Media Asset Management Reimagined

Store, Process, and Distribute Media Files With Evolphin’s AI-powered MAM

Media asset management has become a necessary fixture for the digital transformation of companies as video content continues to proliferate. With the average consumer spending up to 100 minutes watching videos daily, it’s no surprise that 86% of businesses planned to use video as a marketing tool in 2022. But how can businesses realistically achieve this?

Especially with the recent shift to remote working, we know there’s pressure on video editors to publish content quickly to meet demand. We also know that between video recording and video consumption lies a long, tedious creative process that relies on efficiently storing, processing, and distributing media files. Media Asset Management (MAM) helps video industry professionals reduce the time spent in storing, processing, and distributing media files – not just processed MP4 files, but also project files, linked footage, images, voice-over tracks, animation, and graphics – so that they can distribute their content quickly to meet public demand.

Media Asset Management (MAM) Defined

Media asset management (MAM) describes the workflow and software that helps users store, process, and distribute video and multimedia files throughout the content lifecycle. A MAM system is critical to the video production process (especially post-production), enabling organizations to manage large media libraries from a secure, centralized location. Most MAM solutions are only optimized to manage video files. However, next-generation solutions like Evolphin Zoom handle every type of rich media file and integrate tightly with key editing tools including – Adobe Premiere, Avid Media Composer, Apple Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve.

A best-practice media asset management system is the single point of truth for rich media content. It gives the content editor secure access to the content and tools used to manage, store, process, and distribute rich media content including unprocessed video and audio.

For example, to create a ‘simple’, short post-production reel of the highlights of a footballer’s career, you need reliable storage, powerful search and the ability to retrieve relevant pre-production multimedia assets (native footage files, voice-over audio, etc). Not too long ago, you would have met these requirements by creating descriptive file names and categorizing content using folders and sub-folders. To retrieve the files you want, you would search for best-guessed terms – or trawl through hundreds, possibly thousands of folders and files.

Today, Artificial Intelligence(AI)-powered media management systems help editors perform these tasks speedily and more efficiently. With AI, you can automatically tag and then search the multimedia assets you want, and even use AI video editing to create rough cuts. With intelligent plugins for Adobe Premiere for example, the Evolphin Zoom MAM makes it easy to import clips and graphics for faster editing.

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Key Use Cases for a Media Asset Management

A MAM gets you, your post-production workflows, and your content organized.

Media asset management systems (MAMs) are integral to the workflow of efficient multimedia production teams because they simplify the post-production process while easing the flow and efficiency of collaboration among contributors. Apart from being able to store and manage large media files from one reliable, centralized library, MAM systems help media professionals achieve efficiency in several ways, including:

Being a single point of truth for all content, including native footage files, audio voice-overs, graphics, and more.
Providing reliable and accurate version control
Managing critical information about your media assets including asset name, location, length, and timeline as well as technical information like format, frame rates, codecs, etc
Offering deep integration with editing tools
Improving collaboration with freelancers who play a significant role in modern-day post-production
Carrying out all these tasks in a secure and well-managed way

Next-generation, AI-powered MAM systems such as Evolphin Zoom go a step further to offer intuitive features that recognize the audio and video information inside video files including speech for subtitling, language translation, face recognition, and more.

For example, to quickly broadcast soccer highlights compiled from various matches spanning across years, Inter Milan FC relied on the AI-powered media asset management system, Evolphin Zoom.

Inter Milan had a rich database of 21K+ hours of video footage from 113+ years of soccer history. These media assets consumed 600TB of data storage on cloud (AWS S3) and on-premises NAS. In their existing form, these media assets would take months – maybe years – to organize for easy retrieval.

To make these video files easily accessible for the video editors, Evolphin Zoom ingested 21,000 hours of video and used its powerful AI toolset to create clips with AI-generated metadata timelines. With every section of each video clip tagged, organized and searchable, video editors could easily find and import relevant video clips into a range of video editing software – Adobe Premiere, Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, Apple Final Cut Pro, etc.

