FIMS, SOA and Media Applications - How modern software systems can serve media businesses
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FIMS, SOA and Media Applications
How modern software systems can serve media businesses
The demands on broadcast systems are increasing. The move to file-
based operations and the challenges of delivering in multiple formats
across multiple platforms are exposing many weaknesses in existing
systems. Many were designed to meet the needs of the last century,
for simpler, linear broadcasting.
Traditional broadcasters are facing more competition from new
entrants to the media business. YouTube, Hulu, Amazon, Netflix and
other over-the-top (OTT) operators have changed the landscape
for video on demand. Digital transmission allows broadcasters that
once had one channel, to air a multiplex of linear channels, as well
providing catch-up and mobile services.
To compete with new, global operators, broadcasters must deliver
to more platforms — linear and on-demand — and to a plethora of
devices from smart TVs to mobile.
The Future — Agile and Efficient
To meet these challenges, operations must become more efficient
and the business must become more agile. Many other sectors have
faced similar challenges, from finance to pharmaceuticals. Part of the
solution for many has been to turn to new software methodologies,
specifically business process management (BPM) and the service-
oriented architecture (SOA). Although each can be used stand-alone,
BPM and SOA are frequently used together as a platform to improve
the performance of the business.
Operations that use videotape were constrained by the need for
manual handling, but as content migrates from videotape to digital
files the way is open for broadcasters to use IT methodologies
including BPM and SOA to aid their operations. They provide a holistic
approach that can adapt more easily to the digital media future.
They also provide corporate management with better visibility of
operations. Stemming from improved monitoring, operations can be
F ramework for optimized to improve efficiency and lower costs.
I nteroperable BPM and SOA have already proved successful in other business
M edia sectors, and, with the FIMS Project driving standards and practices
S ervices to meet their special requirements, the time has come for the media
sector.
www.amwa.tv | www.fims.tvTraditional Broadcast Systems
Broadcast systems have evolved as a It can be difficult to add new functional-
number of silos coupled by real time ity to the system to meet the ever-chang-
SDI streams or videotape exchange (see ing demands of multi-platform delivery
figure 1). Within each silo processes and and evolving codec standards.
applications are linked by a variety of Storage architectures are changing with
interconnections with file exchange and object-based and cloud storage becom-
an assortment of control protocols. ing alternatives to on-premise NAS and
Such systems were optimized for a spe- SAN arrays.
cific application and have provided a When vendors upgrade products, the
good price/performance ratio with high new versions often do not support legacy
efficiency. operating systems leading to the need to
However, the tight coupling of these replace underlying computer hardware
older systems makes it difficult to upgrade platforms.
or replace one or more of the compo- All this adds up to the reality that tradi-
nents. Applications are typically coupled tional systems are just not agile enough
in a mesh, often with proprietary applica- to support the new demands of the media
tion programming interfaces (API). If one business without modifications and addi-
item of software is upgraded to a newer tional cost. Frequently new multi-plat-
version, the API may also be modified. form systems are added on to existing lin-
This will undoubtedly lead to changes to ear playout systems in an ad hoc manner
other software applications that are using to support a pressing demand. The con-
the API — and this work is usually custom sequence can be a system that grows in
and can be costly. a way that becomes difficult to maintain
and operate.
videotape,
optical discs
videotape videotape
& camera cards
acquisition post-production transmission archive
Figure 1. Legacy broadcast
workflows operate in silos Visibility of Processes
Traditional systems also suffer from a manage existing systems and to guide
lack of visibility of the internal processes. future investment. Many broadcasters
Individual processes may display the sta- already have end-to-end alarm moni-
tus on a local user interface, but it is diffi- toring, but resource usage may only be
cult to obtain an overall view (dashboard) monitored for billing purposes, and not to
of the operation of the business. discover utilization factors for hardware
As broadcasters strive for even more and software plus measuring operational
efficiencies, it is vital to have an overall efficiency.
view of technical operations as an aid to
2What is a Service? process, but the principles remain the
In the context of SOA, a service is a mech- same.
