The Digital Media Project

Analogue Legacies in the Digital Age

(Barcelona, ES - 2004/10/25)

Indice

Analogue Legacies in the Digital Age

Multiplatform perspective

• Background & expertise perspective

• Analogue legacies

• Context management

• Digital consumer

• Format issues

• User producer

• Open Source, open format, open market

Background & expertise perspective

• Digitalisation process & the new multi platform paradigm• Integrated workflow, interactions among various media

conceptions• From adding metadata to new production models

The digitalisation processes a broadcaster undergoes are far more risky in the back-office than at the frontal. This is so because of the lack of control and the uncertainty about their devices and capacities. Our experience, first as suppliers and later by co-developing software, has allowed us to understand the several rhythms of the shift and also the requirements that communication demands on the software so that a real and complete implementation happens.

The experience of the extremes, both integrating digital tools in the productive processes and by knowing the TV user through a set top box, even about the analogical viewing itself, has made us think of a wider scenery beyond the digital phenomenon.

Analogue legacies

• Mistaking form for format• Mistaking distribution for consume• Pay for stream: from object possession (on-demand

capability) to the right of viewing

Shifting does not only imply a new way of storing and distributing contents but

also a redefinition of the nature of the format itself. The breaking of the

barriers between audio and image, thanks to the dubbing and post-

production industries for instance, is a process that has taken many years

work to happen and has meant significant changes as far as audio-visual

production and distribution are concerned. A digital content, apart from being

able to adopt several audio-visual forms (size, fps, compression and so

forth), it can also incorporate metadata, data and scripting, parameters in its

visual forms or in the way the viewer interacts with the content.

Context management

• User, Content and Services• Growing content-related services

Standardization and the widespread use of technology homogenise all those

produce that base their premium value upon the commodity functions. Our

experience has lead us to consider the digital management and distribution on a

context and not content management basis. A management which integrates the

contents, the user and the service information into a single. Services that

transform information while generating an added value, while getting the user

involved in an interactive way or while retrieving the information the user has

generated as a publishable content are now growing and are of great import

when facing the content shortfall.

Context management

• Micro-markets: tracking user preferences. • A DTT experience: ‘Breaking the family unity’• Translating more than voices

The fact of having more channels entails a greater segmentation. If this is carried

to the limit –a case that seemed impossible but which during the bubble years

has almost come true (NY latin portal case)- it states the impossibility to develop

segmentation unless automated processes and rules are settled. The tracking of

the user, the segmentation of the very family or the collection of preferences

require an integrated management that redefines the processes by which

content is produced and distributed.

Digital consumer

• E-commerce segment, delivery big difference

Replicability of the digital content at almost no cost -the connectivity is becoming

a commodity as much as electricity- is the element which more affects the

new paradigm of digital consumption. It creates a subsegmentation in the e-

commerce which does not demand any logistics, nor stocks, nor

transportation and it completes the general situation of digital content with the

digital consumption – whose delivery and devices are exclusively digital,

without any physical format.

Nevertheless, a legacy that inhibits the shift of model derives from the selling

nature, which is still analogical-, not so much where the transaction is

concerned as it is usually done through a digitized bank, but in the invoicing

and control systems, still working in paper.

Digital consumer

• Overlapped value chains: paying for digital content

Banks are not eager to accept micropayments yet and this becomes a critical

factor against the selling of digital contents because they are required as

buying formats. And not only to enhance the impulsive shopping but also for

the buying to independents. If we move now towards consumption nowadays,

we see that the psychological threshold of 1 Euro per topic o 5 Euros per CD

or movie would be able to foster digital consumption, with a percentage of

transaction in the value change of the traditional delivery, at distribution

points. Fragmentation of payment should not be a problem in the digital

world, although it may require an interoperable footbridge for payments to

several suppliers or the creating of an intermediate transactional agent.

Digital consumer

• New consumption objects: from consuming marketing content to an ‘Artist life subscription’

One of the most successful models in the mass digital consumption is the selling of ring-tones for instance. It is based on another legacy of even higher penalty: the payment systems by SMS in the legislation currently in force- at least in Spain- are a data service working in the mobile operator environment. Today’s perspective where a broadcaster broadcasts a content and offers the download- through the very same mobile phone or in a triangle with the Internet- the mobile operator is basically the payment footbridge, at a ratio that ranges from 30 to 40 per cent of the transaction.