Inter Milan’s video editors could then create video sequences inside Adobe Premiere using Zoom’s Premiere plugin and the Zoom AI video editing toolset. Consider this, the time taken to create a retrospective on the 1960s famed left-winger, Mario Corso, was drastically reduced from weeks (or even months!) to minutes. By simply selecting tags like “Face” matches “Mario” and specifying events like “Goal scored”, the Zoom Premiere plugin extracted relevant clips from 21K+ hours of footage into a premade sequence ready for final editing in Adobe Premiere.

By contrast, this same process would have taken months to execute without a MAM system like Evolphin Zoom. It might have looked like this:

Locate video footage from the 1960s
Load LTO tapes based on best guesses on where Mario’s footage might be
Scrub through hundreds of videos to locate Mario
Note start and end times of Mario’s appearances
Send the files to an editor with notes
Editors scrub through files to find the key moments in the footage
Extract best fit moments
Edit
Review and approve
Rinse and repeat…

Apart from the painfully tedious workflows, staffing costs are highest using this model. Added to this is the protracted length of time taken to publish content, considering the fast-paced nature of the industry. MAM systems offer a practical, intelligent solution for storing, organizing, and retrieving critical media files to help editors work more efficiently.

To switch things up a notch, some MAM systems (like Zoom’s PAM) come with Production Asset Management (PAM) components designed for round-the-clock, work-in-progress media production workflows.. These are built to streamline workflows like film or video post-production.

Choosing the best Media Asset Management (MAM) Solution in 2023

Depending on your unique requirements, there are a range of factors to consider when choosing the best media asset management system for your team. Some of the questions you should ask your proposed vendor are listed below:

Is it searchable?
The assets in your media library won’t do you much good if you can’t find them. A good search function is a “must-have”. AI-powered search? Even better.

Will it scale?
Before committing to a MAM system, consider its flexibility and potential to scale as your asset collection grows. Can you add more storage at the push of a button? Think of the future, and pick a MAM system that will serve you well for years.

Is it customizable?
How well can you categorize your assets? Are there customizable metadata fields for organizing your assets? Can you update external portals with your logo, colors, and brand imagery? How easy is it to implement customizations?

How do you input metadata?
A sound MAM system doesn’t just store assets; it puts them in context. Your MAM solution should provide automated metadata management to organize files intelligently and save you from large-scale metadata entry projects.

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How will it speed up your workflow?
Map out your processes and see where better media asset management could eliminate unnecessary steps. This will help you decide what features to prioritize. Look for a flexible & open API that enables you to automate the MAM for your unique workflows.
Is the MAM system cloud-enabled?
Many modern MAM solutions can support cloud-based remote editing for large, high-definition video files thanks to the fast-evolving digital media landscape post-COVID. This means that cloud-based platforms are no longer considered a novelty. They’re a necessity.
What add-on features are available
Features like AI-powered video editing, deduplication (reduces your storage costs by 20-30%.), link management, versioning, and tier archive management are worth considering if your objective is to increase productivity and reduce wastage.

How long does it take to plan the purchase of a Media Asset Management System?

Here are the steps and estimated timeline involved in purchasing and deploying a MAM:

Identify the most critical (ideally 4 – 5) pain points from the user’s perspective.
Identify stakeholders and nominate a core team to steer the buying process without excessive red tape.
Evaluate identified pain points and match them with business and IT needs.
Establish your budget, expected ROI, and get management buy-in.
Shortlist vendors and set up custom demonstrations.
Set up a technical deep-dive discussion, reviewing cloud options.
Review deployment pathways, implementation plan, and technical support available, and post-purchase support offered by vendors.
Finalize quotes based on required modules.
Reference Check
Select the vendor and proceed.

While the entire process can be challenging, this whole timeline is usually completed within a 2 – 4 month period.

"Evolphin’s MAM is at the heart of our digital media transformation strategy. As we look for new and innovative ways to engage our sponsors and global fanbase, Evolphin has given us the tools and expertise to discover and utilize our extensive digital content library. For 113 years we have collected a rich history of images and videos which until recently remained hidden in archives, servers, and thumb drives. With the Evolphin AI toolset we have indexed, tagged and labelled a massive amount of historical and current content"

Lorenzo Antognoli

Head of IT, Inter Milan

When do you need a Media Asset Management system?