Nomenclature anism to provide access to a capability. Because the service is abstracted it
Services communicate via a bus, an Examples of services in the broadcast opens the way for broadcasters to lever-
analogy with hardware architec- domain include: age cloud services more easily. As an
tures. The benefits of SOA are best • ingest example, at times of peak transcode
seen when applied across the enter- • transform demand a cloud transcode service
prise, so the communication bus • playout could be used to supplement in-house
becomes the Enterprise Service Bus • move a file resources. With a standard service inter-
(ESB). The term ESB has now become • archiving a file face for transcoding, the implementation
generic, even when a service bus A transcoding application could expose can be an on-premise service or in the
may not extend throughout a broad- its capability to transcode files as a trans- cloud.
cast operation. form service. The operation of the services is orches-
The service is defined at the business trated by a layer of middleware, software
level rather than the detailed technical that manages business processes accord-
level. This allows different manufacturers ing to the needs of the business.
to deliver a given service, even though
the detail of implementation will differ Services are Reusable
from product to product. This leads on to A transform service can be used for dif-
a key feature of services—abstraction of ferent business processes. For example
capability. a transcoder could be used to transform
files at ingest to the house codec or used
Abstraction to create multiple versions of content for
The business management logic may call multi-platform delivery. The transform
for a file to be transcoded from in-house services can be redeployed to different
mezzanine codec to YouTube delivery for- departments as the needs of the file traf-
mat, but it would not define the specifics fic change from hour to hour. This pro-
of a particular make and model of trans- vides a significant improvement in utiliza-
coder or the detail of the file formats. It tion and operational efficiency
would simply indicate that a transcode
capability is required. Service Contract
This abstracts the business logic from In SOA, services share a formal contract.
the underlying technical platforms. Service contracts are commonplace in
A generic service interface for file trans- broadcasting and across the M&E sec-
form can be defined. Different transcod- tor, where companies call on others for
ers will be wrapped by a service adap- capabilities, like playout, subtitling and
tor, which handles the complexity of the VFX as examples. The service level agree-
transcode process. To the business logic, ment (SLA) for playout will include qual-
the transcode is simply a job. ity aspects like permitted downtime (for
example the 99.999 % SLA).
Autonomy Service contracts operate at the busi-
In existing broadcast systems, the ingest ness level, and ultimately could result in
job is delegated to an operator. He or she monetary exchange, for example with
configures an encoder, then starts and cloud services.
stops the encoding at the appropriate It could be said that many broadcasters
times. The operator is functioning auton- run departments that provide services
omously during the processes of the job. to other departments (as silos). They just
These concepts of delegation and don’t extend the methodology to the
autonomy are also fundamental to the architecture of technical systems. Instead
SOA design philosophy. The encoding they run monolithic silos for the process-
may well be automated as a computer ing of content within each department.
3What is SOA?
The service-oriented architecture (SOA) In the context of the media and enter- The services are implemented by reus-
is not a product but an architecture to tainment sector a SOA can be used to able software modules that are indepen-
deploy loosely coupled software systems implement a “media factory”, process- dent of the platform on which they run.
in order to implement the processes that ing content from the production phase
deliver a business workflow. though to multi-platform delivery.
SOA provides a more viable architec- Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a
ture to build large and complex sys- software methodology that a media busi-
tems because it is a better fit to the way ness can utilize to transform the opera-
human activity itself is managed -- by tion of business into a set of linked ser-
delegation. SOA has its roots in object- vices or repeatable business tasks, that
oriented software and component-based can be accessed when needed over a net-
programming. work. This may be a local network, it may
SOA is not new; it has been in use for a be the Internet, or in the cloud. In theory, Part of the ethos of SOA is
decade or more in other sectors includ- a media business could access services to align the technology plat-
ing defense, pharmaceuticals, banking across the globe; in Singapore, London, forms with the business goals.
and insurance. It developed from the New York, and Los Angeles as though Traditionally the operational
principles of object-oriented software they were all installed locally. workflows have been defined by
design and distributed processing. The Media businesses can rapidly adapt to
the technology, especially stem-
media sector has lagged other sectors in changing conditions and requirements
the adoption of such systems for a num- by bringing together services to accom- ming from the constraints that
ber of reasons. These include the sheer plish a specific business task videotape imposed on processes.
size of media objects, the file sizes, and The migration to handling con-
the duration of some processes. A query The Architecture tent as streams and files using
for an online airline reservation may take There is no prescriptive SOA, but an ESB generic IT platforms has trans-
a minute at most; a transcode of a movie is conventional for the messaging layer. formed what is possible.
can take several hours. Conventional SOA The workflow orchestration and business
implementations are not well suited to logic are performed by software applica-
handling such long-running processes tions called middleware. Adaptors con-
and mission critical activities. nect the services to the ESB.
applications
back office
monitoring and management dashboard
digital
asset resource workflow business
management management orchestration logic
enterprise service bus
quality content
ingest transfer transform
analysis repository
processing
broadcast,
content
content
on-demand,
web, mobile
media bus
workflow
4FIMS
The Advanced Media Workflow The media bus operates in parallel to
Association (AMWA) and the European the ESB to transport the large media files
Broadcasting Union (EBU) had been inde- between services.
pendently looking at the issues of SOA Security includes authorization and
for the media sector. In 2010 the two access control, but for media operations
parties decided to pool resources and it may well include digital rights man-
jointly set up a project, the Framework agement on watermarking of content
for Interoperable Media Services (FIMS). essence files. The enterprise nature of
This project would develop standards SOA and ESB will make the need for secu-
for a framework to implement a media- rity policies to be more rigorous than
friendly SOA. older siloed architectures.
