What exactly is a media asset management system (MAM)?

Thursday March 23, 2023

What exactly is a media asset management system (MAM)?

And how does it differ from Digital Asset Management (DAM)?


Media Asset Management (MAM) is often used synonymously with Digital Asset Managements (DAM), which we will discuss later in this blog. Although there are similarities between the various asset management systems, a MAM system is unique both in its origins and in the way users use it to organize your visual content.


Media asset management is the process of managing large volumes of video, images and audio files. It has long been an important part of video production workflows, allowing various team members - from writers to editors - to edit, manage and store their video projects in one place.


MAM systems focus on storing, managing and editing digital video content, which is why they bring some features tailored for this task. Organizing large volumes of video assets comes with special requirements. A major feature in a MAM system is the tagging of video content. Assigning metadata is far more challenging than with image or document files.


With a MAM, video assets can be tagged with time-related image and action descriptions. Shots, sequences, and whole movies can be assigned metadata of the highest precision from the outset, which is necessary to accurately locate the content being searched for within a video.


The ability to generate short preview clips is also very helpful. Preview clips provide a quick preview of videos and are automatically generated when video files are cataloged. The videos can be played on different devices. This way, users don't have to wait for an entire video to be downloaded or converted before starting to play it.


MAM systems also optimize the uploading and editing of video files, which typically require high bandwidth and large storage capacity, and take into account multiple video formats and codecs.


medialoopster media Asset Management can handle all these unique features, and more...



How does a MAM differ from a DAM (Digital Asset Management)?


Digital Asset Management (DAM) refers to systems that are used to store, manage, share and distribute documents and images. Many DAM's also include video content, which can also be managed and secured there to some level. However, the functionalities of DAMs are usually far from being sufficient to handle the special challenges of video files and to be able to work optimally with video content.


For video, a MAM is far superior


Media Asset Management could be seen as a specific segment within DAM.
The difference is that MAM focuses on managing video and audio content, making it far superior to DAM for video.


A media asset management system is ultimately about using the potential that exists in the videos and increasing the video output many times over! And thus significantly increase the value of the videos!


With medialoopster Media Asset Management you have the chance to keyword your video content with metadata, to organize, use and reuse it across all your locations worldwide. Furthermore, with the help of the Rough Cut Editor, you can easily create a rough cut and do not need any expert knowledge. Artificial intelligence can be used to perform video analysis, automate workflows, and significantly increase content utilization.