Digital asset management (DAM) and the implementation of its use as a computer application is required in the collection of

digital asset A digital asset is anything that exists only in digital form and comes with a distinct usage right or distinct permission for use. Data that do not possess those rights are not considered assets. ''Digital assets'' include, but are not limited t ...

s to ensure that the owner, and possibly their delegates, can perform operations on the data files.

Terminology

The term ''media asset management'' (MAM) may be used in reference to Digital Asset Management when applied to the sub-set of digital objects commonly considered "

media Media may refer to: Communication * Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Interactive media, media that is inter ...

", namely audio recordings, photos, and videos. Any editing process that involves media, especially video, can make use of a MAM to access media components to be edited together or combined with a live feed in a fluent manner. A MAM typically offers at least one searchable index of the images, audio, and videos it contains, constructed from metadata harvested from the images using pattern recognition, or input manually. Digital asset management (DAM) may focus on the electronic management of any form of a digitally stored piece of information. DAM is certainly strategic, while MAM is almost always tactical. Both asset management primarily reflect long-term stored content that is used for archiving, preservation, and most notably reuse.

Management

Creation

Applications implement Digital Asset Management (DAM) by importing it from the analog and/or

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

domains (by

encoding In communications and Data processing, information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter (alphabet), letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes data compression, shortened or ...

, scanning,

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...

, etc.) or by authoring it as a new object.

Indexing

A primary function of a DAM system is to make assets easily available to its users by providing a searchable index that supports retrieval of assets by their content and/or

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

. The

cataloging In library and information science, cataloging (American English, US) or cataloguing (British English, UK) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging ...

function is usually part of the ingestion process for new assets.

Workflow

Digital assets will typically have a lifecycle, which may include various states such as creation, approval, live, archived, and deleted.

Version control

Often a DAM system will store earlier versions of a digital asset and allow those to be downloaded or reverted to. Therefore, a DAM system can operate as an advanced type of

version control Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code t ...

system.

Access control

Finally, a DAM system typically includes security controls ensuring relevant people have access to assets. This will often involve integration with existing directory services via a technology such as single sign-on.

Categorization

Smaller DAM systems are used in a particular operational context, for instance, in video production systems. The key differentiators between them are the types of input encoders used for creating digital copies of assets to bring them under management, and the output decoders and/or formatters used to make them usable as documents and/or online resources. The

of a content item can serve as a guide to the selection of the

codec A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

(s) needed to handle the content during processing and may be of use when applying

access control In physical security and information security, access control (AC) is the action of deciding whether a subject should be granted or denied access to an object (for example, a place or a resource). The act of ''accessing'' may mean consuming ...

rules to enforce authorization policy.

Requirements

Assets that require specific technologies to be used in a workflow need to have their bandwidth, latency, and access control requirements considered in the design of the tools that create or store them, as well as in the architecture of the system that distributes and archives them. When assets are not actively being worked on, they can be stored in a DAM in various formats, including as a blob ( binary large object in a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

) or as a file in a standard file system, which is "cheaper" to store than the form needed during operations on them. This allows the implementation of large-scale DAM as an assembly of high-performance processing systems within a network with a high-density storage solution at its center.

Types of systems

Digital asset management systems fall into the following classifications: * Brand management system: Enforce brand presentation within an organization by making approved logos, fonts, and product images easily accessible. * Library or archive: Provide bulk storage of infrequently changing video or photo assets. * Media asset management systems: Handling assets in the audiovisual domain including audio, video, or still images. * Production management systems: Manage assets being created on the fly for use in live media production or as visual effects for use in gaming applications, TV, or films. * Streaming: Facilitate on-demand delivery of digital content, like TV shows or movies, to end users on behalf of digital retailers. All of these types will include features for workflow management, collaboration, project management, and

revision control Version control (also known as revision control, source control, and source code management) is the software engineering practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of computer files; primarily source code ...

Media asset issues

An asset can exist in several formats and in a sequence of versions. The digital version of the original asset is generally captured in as high resolution, colour depth, and (if applicable) frame rate as needed to ensure that results are of acceptable quality for the end-use. There can also be

thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image-o ...

copies of lower quality for use in visual indexing.

Metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

for an asset can include its packaging, encoding, provenance, ownership and access rights, and location of original creation. It is used to provide hints to the tools and systems used to work on, or with, the asset about how it should be handled and displayed.