Optimising Edits with Metadata

Simon Bergmark

CPO, Codemill

Few industries are as fast paced and highly pressurised as the media industry. What was already a competitive field has become even more so, as the demand for content has increased in-line with the explosion of OTT services. To manage this high volume of throughput, content supply chains have become more complex, with multiple teams all contributing towards content preparation.

There is a lack of consistency and uniformity across the industry, and this results in the need to manage a wide variety of formats and metadata standards. This only serves to add to the already complex nature of the modern content supply chain. Naturally, when producing and preparing media assets in such a competitive environment, it is critical that the content’s value is maximised.

Managing Content at Scale

To keep up with demand, a typical media organisation will see large numbers of assets continually moving through its content supply chain to facilitate consumer demand. Content is being produced and managed at a scale never seen before. If content supply chains are not optimised, it is harder to monetise content and maximise its value. If media costs more to produce than it needs to, profit margins are quickly going to be affected and this will significantly impact the ability of a business to operate, particularly given the current global circumstances. As the volume of content being produced grows, this issue becomes magnified and bottlenecks can occur.

Media organisations are adapting their workflows to better manage content at scale and are doing this while maintaining their focus on quality. To process all this content, companies need to ensure workflows are streamlined, automated where it makes sense, and operating as efficiently as they can be. This applies to all stages of the media workflow and is particularly important with those stages that involve a lot of manual, labour intensive tasks, such as essential editing tasks around QC and compliance.

Optimisation Needs Time-based Metadata

Managing content at scale is impossible without leveraging time-based metadata. Scrubbing through literally thousands of hours of content to find errors or complete validation checks is impractical. Take advert markers for example: without time-based metadata, media operators would have the painstaking process of having to manually locate black frames for inserting advert markers. This may need to be done not just once, but multiple times and in different ways for versions of the same content, as media operators prepare it for distribution in regions that have differing ad requirements.

It’s easy to see why this process is such a drain on resources. But if time-based metadata is used to identify exactly where the black frames are, rather than operators spending time manually searching through content, they are guided straight to the correct position. Operators can then set a start and an end point for the content, find the optimum position for ad-breaks and move on to the next task. This is where time-based metadata can make a huge difference to the efficiency of a content supply chain.

The same applies when it comes to the QC and localisation process. Let’s say an operator has to remove frames showing restricted content such as firearms. Without time-based metadata, this could involve trawling through masses of content to find all problematic frames. In addition, if operators have to manually search each frame, there is always the possibility of overlooking the inclusion of a firearm, where it is not immediately obvious. An error of this nature would understandably have quite significant repercussions.

With time-based metadata, operators are guided to the frames where essential actions are required. This means they can quickly manage, edit, and remove errors or restricted content. Operators are empowered to work efficiently and focus their time and energy where it is needed most. By letting the metadata guide them, an operator’s workflow becomes more targeted. Individual actions are made more efficient and then multiplied across thousands of hours of content processing, so companies can optimise the monetisation of both archive content and acquisitions.

Simplifying essential editing

Media operators are under enormous pressure to perform the necessary actions around QC, compliance and localisation, quickly and efficiently. Failure to do so can create a backlog in the system which can be catastrophic for media businesses. Many of the tasks involved in essential edits are repetitive and time consuming. Let’s say a media operator is responsible for locating and removing errors such as bars, black frames, or slates and tones, from 100 hours of content for a particular show. What if an operator can access the content straight in the browser and easily locate, edit, and fix any errors? This is a much more efficient way of working than having to open and use more complex video editing solutions not designed specifically for essential edits.

The localisation element of the process can be optimised in the same way. Media operators need to be able to remove frames that show content which is prohibited in certain regions - such as violence, explicit content, or drugs. Being able to do this quickly and easily in a browser from anywhere, will speed up the supply chain and save costs.

Automation also has the power to speed up the editing process, and at the same time allows operators to apply their skills in other areas. Automating repetitive and onerous editing tasks wherever possible, will save operators huge amounts of time and help to optimise an asset’s value. Automation is not only a critical requirement when improving efficiency, it also plays an important role in minimising human error.

Maximising Value

In this era of expansive content consumption, the value of media assets must be maximised. The complexity of content supply chain workflows has a huge impact on how organisations can effectively monetise a large volume of media. By radically simplifying the editing process that accompanies QC and compliance, actions can be performed quickly and efficiently.

