’s a reason folks in the media and entertainment space dread a migration. It’s slow. It’s semi-painful. And, everything has to port over correctly. 

The Eagles approached their migration in the off season. They needed some flexibility to consolidate their multiple SANs, stadium production operations, and LTO system into something that helped them fly higher. 

They consolidated the data into one single tier with a Quantum QSX on site for nearline storage and shifted hundreds of terabytes from their SAN and LTO system to Backblaze as their off-site storage for backup and archive. 

Cloud MAM for the win

With storage sorted, the Eagles then integrated Mimir, a video collaboration and production platform that includes production asset management, archive, and object-store integration, to keep everything organized and on time. Whenever a file is uploaded to Mimir, it’s automatically stored in Backblaze B2 via Mimir’s file indexer system Kelda. This covered the game day action—their production team had fast access to recently recorded content, providing flexibility to work from home after those late night games. 

A diagram showing how media assets flow through a SAN, Mimir's MAM, and then are stored with Backblaze B2.

Getting our sponsored, highest-performing content out quickly drives more views and boosts revenue, so efficiency on game day is critical. Our newly streamlined workflows ensure our editors can deliver while the content is still relevant and engaging.

—Stacy Kelleher, Director of Production, Philadelphia Eagles

The final score

The new system empowers their production team by giving them instant access and fast workflows so they can work without slowdowns. Kelleher noted that restoring a clip is nearly instant. 

They have the ability to share links directly from Mimir to users outside the organization for things like pre-season broadcasts, which comes in handy especially when those users don’t want, need, or have the equipment to download the entire broadcast file. Stacy can just copy and paste a Mimir link into an email, and outside agencies or users can watch entire games at speed. 

Finally, they freed up IT staff time spent managing all that tape and old hardware, not to mention physical space. It all added up to a big win for the IT team, the franchise, and the fans.

Now I can easily share entire broadcasts by copying and sharing a link from our MAM. No need for FTP downloads or uploading to other platforms. It’s fast, seamless, and ensures everyone can view the content without issues.

—Stacy Kelleher, Director of Production, Philadelphia Eagles

The post The Philadelphia Eagles Make Real-Time Content Production a Reality appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup