Simplify Metadata Re-Use for Packaging & Deliveries to OTT, Broadcast & Cable Platforms

A magnifying glass enlarges alphanumeric text, revealing "METADATA" prominently among scattered gray characters on a white background, suggesting data inspection or analysis.

One of the critical workflow challenges in the modern, fragmented media ecology lies with metadata, specifically ensuring that the metadata associated with a project remains intact as it progresses through the various stages of production & distribution. Maintaining metadata relationships is an increasingly critical task that made more complex due to each platform mandating its’ own specific metadata rules and requirements.
 
Accommodating metadata variances is just as critical as maintaining video and audio transcode & packaging when it comes to delivering versions to different platforms. Most OTT, broadcast & cable platforms require not only valid media assets, but also the correctly tagged ancillary posters, artwork, subtitles and metadata to match their specific service’s layout.
 
To facilitate and greatly accelerate the use of correct metadata in distribution workflows, Ateliere's Metadata Service can be used. This module is contained within Ateliere Connect, our digital media supply chain platform in the cloud. It dynamically maps a superset of asset metadata onto the specific requirements for an endless number of different platform endpoints (we’ve pre-built over 100 recipes for the most common OTT, broadcast & cable platforms), allowing companies to deliver more titles to more platforms without incurring the time and resource penalties that current metadata compliance efforts can result in. 
 
The Metadata Service is extremely flexible and provides a range of options to ensure that users can configure their own metadata hierarchy and sets. For example, the user can set a hierarchy for a series, season, and episode wherein each tier has different metadata requirements that are completely customizable. 
 
One master file is completed for each tier, rather than countless variations for different assets and endpoints. This means that a single update is completed for the series, one for the season, and one for the episode, echoing the usual Ateliere ethos of avoiding duplication and multiple versions of the same asset that we have pioneered with our use of IMF.
 
The workflow is simple. Metadata is added to a template that Ateliere provides and this template is then uploaded to Connect via the Assets page via the following path: Import > Import Assets and Metadata > Drag & Drop the CSV file > Click Import or via API. The metadata is then automatically attached to the corresponding asset, ready for delivery.
 
With users having both flexibility and control when it comes to configuring their own supersets, the result is a significant saving of time on meeting metadata requirements from multiple suppliers, as well as a streamlining and refining of the internal process that can help mitigate against the propagation of human error and subsequent further time and resource penalties.

With users having both flexibility and control when it comes to configuring their own supersets, the result is a significant saving of time on meeting metadata requirements from multiple suppliers, as well as a streamlining and refining of the internal process that can help mitigate against the propagation of human error and subsequent further time and resource penalties.