The FIMS solution has the aim to pro-
vide a flexible and cost-effective solu- Planning for SOA
tion which is reliable and future proof. It Migrating from traditional tightly cou-
should allow best of breed content pro- pled systems to use the principles of
cessing products to be integrated with SOA is a big step for a media business.
media business systems The efficient operation of a SOA requires
The FIMS team released V1.0 in 2012 as thorough analysis of business needs and
an EBU specification, Tech 3356. Three detailed definition of the services that will
service interfaces have been specified: be needed to meet those needs.
• transform It will also require rigorous planning of
• transfer the IT infrastructure— the computers and
• capture networks—for efficient operation of the
Services currently under development services.
in 2013 including quality analysis (QA) It must be remembered that SOA is a
and the repository service. means to deliver business goals, not an
The FIMS Project has expanded on the end in itself. Moving to SOA is an opportu-
conventional SOA with additional fea- nity for a media business to rethink goals,
tures to meet the needs of media opera- and break from the constraints imposed
tions. Specifically FIMS adds: by earlier videotape operations.
• Asynchronous operation For broadcasters used to running
• Resource management departmental silos, many with real time
• A media bus elements, the move to a SOA will be a
• Security radical change to the way the business
Asynchronous operation allows for operates. However, the advantages of
long running services. A media process the SOA and allied systems like BPM are
may take hours or days; conventional proving attractive propositions for the
SOAs allow for processes that complete broadcaster or service providers that are
in seconds or minutes. This places specific running complex file-based operations
persistence requirements of the SOA BPM for multi-platform delivery.
platform. A media company looking to embrace
Although services are loosely coupled SOA and BPM will face challenges includ-
to the orchestration, jobs can still be run ing change management, plus they need
with time constraints. This may be simply to keep on air throughout the migration
to start a job at a certain time, but services to the new technical infrastructure.
can also be real time, like the capture and In view of the radical change SOA can
playout of streams. In theses cases the job bring, many companies have trialed the
requests for the service will also include architecture in one area of the business
start and stop times for the process. For before committing to that changes across
playout, this concept is no different from the entire enterprise.
a playlist or schedule. Traditional broadcast system installa-
Resource management allows process tions were a wiring and configuration
and resource scheduling to be cognizant exercise whereas SOA requires more IT
of very long running media processes. than video skills.
A SOA typically is based on an ESB that There are several consulting companies
carries XML messages between services. that specialize in the media sector, and
5these companies can bring their valu- Early adopters of SOA have designed
able skills to broadcasters who are unfa- each service adaptor as a custom proj-
miliar with complex enterprise software ect. As FIMS adds more standard service
implementations. adaptors, the need for bespoke coding
However, the task of delivering a media will decrease.
SOA potentially needs custom develop- The road will be long and many obsta-
ment of adaptors to the chosen services. cles remain to be resolved, but the suc-
If common standards existed there would cess of this project will bring benefit to
not be the same need to duplicate devel- both vendors and media companies with
opment work creating new adaptors for a more standards-based approach.
each project.
It was this issue that the AMWA and the
EBU independently realized. Combining David Austerberry, 2013
forces, they formed the FIMS Project to
bring standards to the process.
Questions about FIMS
ff If SOA is common in other sectors, why ff How does FIMS relate to AMWA Application
not just buy a system from a middleware Specifications?
provider?
»» FIMS is a system architecture. Application
»» The problem lies with the special nature of media Specifications define constrained versions of
operations. Through the work of the FIMS Project, MXF used for file exchange. FIMS services could
standards are being created for a framework and well use Application Specifications for content
for service adaptors specifically designed for the transfer over the media bus.
media sector.
ff How does the FIMS architecture relate to
ff How can I be confident that mission critical the file based workflows already being
tasks, such as program playout, will occur on adopted?
time?
»» It is possible to build a file-based workflow in
»» A playout service, like all services are abstracted many ways. It could model older videotape
and autonomous. This means that a playout ser- workflows, or the FIMS architecture could be
vice can run in real time, synchronous to a time- adopted, but these are just two ways to use con-
of-day reference. tent files in a workflow.
If you are interested in the FIMS Project, please visit www.fims.tv
for more details and resources.
If you are interested in becoming a member of the AMWA,
please visit the AMWA web site at www.amwa.tv/join.shtml.
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