Data Integration for the Media Value Chain

With the switch from analog to digital technology the entire process of production, distribution, and archival of a film and tv program large amounts of data are created. Besides recorded and processed audiovisual information, in each single step of the production process and furthermore throughout the entire media value chain new metadata is created, administrated, and put into relation with already existing metadata mandatory for the management of these processes. Due to competing standards as well as to proprietary and incompatible interfaces of the applied software tools, a significant amount of this metadata cannot be reused and is not available for subsequent steps in the process chain. As a consequence most of this valuable information has to be costly recreated in each single step of media production, distribution, and archival. Currently, there is no generally accepted nor commonly used metadata exchange format that is applied throughout the media value chain. But, also the market for media production companies has changed dramatically towards the internet as being the preferred distribution channel for all media content. Today’s available limited budget for media production companies puts additional pressure to work in a cost and time efficient way and not to waste resources due to the necessity of costly reengineering of lost metadata. The dwerft project aims to apply Linked Data principles for all metadata exchange through all steps of the media value chain [4]. Starting with the very first idea for a script, all metadata is converted according to either existing or newly developed ontologies to be reused in subsequent steps of the media value chain. Thus, metadata collected during the media production becomes a valuable asset not only for each step from preto postproduction, but also in distribution and archival. This paper presents results of the dwerft project about the successful integration of a set of film production tools based on the Linked Production Data Cloud, a technology platform for the film and tv industry to enable software interoperability used in production, distribution, and archival of audiovisual content.