BBC Digital Media Initiative to Leverage Signiant's Media Distribution Solution

Signiant's Digital Media Distribution Management Suite (DMDMS) has been selected by Siemens as a core component for the forthcoming BBC Digital Media Initiative. Siemens is providing the integration and delivery services for the provision of the Digital Media Initiative within the corporation, and Signiant's technology will enable the Media Mover component. The Digital Media Initiative will provide the broadcaster with a flexible, multiplatform-enabled, digital production capability with the associated technology infrastructure. Financial terms were not disclosed.


The BBC DMI is collaborative multiplatform production capability that will allow multiplatform programme making teams to work together throughout the production lifecycle and provide individuals access to the work-in-progress content from the point of its inception.


Media Mover is an infrastructural component of the DMI architecture which will manage effective movement of media across the BBC network by throttling transfer rates based on priority and available bandwidth. This component will be enabled using the Signiant DMDMS and, in this first phase of the DMI, will be used for two main purposes.


Firstly, the DMI will use the Signiant SOA Interface (Simple Object Access protocol) to manage, prioritize and accelerate the movement of media between the BBC Archive (the central repository for the corporation's digital assets and related asset information) and the Work In Progress Library (a client application that allows users to ingest and retrieve content and perform logging, local searching, storyboarding and synchronization retrievals) across all sites within the BBC Network. This will allow multi-platform programme-making teams to work together throughout the production lifecycle, providing instant access to the work-in-progress content.


Secondly, the Signiant DMDMS will be used for the bundling, packaging and distribution of video, audio and graphics material to the various broadcast platforms. Signiant's Adaptive Policy Engine will be used to perform digital media transfers based on business rules to ensure that the highest priority items are assigned the appropriate levels of networking bandwidth and priority within the file-based workflow.http://www.signiant.com