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Proposal for HowCast1/9/2008

Aquisition, Storage, Distribution (ASD) FLOW :

There are three steps in the life of an asset - ACQUISITION, STORAGE,

and DISTRIBUTION. In the flow presented speed and safety areemphasized.

There are three elements needed to mitigate the production flowprocess: CONTENT, DATABASE and a CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. It is theCMS that negotiates the asset with the database. Our ideal is to havea web based CMS and a database that is secure in the webosphere. CMSwould also be the "one-click" front end solution we discussed thatwould trigger encoding and uploading batch processes. Furthermore thissolution will give us at a single glance an understanding of thecurrent production flow status.

The database is interoperable with the accounting database (by virtue

of assigned asset code) and facilitates the handling of billing. Alsothe database is designed to completely avoid redundancy by checkingnames, date stamps, and file sizes.

I'm going to walk you through the life of an asset, from beinguploaded by an amateur producer to our incoming server up to ourdelivery of it to a VCast phone, an iPhone, and youtube.

Through a website console the producer uploads the file and enters hisinformation, the file is uploaded to our INCOMING SERVER.Our CMSassigns an asset code and renames the file to conform to ourstandards.

A human watches the file, if it is up to par it is passed onto ourMASTERS SERVER where it is archived into a ZIP file (I think ZIP fileswould be the best way to structure the data, each ZIP file willcontain all the asset media along with info file, it will be ZIPs thatare moved around, not groups of files - less chance for error) andeach directory will be month/year named and contain all the archives(new assets) created for that month.

That night the ZIP file is backed up to the offsite server. This isnoted in the database.

The asset resolution and content are good enough for Vcast and

youtube, but the resolution is bad for iPhone, also there is apossible copyright issue with onscreen text and/or music in the audiotrack. A decision is made to put delivery on hold until a full rezmaster is acquired. The producer sends in a dvd with full rez qt withand without graphics. The files are copied into the ZIP archive. TheDVD is assigned a number, stickered and stored in the physical medialibrary. All this is recorded in the asset's database entry. A newgraphics file and audio track are created for the asset. They are alsostored in the ZIP archive. In FCP they are married to the full rezmaster, and the new master QT is stored in the archive as well. QC is

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done and signed off on. All this is recorded in the database.

At night the ZIP archive is backed up to an offset server replacingthe older smaller one. This is noted in the database.

The next step is distribution and this is really the domain of

batching and scripting.

Next day the file needs to be encoded into three formats andposted/delivered. It enters a batch stream and is encoded into MPEG4,M2V. It is watched and qcd, checked for upload. The file enters theupload batch to be sent to Verizon and iTunes through FTP. For youTubewe use a front end script (there are programs that do this, and ingeneral a script would be easy as long as the front end doesn't usespam protection technologies) that enters relevant data from thedatabase and uploads the file through a browser dialogue.

The date of delivery is recorded in the database. Accounting is notified.