1. EBU TECHNICAL
SOA-FIMS: why?
IP&TV 2011, IP WORKFLOWS
London, 23 March 2011
Jean-Pierre Evain, EBU

2. The result of several years of Sherpa work
Technological accelerator: tapeless file based production
Activities since 2007
EBU Common Process (ECI CP) and Networked Production (NP) projects
AMWA Media Services Architecture Group (MSAG)
Conferences, seminars (AMWA, EBU, IBC, NAB) on asset management and SOA
Objectives
Educate, raise awareness on the opportunities of new production architectures
Make new concept of service based infrastructure understood at enterprise level
Identify specific needs and requirements: interview broadcasters, MAM providers, vendors
Share best practices and tools across different production units (news, drama, etc.)
Harmonise /standardise solutions for interoperability with the industry
Promote market adoption -> propose a win-win scenario for users and providers
EBU TECHNICAL - your reference in media technology and innovation

3. Lessons learnt
The audio-visual landscape is changing
 More delivery platforms (broadcast, broadband, hybrid, mobile), more competition
 Consumption habits and viewer expectations are evolving
The business needs: agility, visibility & productivity
 Need for rationalisation and be present on a variety of platforms
 Adapt content to the specific needs (usability, availability, etc.)
 Control production costs (“produce once, publish many ?”), share resources
The technical challenge : ‘start small, think big!’
 Adapt to business needs and rationalise platform independent production
 Combine the best of breed of available tools from different providers, get what you need
 Maximise reuse of well defined common resources by similar ‘roles’ having similar
‘needs’ across different production units
 Support ‘modularity’, ‘scalability’ for maintenance & upgrade vs. customisation
 Modularise functions for more ‘agile’ workflow orchestration -> ‘plug & play’
EBU TECHNICAL - your reference in media technology and innovation

4. File-based production: orchestrated processes
Specific media requirements:
High-bandwidth real-time stream handling, non linear process capability, multi-resolution
multi-compression cross-media file based production, redundancy, disaster recovery
management, user oriented collaborative environments, distributed (cloud) architectures,
etc.
EBU TECHNICAL - your reference in media technology and innovation

5. A methodological and technical answer: SOA
The SOA proposal:
 Combine heterogeneous functional tools through services with a common interface
 legacy and new equipment / tools from different manufacturers,
 software platforms, asset management tools
 in-house developments
 A better management of metadata collected through well defined interfaces and
contributing to each broadcaster’s data model
 Modularity and scalability, a toolbox of tools exposed as ‘services’
 Flexible workflow management through ‘service’ invocation possibly across
production units, particularly adapted to non-linear file-based production
 Easier maintenance and higher ability to upgrading (the 1.x vs. 2.0 dilemma)
SOA has been designed for file-based production
SOA offers a framework for standardisation and interoperability
SOA is a prerequisite for selecting a Media Asset Management (MAM) solution
EBU TECHNICAL - your reference in media technology and innovation

6. When: already there! How is ‘EBU AMWA FIMS’ !
FIMS is a “Framework for Interoperable Media Services” launched on 08/12/2009
 Co-chaired by: Giorgio Dimino, RAI and John Footen
 Co-managed by: Bard Gilmer, AMWA and Jean-Pierre Evain, EBU
 Membership is open (FIMS participants do not have to be an EBU or AMWA member)
 All information is public: http://wiki.amwa.tv/ebu
 The licensing regime is ‘compensation free’
Members (subject to signing the Participation Agreement)
 Amberfin, Avid, Cinegy, Chime Media, Cube Technology, Digimetrics, Harmonic,
Harris, IBM, Limecraft, MBC, metaFrontier.jp, Metaglue, Omneon, Oracle, PMG,
Portability, Radiant Grid, RedBee Media, Snell, Sony, Tixel, Vidispine
 BBC, CBC, IRT, RAI, EBU -> JOIN THE SOA FIMS USER GROUP on www.LinkedIn.com!
Status
 Several submissions to the RfT
 A first draft specification under the leadership of IBM and Sony (see wiki)
 A plan for a preliminary demonstration at NAB 2011, Booth 3134
EBU TECHNICAL - your reference in media technology and innovation

7. Overview of the EBU/AMWA FIMS Phase 1’s scope
Web service
directory,
registration,
discovery and
access
Restful and In scope
WSDL
Linking to SOA
Interoperability,
efficiency (MXF)
EBU TECHNICAL - your reference in media technology and innovation

8. Next ? Metadata is the lifeblood of SOA
+
+
What’s on the radar?
 EBU Class Conceptual Data Model
(CCDM)
 EBUCore (already partly in FIMS)
 Semantic Web technologies, linked data
EBU TECHNICAL - your reference in media technology and innovation

9. EBU TECHNICAL
Thank you
evain@ebu.ch
ebu-amwa@list.ebu.ch