Organization

You want to organize rich media files (as well as other media files) for easy retrieval and usage.
You want to make your media assets (video, photos, sound clips, etc) searchable using AI.
You want a secure, centralized and well-managed repository structure to streamline your content or video production and distribution process..

Better collaboration

Thanks to COVID and a massive change in attitudes, the remote workflow is here to stay. A MAM is the ideal solution for your new workflow if:

You want your internal teams to work collaboratively on the correct file revisions.
You want your internal teams to work collaboratively with external contractors and freelancers on the correct file revisions.
You want to collaborate better by sharing time-coded notes with team members inside Adobe Premiere Pro, InDesign, etc.
You want to be able to upload media for your remotely-distributed team, accessible from any internet-enabled location.

Increased efficiency

You want to publish video sequences without relying on video editors or time-consuming video-editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro.
You want to save video editors time by using AI to scrub and cut through lengthy footage, rather than scrubbing through timelines manually
You want to create subtitles quickly using AI, without hiring expensive and time-consuming translators
You want to run several media post-production workflows in parallel.

Cloud cost control

You want to save storage costs by sharing entire projects with freelancers without duplicating folders. MAMs with Smart copy capabilities like Zoom MAM help you optimize your storage with shareable virtual folders that freelancers can work with.
You want to migrate and archive colossal amounts of data without hiring an expensive team or paying a fortune on cloud costs. Storage is expensive, so modern MAMs like Evolphin Zoom use patented technologies like cloud deduplication and a tiered archive management model, to keep cloud costs under control.

"Media management with long form videos is not an easy endeavour. Our Cloud Data Migration could not have gone smoother. When I work with the Evolphin team I know they will act fast and deliver the best solution possible! "

Jordan Glenn Media Asset Manager,
Circle Media

DAM vs MAM - Which is best?

What is digital asset management (DAM)?

DAM (Digital Asset Management) is a common term for any system whose primary purpose is to store published digital files (videos, pics, docs, audio, HTML) and related metadata. While these systems can store multiple file types, they are best suited for smaller files like photos, published videos and documents because larger files, especially native video footage, are usually not easily supported.

Today, digital asset managment systems tend to be more popular in sales and marketing-based environments. When managing larger, richer media & video files, digital asset management systems usually fall short, with media asset management systems becoming more relevant.

DAM vs. MAM: compare and contrast

While MAM and DAM systems may seem similar on the surface, they are very different beasts! Media Asset Management platforms manage a much broader range of digital files, including rich media assets such as massive video and multimedia files in a way that digital asset management platforms cannot match.

DAM systems most often are cloud-based and are best suited to low volume published content supported by metadata-based search and download capabilities. MAM systems, on the other hand, are best suited for large volumes of rich media assets and unlike their DAM predecessor, can be on-premises or cloud-based also. DAM and MAM systems differ in several ways:

Supported file Sizes. Typical DAM file sizes tend to average less than 100MB while MAM systems can handle file sizes several Terabytes in size
Volume of assets. DAM systems typically handle less than 100,000 assets, but MAM systems can manage millions of assets
Users. Primary DAM users are marketing agencies, freelancers, brand executives, end clients, etc., while primary MAM users are media managers, studio operators, producers, videographers, etc
Workflow types. Digital asset management systems are not usually optimized for work-in-progress workflows, so typical user tasks include searching, filtering, browsing folders, downloading and upload finished digital assets. On the other hand, MAM systems streamline high-resolution (high-res) video post-production workflows by orchestrating many steps in the process, including ingestion, transcoding of raw footage, proxy workflows, video distribution, and media archive.
Collaboration capabilities. Collaborators on DAM systems are limited to marking up, reviewing, and commenting on digital assets. Collaborators on modern MAM systems like Evolphin Zoom enjoy deeper integration of every part of the multimedia production process across devices, platforms, and time zones.
Video. DAM systems handle video poorly, but MAM systems easily manage high-res video workflows.
User experience. The user experience of MAM systems tends to be more technical than that of DAM systems.

