Large broadcast networks run many separate departments to manage different program genres. They may have separate departments for features, sport, news, current affairs and documentaries. Each department probably has an autonomous database, with the information that they alone need. But what happens, for example, when a documentary needs to be made about a famous sportsman? There may be relevant news items in the newsroom computer, and the sports department will have comprehensive stats. Plus, there will be many external sources of information on the Web.
The program researcher can sift though all these separate data sources searching for information relevant to the program, but wouldn’t it be more efficient if you could federate all that information and link it together, then present the results in a graphical interface where video previews were just a click away?
Conventional Web search engines are more oriented around shopping for products and services, and content management systems may offer only simple text search using controlled vocabularies. Our documentary maker wants to discover something new for his scoop program on the sporting giant.
What is needed is an engine that allows the researcher to browse associated data from many sources, rather than to search using the usual keywords, production title, etc. It is this very problem that IPV looks to address with its new Teragator. Described as a metadata aggregation and management engine, Teragator uses complex data mining and analysis techniques to establish relationships between data stored across disparate sources. This is all fine if you are a knowledge management specialist, but what IPV have done is to add a user interface that presents all these esoteric results in a form that a librarian or program researcher at a TV network can understand. Conventional search uses forms, possibly with Boolean expressions to narrow the search, and produces pages of text results to the search.
Teragator instead displays the relationships between data in a visual manner. A click on the interface can open the result of a query as browse video. Teragator is focused on the metadata and assets found in a typical broadcast environment.
IPV has been researching the concepts with a couple broadcasters, and visitors to IBC can get to see this product at the show. Broadcast Engineering had a preview of the user interface by remote desktop access, and it shows the promise of being a real step forward for those looking to monetize their program assets through some smart data mining.
As David Cole, CEO at IPV, says, “Editorial staff, library sales and research assistants looking for library material to enrich or illustrate a story will search through the metadata for a given library, often using the same terms — and the result is that the same clips are offered and used. Using Teragator to interact with the metadata and media assets enables users to truly capitalize on established libraries, delivering rapid results from these new digital workflows. Teragator offers a world of opportunity by uplifting catalogs, streamlining library and archive management and repurposing media."
See IPV at IBC2009 in Stand 8.B67.
