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Media Aset Management and Image Recognition: What Lies Ahead--And Who's Asking For It?
News Update
Media
Aset Management and Image Recognition:
What Lies Ahead--And Who's Asking For It?
By Barry Mazor
April 2001
Media Asset Management--with its inevitably central still and motion image database-handling aspect--has certainly seen a great deal of technology development and even heavier duty marketing over the past five years. The market target emphasis may have shifted at times from scientific/medical visualization fields to big media entertainment to e-commerce, but pros understand that intelligent handling, organizing, sharing, exploiting and protecting of all this imagery and related data impacts a variety of markets--and that demands will impact next-generation development of these systems.
Advancd Imaging thought this would be a good time to check back with IBM and Virage, two organizations that are among the most experienced and innovative in the world in bringing image recognition capabilities to this area of ever-increasing attention, to see where we've been--and where the needs of real customers are likely to take the market.
WHERE ARE THE SYSTEMS ACCEPTED?
AI: Today, the common perception in the general marketplace (and in general coverage) is probably that robust media asset management systems are used mainly by the likes of television networks or movie studios. But it is, of course, a larger world. Where, in reality, has your firm been finding acceptance of these systems, in terms of commercial, industrial, scientific/ medical and government markets, and what do you see as driving the demand in those sectors now?
John Peterson, Virage (right): Media asset management systems are typically perceived as the front ends to large digital archives, leading people to the conclusion that their benefits are limited to those large media and entertainment companies. The reality is that with the dramatic growth of digital content and electronic distribution channels, even organizations with moderate amounts of digital media can benefit from software or services that facilitate management and distribution of content.
We have seen adoption by a broad range of enterprises that rely on video for communication, training, sales and marketing and decision support. Corporations with branded products, government agencies, educational institutions and financial services companies, to name a few, are all grappling with the challenges of digital media proliferation. A major driving factor is the emergence of high-speed corporate intranets that connect the knowledge workers within those organizations. In much the same way that high speed freeways brought the need for more sophisticated road building, the increasing use of the network for creating, accessing and distributing digital media has spawned the requirement for platforms that help manage the content.
