Media asset management (MAM) is a process or software system that is used to store and manage rich multimedia files (video and audio files) from one central system.
If you work in the media or entertainment industry, then media asset management (MAM) is probably something that you’re relatively familiar with. Media asset management is a process that originated in the film and broadcast industry as a way to handle, and also simplify, the process of organising, storing and managing large multimedia files.
In the past, the best way that organisations could archive their files was by manually creating folders with multiple subfolders, in order to keep their data as organised as possible.
However, as video and audio files started to grow (both in size and quantity), along with the workflow surrounding these files, traditional file management became quickly unsustainable. This lead to the development of MAM - or a system that had the capacity to store heavy files, gave users the ability to follow changes and edits that were made, as well as make it easy to organise and sort through them based on their metadata.
According to Vidispine, “The MAM (media asset management) systems know everything about your files, not only the asset name and location but also technical metadata such as codecs, formats, frame rates. And it does not stop there – some MAM systems can today give you information on the actual visual and audible content inside the video, recognize faces, speech for subtitling and much more.”
If you want to learn more about what metadata is and why metadata is so important to the media industry, check out this white paper: METADATA MATTERS: How Metadata Can Help Media Companies Succeed.
What is the difference between DAM and MAM?
Okay, so now that we have a clear understanding of what media asset management is, let’s dig into digital asset management (DAM).
Digital asset management is essentially the same as MAM; the key difference is that rather than dealing with heavy media assets that go into creating videos, it deals with marketing materials and communication assets.
In most businesses, this can be anything from branding materials to images and other creative files. However in the media industry, these assets can range from images, videos, trailers and screeners to social media assets, logotypes, documents, press releases, metadata, audio files, cover images, author images, or any other type of digital files that you may be using for your marketing efforts.
Having a digital asset management (DAM) system allows you to store, organise, share and manage all of these materials in one central system, similar to a MAM, to streamline marketing and communication workflows.
For a more in-depth look, check out this guide: What is digital asset management (DAM)? [A guide for the media industry]
Bridging the gap between DAM and MAM for media professionals
It has been typically understood that media companies only require a MAM system to handle the large video, audio and multimedia files that go into the production process.
However, now they also need a system to manage their heavy multimedia marketing and communication assets: trailers, clips, screeners, images, audio files, logotypes and the other items previously described above.
These materials don’t exactly fit into the content lifecycle that MAM systems are designed to maintain, but they also don’t fit into the traditional DAM models that are used to support different types of industries.
This is where Clipsource’s digital asset management system, Program Catalog, comes in. Clipsource has bridged the gap between DAM and MAM to offer a digital asset management system that can support the traditional marcomms assets as well as the screeners, trailers and larger multimedia files that media professionals need but that don’t fit the traditional category of media asset management.
Unlike other DAM systems, Clipsource understands the unique needs of the media industry and the details that go into managing complex materials for TV/VOD or book distribution.
Check out Program Catalog or Book Catalog to learn more and see if your organisation could benefit from a digital asset management system for your marketing and communication materials.
Clipsource provides DAM solutions to the entertainment industry’s finest brands. Contact us today to learn how you can use our platform to streamline your workflow and increase consumption and consumer loyalty.
