the digital media project analogue legacies in the digital age (barcelona, es - 2004/10/25)
TRANSCRIPT
The Digital Media Project
Analogue Legacies in the Digital Age
(Barcelona, ES - 2004/10/25)
Indice
Analogue Legacies in the Digital Age
Multiplatform perspective
• Background & expertise perspective
• Analogue legacies
• Context management
• Digital consumer
• Format issues
• User producer
• Open Source, open format, open market
Background & expertise perspective
• Digitalisation process & the new multi platform paradigm• Integrated workflow, interactions among various media
conceptions• From adding metadata to new production models
The digitalisation processes a broadcaster undergoes are far more risky in the back-office than at the frontal. This is so because of the lack of control and the uncertainty about their devices and capacities. Our experience, first as suppliers and later by co-developing software, has allowed us to understand the several rhythms of the shift and also the requirements that communication demands on the software so that a real and complete implementation happens.
The experience of the extremes, both integrating digital tools in the productive processes and by knowing the TV user through a set top box, even about the analogical viewing itself, has made us think of a wider scenery beyond the digital phenomenon.
Analogue legacies
• Mistaking form for format• Mistaking distribution for consume• Pay for stream: from object possession (on-demand
capability) to the right of viewing
Shifting does not only imply a new way of storing and distributing contents but
also a redefinition of the nature of the format itself. The breaking of the
barriers between audio and image, thanks to the dubbing and post-
production industries for instance, is a process that has taken many years
work to happen and has meant significant changes as far as audio-visual
production and distribution are concerned. A digital content, apart from being
able to adopt several audio-visual forms (size, fps, compression and so
forth), it can also incorporate metadata, data and scripting, parameters in its
visual forms or in the way the viewer interacts with the content.
Context management
• User, Content and Services• Growing content-related services
Standardization and the widespread use of technology homogenise all those
produce that base their premium value upon the commodity functions. Our
experience has lead us to consider the digital management and distribution on a
context and not content management basis. A management which integrates the
contents, the user and the service information into a single. Services that
transform information while generating an added value, while getting the user
involved in an interactive way or while retrieving the information the user has
generated as a publishable content are now growing and are of great import
when facing the content shortfall.
Context management
• Micro-markets: tracking user preferences. • A DTT experience: ‘Breaking the family unity’• Translating more than voices
The fact of having more channels entails a greater segmentation. If this is carried
to the limit –a case that seemed impossible but which during the bubble years
has almost come true (NY latin portal case)- it states the impossibility to develop
segmentation unless automated processes and rules are settled. The tracking of
the user, the segmentation of the very family or the collection of preferences
require an integrated management that redefines the processes by which
content is produced and distributed.
Digital consumer
• E-commerce segment, delivery big difference
Replicability of the digital content at almost no cost -the connectivity is becoming
a commodity as much as electricity- is the element which more affects the
new paradigm of digital consumption. It creates a subsegmentation in the e-
commerce which does not demand any logistics, nor stocks, nor
transportation and it completes the general situation of digital content with the
digital consumption – whose delivery and devices are exclusively digital,
without any physical format.
Nevertheless, a legacy that inhibits the shift of model derives from the selling
nature, which is still analogical-, not so much where the transaction is
concerned as it is usually done through a digitized bank, but in the invoicing
and control systems, still working in paper.
Digital consumer
• Overlapped value chains: paying for digital content
Banks are not eager to accept micropayments yet and this becomes a critical
factor against the selling of digital contents because they are required as
buying formats. And not only to enhance the impulsive shopping but also for
the buying to independents. If we move now towards consumption nowadays,
we see that the psychological threshold of 1 Euro per topic o 5 Euros per CD
or movie would be able to foster digital consumption, with a percentage of
transaction in the value change of the traditional delivery, at distribution
points. Fragmentation of payment should not be a problem in the digital
world, although it may require an interoperable footbridge for payments to
several suppliers or the creating of an intermediate transactional agent.
Digital consumer
• New consumption objects: from consuming marketing content to an ‘Artist life subscription’
One of the most successful models in the mass digital consumption is the selling of ring-tones for instance. It is based on another legacy of even higher penalty: the payment systems by SMS in the legislation currently in force- at least in Spain- are a data service working in the mobile operator environment. Today’s perspective where a broadcaster broadcasts a content and offers the download- through the very same mobile phone or in a triangle with the Internet- the mobile operator is basically the payment footbridge, at a ratio that ranges from 30 to 40 per cent of the transaction.