Moving AVOD Workflows to the Cloud at Record Speed

Learn how Circle Media migrated 39TB of assets to the cloud from on-premise storage in less than 2 weeks.

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The flexible capacity and higher processing capabilities of MAMs make them ideal for handling complex tasks like transcoding, video collaboration, AI-powered search, final delivery, packaging of rich media content.

DAM

MAM

PAM

DAM

MAM

PAM

Brand Management, finished content

High-res video ingest, transcode proxies

Versioning, Work-in-progress workflows

DAM users include marketing, agencies, freelancers, executives, end-clients

Media managers, producers, archivists, studio operators, videographers

Production users such as editors, media managers

Search, filter, browse folders, download, publish finished assets

Organize, search, transcode, archive high-res media

Check-in Adobe CC projects,, layered files, Motion Graphics image sequence

Markup, Review & Comment

Connect local storage to cloud storage

Full version control, smart link/copy, client-side deduplication

In a nutshell, DAM and MAM systems differ in their functionality, processing capabilities, and the range of media types they can support.

MAM or DAM: Which is best for your workflow?

The choice of the most suitable asset management system depends on your workflow. Both systems (DAM and MAM) exist to give you a central repository for your digital assets. However, they differ in their suitability for your unique workflow. MAM systems are purpose-built for handling large media workflows, but DAM systems are built to handle finished or published asset repositories.

With smaller unit files ingested per upload (compared to large volume of massive video files), a DAM system’s resources might be stretched by uploading 100,000 files with Terabytes of storage. On the other hand, a MAM system like Evolphin Zoom will easily accommodate millions of files with Petabytes of storage. So, a DAM system is a general-purpose tool for sales and marketing teams (for example, a media library for a corporate website or social media channel) but a MAM system is a more specialized toolkit for a company that works with larger media assets.

Your choice of a solution depends on what you want. For example, if, like Inter Milan, your organization primarily deals with media assets in a post-production environment, your chosen MAM systems should optimize your team’s workflow in a post-production setting. In this case, your MAM workflow might look something like this:

Remote media uploads from multiple locations
Automatic and manual media transcoding & metadata logging
Collaborative editing of media
Video clipping, cutting, and preparation for editing
Subtitles and translations
Review, approval, and remote access to master versions
Distribution.

On the other hand, if your organization primarily deals with creating ‘simple’ graphics and document assets for a marketing or sales team, you are probably best suited for a DAM system. In this case, your DAM workflow might resemble the following:

Finished digital asset dissemination
Content management for the web, social media, etc
Project management
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Cross-team collaboration
Program scheduling
Financial and business administration (ERP)

Essentially, the asset management system you choose depends on your unique work processes and the capabilities of your chosen system to optimize your workflow. Like all new technology, asset management systems constantly adapt and evolve to accommodate new features.

Evolphin Zoom MAM is best suited for highly-specialized teams (like video operations teams, studios, media managers, etc.) with complex, rich media requirements. It boasts of more third-party integrations than any other MAM system (Cinema 4D, Zapier, Adobe Creative Cloud, etc.), as well as AI and Machine Learning capabilities to help teams automate post-production tasks.

Evolphin’s DAM is a good fit for generalized teams that need one central hub for all their documents, graphics & finished assets. It offers real-time collaboration via review & markup capabilities, support for a wide range of file types, robust search capabilities, seamless integration, and in-app editing inside third-party applications like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and more.

For evolving teams who want to save costs while organizing their rich content, a solution like Evolphin Zoom MAM is powerful and flexible enough to simultaneously support multiple teams within an organization – marketing, video, graphics, etc. This means that you can consolidate all your team’s needs under one umbrella and avoid the costs and hassles of dealing with multiple different solutions trying to play as one.

Solutions like Evolphin Zoom are flexible enough to incorporate both MAM and DAM systems and to adapt to various business processes and workflow models.

Top 10 reasons to choose a next-generation Media Asset Management solution like Evolphin Zoom

3-in-1 cloud-based MAM + DAM + PAM

Combined solution that brings your end users, creative teams, marketing, media managers, business owners, external agencies, freelancers under one umbrella

More Creative App Plugins & Integrations than any other MAM

Evolphin Zoom is the only solution that offers plugins for the entire Adobe Creative Suite. Our media asset management plugins cover workflows for Video Editing, Vector Art, Motion Graphics, Layout, Photo, Web Design, and more.

