W3C/SMPTE Joint Workshop on Professional Media Production on the Web

Hi everybody. My name is Julian Fernandez-Campon, I am chief technology officer at Tedial. And today I'm going to show you a different approach to maximize the media production on the web. The use of the no-code iPaaS for media.

The current workflow paradigm has two main problems.

The first one is that each system which is integrated in the platform, or two systems that need to be integrated, need to know the API of each other. This has the problem that it is difficult to evolve. It is difficult to maintain And if we make a change in one of the APIs of one system, it will be affecting to all the other system which are integrated with it.

The second one is that we need to be adding non-specific business steps to the workflows. For example, moving one media to another location or doing transformation to the information which is coming from one system. And again, this makes the solution and the workflows difficult to evolve and maintain.

The solution for this is to have a centralized platform where all the applications are registered and there is a single endpoint to access all of them.

This concept is not new. It's been around for many years in the IT world. And here we can see, for example, the Gartner 2021 Magic Quadrant in September, where we can see key players like Boomi, MuleSoft. And that many of you might be aware of. But this kind of approach has two main limitations.

The first one is that it is, it doesn't have media management capabilities. It is mainly focused on the control and integrating systems without any kind of media management. And the second one is that it is not aware we can say, it is not aware of multi-site or even multi-cloud.

If we translate the concept of the iPaaS to create a no-code iPaaS for media, what we will achieve is that all the workflows that we have that have like, in this one, many specific activities or many specific operations, which are not part of the business, we will get rid of all of them. And we will have any workflow, which is really simple. It is oriented to the business.

Like in this case, for example, we have a simple workflow where we have the ingest edit, Auto QC, validate and the final delivery.

It has several advantages. So first of all, is that it is simple, it is easy to read. The second one is that it is focused on the business. So we don't need experts or IT people to be reading the workflow and evolving the workflow. And also it's easy to design.

All of this is really good, but to achieve this, the no-code iPaaS for media, we need to standardize different things.

The first one is the data model that we can go for the editorial for the EBU Core and for everything which is related for the cameras to the SMPTE ST 2065.

Secondly, we need to standardize the APIs so that all the systems which are in the platform are speaking the same language and they are presenting the same methods.

And finally, we need to standardize in some way that web browsers, so that we can have media management capabilities or media management features where the media, the audio subtitles and the broadcast media can be played and can be presented in a single way.

What is the value proposition of the no-code iPaaS for media?

First of all, is that the applications are integrated with the platform. So we can say that we have a one to many similar integrations and the meaning of this is that every system which is doing the same thing will be sent the same method.

For example, if we have a transcoder, the method will be transcode", and if we have one AI tool, it will be analyze" and so on. In this case, we won't have a vendor lock-in because if we want to exchange one transcoder for another or one AI tool for another, it will be really simple and easy to do.

Legacy MAMs can also be integrated as another system because the key concept here is that the solution is not demand that has orchestration capabilities. The solution is one integration platform that can be integrated one MAM, but also can be integrated another legacy MAM, which is in operation and the customers, they don't want to change at this point.

And finally, it will be easy to implement all the workflows because it will be using a no-code approach so that all the people, without deep technical knowledge can be creating the workflows, understanding the workflows and dragging and dropping the different boxes, which are part of it.

What are the three pillars of the no-code iPaaS for media?

The first one is a common workspace where all the applications will be accessing to get the media. And this is aligned with the 2030 MovieLabs Vision that the media has to stay in the original location, not to be moved between different applications, because that will be really inefficient.

The second one is to have a common workspace. This is what we have discussed before, that all the applications that are doing the same function need to be presenting the same method. This is what they said before, about the one to many integrations.

And finally, all the obligations needs to be speaking the same language. It means that the data model, which is used for each of the application needs to be translated into the no-code iPaaS for media data model and each plugging or each application is responsible for reading the iPaaS data model and writing into the iPaaS data model. So that if there is another task, which depends on the output of a previous task, it doesn't have to understand the specific data model of the previous system.

A typical example is one AI system, which is providing some annotations about the media, and the next system which is using data annotation to take some decision, to be validating the content or to do any automatic action. It doesn't need to know what is the specific data model of the previous AI system.

Here in this diagram, we can see three components of the no-code iPaaS for media, the first one, and really key, and this is a real enabler of the no-code iPaaS for media is the media extraction layer. It will provide the multi-site capabilities and the access to the multiple technologies of the storage. In our case, we have a aSTORM which is a storage management system. Then we need to have a MAM, which is optional as I mentioned before, in this case, we have Evo, which also comes from Tedial.

And finally, we need to have one intelligent BPM, which is going one level up to the traditional BPMs to allow these local no-code paradigm and be able to define and implement the workflows really easily. And in the bottom, we need to have all the business intelligence, maintenance, user management and everything which is needed to be modifying and to be monitoring the platform.

Here, we can see all the other elements, which are integrated within the platform, which are managed in the same way as the other components.

And here, if we focus on the data model standardization, we can see that the EBU Core is a good option to be standardized in the data model, as it has several objects, which are, for example, the editorial metadata, publishing entities, planning, distribution, which is really useful for this kind of workflows, where do we need to be keeping the information.

The good thing, or a good practice is that if we go to a microservices approach, each microservice is updating a piece of the data model, which is oriented to the business.

If we think about the data model standardization which is needed for all the cameras, acquisition, production, ACES is a good candidate better than the EBU Core. Why? Because many vendors are now supporting ACES. There are workflows which are working, and which are very well-defined based on ACES. And also the data model is really well organized in camera objects, lenses, recorders and many other things.

So keeping this information in the SMPTE ST 2065 is also a good option for the no-code iPaaS for media.

If we go now to the API standardization, this is what we mentioned before, about the one to many. Here, we will see what are the benefits that each system will be presenting the same methods if they do the same thing. And also these systems can be organized in different groups.

For example, here, we can see that we have storage engines, media processing engines on other storage engines in the other end for the distribution.

This is also really good in order to implement in the workflows, to have everything organized and be able to swap one component for another, that we will see later.

Here, if we think about the different use cases that we have, the first one can be the simple delivery in the cloud, where we get the content from one S3 bucket, we analyze the content, we transcode it and finally we deliver it to another S3 bucket. And as you see here, this is a very simple linear workflow, and we are not adding any non-business specific logic.

Another use case is the localization where we receive a content in the cloud, one audio track, subtitle, or both, it is ingested. It is seen using a web browser, which is supporting the playing of the video and audio, and also with the synchronization of the audio tracks, subtitles and everything. And finally, if it is okay, if it is correct, it will be delivered to another, another destination.

And here we can see one of the key features of the no-code iPaaS for media, which is swappable components. Remember the workflow that we had for the media distribution in the cloud, where we have the content, we analyze it, we transcode it and we deliver it to another destination.

If for some reason, we need to duplicate the workflow because we are receiving UHD content and the transcoder we are using is not efficient, or we want to improve the quality of the transcoder, or we want to change that transcoder for another one, which is more cost effective, the change is as simple as replacing one box for another, because, remember, all the applications which are in the platform, following the philosophy of the one to many, they share the same method.

So the workflow will be unchanged because the only thing that we will be doing is to be using the transcoding method of the new application in this case, AWS Elemental.

That's all for now. Thank you for watching. I hope you have enjoyed it, bye.