When the changing of agents happens, it is necessary to regulate the market of digital consumption and redefine the stances in the new chain of values – of the selling of digital contents of digital consumption-.In a short-mid term and with less incidence- another key aspect of digital consumption is how easy the offer can be productized or re-productized. Whereas traditionally the money spent in marketing has been a key factor to be considered when launching a product because this is a time when many things are at stake, not only the broadcast but also the way by which the offer is communicated; now in the digital environment, this latter point allows a progressive adjustment, with immediate return and the possibility of atomising and segmenting the offer, with the same selling format in the hands of the marketing strategy. Something that is nowadays out of reach for the vast majority of the existing products.
Format issues
• Multi platform is multi-format, hybrid media
The multi platform, as opposed to the mono platform, involves a restructuring of
the exploitation formats. The technical solutions by which form and content
are set aside or the automatical processes of transcodification may help
solving the problem only partially. However, the exploitation of digital means
implies changes at a deeper level, at the format origin itself. The radial
relationship with the content substitutes the lineal production- a production
where the material that is generated during the process is dismissed.
Format issues
• Now content –as it’s perceived by the user- is more a point of view of media types than a media type
The metainformation and the additional contents begin to organise themselves
into relational models that respond both to the productive procedures and
progressively to the exploitation procedures too. Besides having the
information about the author, the credits, the synopsis or the metadata that is
clearly linked to an asset, some other elements are also added. Namely, the
content of a digital editorial department is added with elements such as: lists,
topic-related groups, transversal contents, related news or the audience
opinion.
Format issues
• So, it’s not just a problem between analogue and digital content, it’s also about ‘rendered’ content and format-content
• Missing information: content is format• The “Last mille production house”
Creating a media product while bearing in mind digital exploitation from the very beginning generates some other objects that go further than what we call the audio-visual. The frontal packing for the decode in market players or in more complex engines which are able to include partially the logics of the same format in the customer is a huge step in conceiving the product as it widens the reaching of the formats, it even widens the broadcast and the payment model itself.
User producer
• User content and user edited content• Prosumer content market
(all we will be Video Jockeys, Sample model, Remix or broken phones)
The introduction of user content, from preferences to winning data that are inherent to the audio-visual contents that belong to the broadcaster environment, involves a change in the relationship between the audience and the content. The bond established by storing their picture – even with anonymous users who can not be exploited with a data mining- this bond can be capitalised in this final recapping, in open formats that allow much more personal experiences.
The interactive viewer is not necessarily a user -at least not in the same terms of a person working in computing- even if the user changes the pull-push relation established with the content. The interaction that takes place is very primary. While in an early stage the viewer is merely a zapper viewer, in a second stage the user becomes a remixer and progressively a media jockey who incorporates their own contents to the whole mix.
User producer
• New media centres are holding media content and user
memory
The evolution of devices such as media centres is gradually allowing part of the
logics and BO applications to be transferred to the user home. Those devices
will foster a better articulation of the mix between the content generated by
the user and the downloaded content. This is reproduced in interactive
formats and includes local preferences and configurations.
Open Source, open format, open market
• Access to media production & distribution for every potential producer
• New collaborative paradigms and the remix culture
The productive and organisational model of the Open Source, no matter if owner code or free code models are used, allow a greater binding among the agents with a greater agility to call up new entries –or small entries- in the chain of values. The very same approach to the viewer-producer raises the threshold to the production for mass media as long as rights and production management tools are well co-ordinated.
Although one of the mainstays of artistic production is the original creation of every aspect of the form, advertising, the mediatic production and the remix culture are now turning creativity towards format, in combinations of pre-existing forms. The market fragmentation and the personalization of the mediatic experience entailed by the digital shift calls up for a more automated and collaborative production.
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Open Source, open format, open market
• Content is organisation of perceptions• A key content creation capability is the ability of
construction of some kind of relation to the viewer
If the evolution of the software production models agrees on separating the
logics of business from the logics of presentation, the unavoidable mixture of
software and content will progressively generate a more open market where
format –not always indissoluble from the form- will be the digital object to be
produced, distributed and sold and its rights managed.