Powerful Video Workflows

Save cloud storage costs with intelligent storage features

Front-end deduplication: This is a patented feature that is only available in Evolphin Zoom

Reducing the Cost of Data Transfer

Downloading media from the cloud can cost over $90/TB. Evolphin Zoom’s front-end deduplication reduces the amount of content stored and the amount of content to be downloaded. How? Only the revision deltas are transferred and not the whole file.

Who said that duplicate folders need storage?

Post-production & creative teams love to clone previous working folders. Duplicating media and digital asset folders takes a ton of storage, increases your cloud costs.

With Evolphin Zoom’s front-end deduplication, folders or files can be copied with 0-Bytes of storage!

Check out our cloud storage cost calculator

How much you can Frontend-Deduplication save you on AWS cloud storage cost?

cloud storage cost calculator

Improve efficiency with smart link management

Eliminate offline links

Evolphin Zoom’s asset ID-based link management ensures that none of these common scenarios will never throw a project link offline:

Automatic Resolve Link

If you work with freelancers, you know how painful it is to relink projects shared between your team & freelancers. Our unique “Resolve Link” feature can fix broken links even if the files are missing on the desktop, just by downloading them from our Cloud Media Asset Management service.

Publish faster with Zoom’s industry’s first AI-powered video editing workflow

Speed up video post-production by letting our AI create sequences from footage saving hours of scrubbing by video editors.

Flexible, cost-saving, rules-driven AI

With speech-to-text, face, and object recognition built into the Evolphin Zoom MAM suite, your archives & newly ingested media can be automatically tagged cost-effectively. Make all your images & videos finally discoverable with the ability to search inside a video or find a specific image from millions of assets at the blink of an eye.

Improve productivity with a built-in web-based collaboration app

No need to get a subscription for another collaboration app to implement reviews & approvals or to share assets with external users.

Our collaboration app supports a range of assets – 2D/3D graphics, images, documents, audio, and video – to allow you to securely collaborate with internal or external teams from anywhere.

Industrial strength version control for all your files

Fewer version errors

With automatic version control and built-in conflict detection, you never lose revisions when multiple editors work on the same asset. Edit your audio or video projects remotely without worrying about teammates overwriting your changes.

Fully managed, cloud-based solution with a single tenant deployment

Evolphin Zoom Cloud MAM is a turnkey 3-in-1 media asset management solution that supports creative teams as they grow and scale. Unlike competitors’ products, technical setup, consultations, and ongoing technical support come as part of our fully managed AWS Cloud SaaS package – we believe our customers shouldn’t have to hire additional technical staff to enjoy our products.

Best security - Single tenant

To better protect your valuable assets, we host each customer as a single tenant without any shared resources, including compute instances, databases, VPC, and firewalls. Compare this with many DAM or MAM solutions that offer only a multi-tenant service with cloud resources shared across customers.

Interested in learning more about our coolest features?

Head over to our detailed guide

FAQ

Can I use Media Asset Management Software for my Marketing Department?

Yes, but if your marketing department handles mostly ‘processed’ documents, images, audio etc and not raw video files, media asset management software might be overkill. In this case, you’re better off adopting digital asset management software.]

Can MAM Software do Version Control?

Yes. A MAM system like Evolphin Zoom MAM that supports work-in-progress workflows can offer version control for video and multimedia files.

Does MAM Software work in the cloud or on-premises?

Both. You can host MAM software either on-premises, in the cloud, or both.

Who uses MAM Software?

MAM software is used by teams that handle high volume rich media files like video production teams, broadcast services, film post-production and distribution teams, video production (especially at the post-production stage), etc

Is an Asset Management System the Same as a Media Asset Management System?

No. An asset management system helps organizations keep track of tangible and intangible assets like hardware, software, contracts, and more. The difference with a media asset management system is that the latter helps organizations store, track, process, manage, and distribute high volume of rich media files.