Modern cloud-based, content processing allows media companies to optimise asset preparation and streamline workflows. This provides operators with much faster and more efficient methods for segmenting content and carrying out essential edits. By using both automation and time-based metadata effectively, media companies can monetise and truly maximise the value of their media assets.

P.O.S.T SCHEME CASE STUDY From famine to feast: How accelerated training is helping to alleviate the shortage of post-production talent.

Fernanda graduated in 2020 with a degree in Film Production.  She spent the next year producing social media content for her mum’s small business. James studied film and media at college but ended up working in kitchens while trying to break into audio editing.  Stories like these are common as during the pandemic the development of junior entrants in the post-production industry practically ceased altogether.  So, when the sector bounced back and the volume of post-production work increased, the absence of junior talent moving up through the ranks over the last two years contributed to an industry skills shortage, with post houses left scrambling for staff.

With junior tech ops in particularly short supply, Chris Spearman, Head of Operations at Picture Shop in the UK (previously The Farm) recognised the need to develop their own talent at an accelerated pace. “We wanted to feed the operational requirements that the industry was lacking as quickly and efficiently as possible, and also give opportunities to junior talent, ” he explains.  “We wanted to put people into positions where they could quickly become operators and help with the backlog.”

Discussions with professional partners and friends at Jigsaw24 Media revealed a shared industry interest and the organisations joined forces to develop a training programme to fast-track the development of future post-production talent - and so the P.O.S.T scheme was launched. 

The P.O.S.T scheme

The Post Operators Skills Training scheme is an intensive two-week course designed to give junior operators a comprehensive understanding of the technologies typically used in collaborative post-production workflows.  The course is hosted at Jigsaw24 Media’s London premises, presented by their industry-leading instructors, and includes both theoretical and practical elements.  

One of the key elements for the hands-on modules was to emulate a real-life working machine room in a post-production facility, without the risk of deleting real, vital pieces of media - so Jigsaw24 Media’s solution architect and lead technical trainer, Neal Kemsley, used the company’s Nutanix platform to set up a training room with virtualised instances of software including Avid Media Composer, NEXIS, Davinci Resolve, Avid Pro Tools and Flame. Strategy director, David Skeggs, describes the setup as “a modern classroom that offers speed to deploy a single desktop with multiple configurations and different versions of software – so one minute trainees could be creating an Adobe workflow and the next they could be working in Media Composer.”

A unique aspect of the training is that a technical supervisor from Picture Shop is present throughout, to provide a common thread and contextualise the theory into real world practice.  “Having someone in the room to explain how things are relevant in Picture Shop’s post-production environment was really helpful because abstract things are immediately made concrete,” recalls Patrick who took part in the second scheme in September 2022. But while the course was designed to meet Picture Shop’s needs, Kemsley explains that it is ‘not about Picture Shop’s processes’ and that the aim is to give junior staff an understanding of the full post-production process. Spearman concurs adding, “We’re working on genres that span the industry and the skills are ultimately transferrable.”

The third element of the scheme is all about providing the context of the tech ops’ role in broader post-production workflows – and exposing the different pathways their careers could take.  Trainees spend time with key professionals in different areas of Picture Shop, from producers to quality control, mastering, vfx and colour grading.  “Learning about workflows and meeting everyone who works on different sections of the pipeline to see how it comes together has been extremely useful,” says Fernanda.  “You need to take all that theory and put it into context - then you start to understand how the industry as a whole functions.”

The proof is in the pudding 

The P.O.S.T scheme may have been born out of necessity, but Spearman notes “Like all things with the pandemic, it was an opportunity to review how things were done.  While it solves a problem for now, ultimately it’s about arming people with skills they can build on and grow with.”

Since taking part in the P.O.S.T scheme, both Will and Anthony have been promoted to positions as Edit Assistants at Picture Shop. For Anthony, the course gave him the confidence and speed he needed to progress, while Will says it gave him a deeper understanding of Avid technologies and processes. But perhaps this feedback from Sonia best sums up the value of the training: “It was a great experience that enforced my passion for post-production, giving me an opportunity to learn more and pursue my goals. After the scheme, I was offered a position of Trainee Edit Assistant at Picture Shop and that was the best news ever!”