When the changing of agents happens, it is necessary to regulate the market of digital consumption and redefine the stances in the new chain of values – of the selling of digital contents of digital consumption-.In a short-mid term and with less incidence- another key aspect of digital consumption is how easy the offer can be productized or re-productized. Whereas traditionally the money spent in marketing has been a key factor to be considered when launching a product because this is a time when many things are at stake, not only the broadcast but also the way by which the offer is communicated; now in the digital environment, this latter point allows a progressive adjustment, with immediate return and the possibility of atomising and segmenting the offer, with the same selling format in the hands of the marketing strategy. Something that is nowadays out of reach for the vast majority of the existing products.

Format issues

• Multi platform is multi-format, hybrid media

The multi platform, as opposed to the mono platform, involves a restructuring of

the exploitation formats. The technical solutions by which form and content

are set aside or the automatical processes of transcodification may help

solving the problem only partially. However, the exploitation of digital means

implies changes at a deeper level, at the format origin itself. The radial

relationship with the content substitutes the lineal production- a production

where the material that is generated during the process is dismissed.

Format issues

• Now content –as it’s perceived by the user- is more a point of view of media types than a media type

The metainformation and the additional contents begin to organise themselves

into relational models that respond both to the productive procedures and

progressively to the exploitation procedures too. Besides having the

information about the author, the credits, the synopsis or the metadata that is

clearly linked to an asset, some other elements are also added. Namely, the

content of a digital editorial department is added with elements such as: lists,

topic-related groups, transversal contents, related news or the audience

opinion.

Format issues

• So, it’s not just a problem between analogue and digital content, it’s also about ‘rendered’ content and format-content

• Missing information: content is format• The “Last mille production house”

Creating a media product while bearing in mind digital exploitation from the very beginning generates some other objects that go further than what we call the audio-visual. The frontal packing for the decode in market players or in more complex engines which are able to include partially the logics of the same format in the customer is a huge step in conceiving the product as it widens the reaching of the formats, it even widens the broadcast and the payment model itself.

User producer

• User content and user edited content• Prosumer content market

(all we will be Video Jockeys, Sample model, Remix or broken phones)

The introduction of user content, from preferences to winning data that are inherent to the audio-visual contents that belong to the broadcaster environment, involves a change in the relationship between the audience and the content. The bond established by storing their picture – even with anonymous users who can not be exploited with a data mining- this bond can be capitalised in this final recapping, in open formats that allow much more personal experiences.

The interactive viewer is not necessarily a user -at least not in the same terms of a person working in computing- even if the user changes the pull-push relation established with the content. The interaction that takes place is very primary. While in an early stage the viewer is merely a zapper viewer, in a second stage the user becomes a remixer and progressively a media jockey who incorporates their own contents to the whole mix.

User producer

• New media centres are holding media content and user

memory

The evolution of devices such as media centres is gradually allowing part of the

logics and BO applications to be transferred to the user home. Those devices

will foster a better articulation of the mix between the content generated by

the user and the downloaded content. This is reproduced in interactive

formats and includes local preferences and configurations.

Open Source, open format, open market

• Access to media production & distribution for every potential producer

• New collaborative paradigms and the remix culture

The productive and organisational model of the Open Source, no matter if owner code or free code models are used, allow a greater binding among the agents with a greater agility to call up new entries –or small entries- in the chain of values. The very same approach to the viewer-producer raises the threshold to the production for mass media as long as rights and production management tools are well co-ordinated.

Although one of the mainstays of artistic production is the original creation of every aspect of the form, advertising, the mediatic production and the remix culture are now turning creativity towards format, in combinations of pre-existing forms. The market fragmentation and the personalization of the mediatic experience entailed by the digital shift calls up for a more automated and collaborative production.

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Open Source, open format, open market

• Content is organisation of perceptions• A key content creation capability is the ability of

construction of some kind of relation to the viewer

If the evolution of the software production models agrees on separating the

logics of business from the logics of presentation, the unavoidable mixture of

software and content will progressively generate a more open market where

format –not always indissoluble from the form- will be the digital object to be

produced, distributed and sold and its rights managed.

Thank you

http://www.communi.tv

Hernán Scapusio Vinenth@communi.tv