RyanThe term “Media Supply Chain” has grown in popularity in recent years, driven by its importance in media enterprise business transformations. In their 2022 Media Supply Chain Manifesto, The DPP stated,
Software-defined content supply chains, built on modern software architectures, are perhaps the most important area of technical focus in today’s media industry.
We know Media Supply Chain is essential for our media businesses, and we hear the term daily, but what exactly does it mean?
Media Supply Chain Defined
Let’s start with the definition, which applies to industries outside of media and entertainment. A supply chain is a logistics system that converts raw materials into finished products and then distributes them to customers. So what, then, is a Media Supply Chain?
In media, the product is a finished media asset—typically a movie or TV show, images used in print media, audio assets for music and podcasting, and more. The raw materials are everything that goes into creating that asset—raw camera and audio material, music, sound effects, visual effects, graphics, etc.
The processes required to convert raw media materials to finished media assets span development, production, post-production, marketing, sales, fulfillment, distribution, and archival. With so much activity described by a single phrase, it can be challenging to determine precisely what is being referred to when you hear “Media Supply Chain.” Is it development through preproduction? Production and post-production? Does it include distribution?
Breaking it down
To begin to decompose the complexity, we like to break the Media Supply Chain down into two distinct segments:
Production Media Supply Chain
Production Media Supply Chain includes all functions, departments, processes, and other “raw materials” required to produce a finished asset. By finished asset, we are referring to the final original version of the creative work, not derivative versions.
Distribution Media Supply Chain
The Distribution Media Supply Chain starts with a finished asset. It includes all processes required to distribute versions of that asset to consumers through various channels - broadcast on TV, in movie theaters, on streaming platforms, via TikTok, etc.
Workflows
Within each of our two media supply chain types, there are many sub-segment supply chains, which we like to call workflows.
Workflows are sequences of steps (or tasks) involved in moving from the beginning to the end of a process
Take finishing through distribution as an example. Media assets are ingested, checked for quality (“Quality Control” or “QC”), registered with an asset management system, transformed into the distribution format, and transferred to the distribution entity.
Workflow Automation
Workflow Automation provides businesses with supply chain efficiencies that allow them to decrease time to market, costs to produce finished assets, or both.
Some workflows can be fully automated, but often, they involve a combination of manual human and automated tasks. If we return to the example workflow above, ingest might be a human-operated process where someone navigates a user interface to upload files, or it could be automated with a watch folder that uploads files on a scheduled basis. Similarly, two types of QC exist: automated QC (e.g., a technical validation check utilizing tools like MediaInfo, Quasar, or Baton) and manual QC, where a human operator watches and listens to media content to check for anomalies using playback tools like QC Player, Iris, or Glim.
At Flomenco, we aim to automate as much as possible and to provide human operators with the data and tools they need to perform their jobs most effectively, thereby improving the overall efficiency of these hybrid workflows.
Common Components
While many workflows are involved with Production and Distribution Media Supply Chains, some standard components (also called “domains”) are critical in many of them. Here is a list of components we see repeated across media workflows in different industry segments (publishing, radio, film, TV).
- Title Management
- Rights Management
- Asset Management and Storage (Media Asset Management - MAM, Digital Asset Management - DAM, Production Asset Management - PAM)
- Media Asset Transfer
- Media Processing Capabilities (e.g., transcode, encode)
- Review and Approval (including Quality Control)
- Scheduling
- Business Intelligence
- Finance
Media Supply Chain is a complex and ambiguous topic. With this article, you should now be armed with the knowledge to break down your media supply chains into manageable workflows and their components so that you can begin to take action to modernize them to improve efficiency.
At Flomenco, we make media workflows easy.
Contact Us today to accelerate your Media Supply Chain modernization!