‘Stick a marker in the ground’ – The MLB visit.

Following our visit to Atlanta we start looking into the Front Porch MAM (Media Asset Management) system. Front Porch is the company that sells the SAMMA. Several months later I contacted the company and asked them if it would be possible to view an existing installation of the system.

They were indeed able to arrange for us a visit to  MLB Networks (Major League Baseball, for us non-Americans...) in Secaucus, New Jersey. As you can well imagine, that visiting the place in itself was an experience even for someone like me, an Israeli, who is not that acquainted with this particular sport. 

We began with a short tour of the compound, and as you can imagine, given that there is no shortage of funds, their system was installed in a very intelligent manner. Tab Butler, Director of Media Management, who showing us around, had vast knowledge on the whole subject, and we were able to learn a lot from this experience.

On our way to the room holding the system we passed by a ‘small’ studio that looked like a baseball diamond. They film news flashes and baseball specials there. There were editing rooms and many other points of such great interest to both Elkanah and myself  that at that moment we actually forgot about the prime purpose of our visit!

The size of the system with all the equipment is hard to believe. What was really interesting to notice how attention was given to every detail. Obviously, their ‘$’ budget supported this. We were also able to see their LTO system which was able to cater for thousands of tapes, whilst we are debating whether to build a system for our archive that would cater for less than one thousand LTO 4 or LTO 5 tapes! One of the more interesting things we saw (possibly even more interesting than actual purpose of our whole trip) was the logging system for inputting their metadata. It was designed and programmed especially to their requirements (with help from someone named Michael Jackson! This being the second time we've heard of him. Another facility we visited also utilized his work).

There are then a team of people who view recordings of games and input every detail into the system... and believe me we are talking about each detail, and it's all synchronized with the time code of the video. You may wonder why this detail is necessary, but recognize that this enables them search and retrieve data on each game with the option to jump to any particular frame in which an incident were to take place. (Ball impact, pitch count and speed, and a million other details concerning a baseball game that I myself don’t know too much about. If it were soccer, I could better explain the stats to you)

We completed our tour in the office of Tab, continuing our questioning trying to make the most of our meeting with him.

While standing by the door, Tab challenged us: "stick a marker in the ground, and decide when you will launch your media system. And hit that date no matter what!" I believe that almost each one of us recognizes the decision we are required to make. A simple example would be someone wishing to purchase a new laptop computer and the salemsman says "wait another month or two for a new model."

You might be chasing technology, while you have a a laptop of the nineties, because there's always a new one about to come out! Similarly, with this project the size of ours which is based on many new technologies, we will constantly be confronted with this same dilemma -- only we can’t allow ourselves to push off the decision because "the next thing" is on the doorstep. Besides, this would entail ever increasing costs in the future. The LTO5 is around the corner but we may still consider purchasing an LTO4 system...

Regarding the Diva, we completed our day in the offices of Front Porch where they did a presentation focused on their system. This was the first occasion that we were seeing their MAM (Media Asset Management) system, without having anything else to compare it to. I'll write more about my professional opinion regarding this product on another occasion.