Letters

Media Asset Management (MAM) System for
Efficient Content Management Using Metadata
Mitsuaki Tsunakawa†, Fumikazu Konishi,
and Tadashi Nakanishi
Abstract
Video content distribution services are thought to have great market potential, but it can be costly to
implement various features such as content management, content delivery across different media types,
and sales trend analysis. As a result, the services on offer are still not as good as one might hope for. We
have developed the core functions of a media asset management (MAM) system that provides an efficient means of tagging video content with metadata, allows content to be searched quickly, and allows
the content usage history to be analyzed for sales promotion purposes. This will prepare the way for the
introduction of broadband video delivery services.

1. Introduction
With the recent growth of broadband services,
video content distribution services are expected tohave considerable market potential. Broadband delivery services offering a wide variety of video content
are already beginning to appear. However, there arestill some technical issues such as copyright processing that need to be addressed in these systems, andthere are other strategic problems that need to beresolved such as the distribution of popular broadcast
content via communication media. Unless theseissues can be resolved, video content distribution will
not live up to its promise of being a killer application
for broadband. To overcome the distribution problem,
we must solve the following technical problems toenable the distribution of content via various channels ranging from broadcast media to packages andcommunication media:• Content providers incur higher content management costs for the secondary use of programs andother material.
• It is more expensive to distribute broadcast content
via communication media.
† NTT Cyber Space Laboratories
Yokosuka-shi, 239-0847 Japan
E-mail: tsunakawa.mitsuaki@lab.ntt.co.jp

62• It can also be costly to analyze sales trends to obtaindemand feedback for the content providers.
Recent developments such as the commencementof terrestrial digital broadcasting have given content
providers an incentive to manage their content more
efficiently. In line with this trend, we have developed
a media asset management (MAM) system that
addresses the above problems.
Because existing MAM systems were designed
only to perform effective management of content thatwas stored beforehand, they have some drawbacks:
they lack system scalability, realtime registration ofmetadata is impossible, the schema for metadata is
restricted, and so on. In our MAM system, we havesolved these problems. And in consideration of general usage, we enabled the addition of various kindsof media indexing, further speeded up content searching, and provided sales analysis support functions.
We think that our MAM system can expedite thespread of services that distribute video content viacommunication media.
2. System design
The core functions and the role of our MAM system, which is designed for content management markets aimed at the multimedia development of broadcast content, are shown in Fig. 1. The metadata creNTT Technical Review

Letters

MAM system

Solutions for searchingarchived program content at high speed(intranet system)
Content planners
TV station Aand producers

Service applications
Metadatacreationsystem

Content holder(e.g., TV station)

Metadata
Programs

MAM system
Program material
Sales trends
Solutions for efficiently searchingand distributing programs between
TV stations (B2B)

Metadata
managementsystem

Rightsmanagementsystem

TV

Content delivery system
Program delivery
Broadband network

TV station B

Contentdeliverysystem

Programs

Browsing history,
purchase history

PC

MAM system
Cellularphone

Program editor
Content holder, TV station, or company selling other forms ofmedia or packages

Internet service provider(content delivery business)

ConsumerFig. 1. Role of the MAM system.

ation and management systems have already beendeveloped. They are based on technology developedat NTT Cyber Space Laboratories for a system called“MetaConcierge” [1], which is a platform of toolsthat allow users to quickly access large quantities ofvideo content and search through it with ease. The
MAM system was constructed by integrating a content delivery system (already developed by NTT Laboratories), a rights management system (alreadydeveloped by NTT Laboratories), and service applications (consisting of a graphical user interface anduser applications) into the metadata creation andmanagement systems.
Video content distribution services are chiefly
required to handle the following three types of metadata.
• Content description metadata
Title, summary, keywords, scene information,
copyright information, etc.
• User description metadata
User’s name, address, age, gender, interests, etc.
• Content usage history metadata
Information linking content to users, including
search history and purchase history.
Our MAM system has made it possible to supply
content and service providers with metadata creationand management systems. A metadata creation system is an environment for efficiently creating content
description metadata; a metadata management system is an environment for developing applications
Vol. 2 No. 9 Sep. 2004

that have high-speed searching functions using eachtype of metadata and analyzing the content usage history and sales trend reports.
To keep our MAM system compatible with existingbroadcast content management systems, we madesure that our laboratory studies were conducted whileconsidering applications in a wide variety of fields
including corporate infomercials, educational content, and online museums. We also considered factors
such as the following:• Performance scalability
The system performance can be linearly
increased by using distributed processing and load
control techniques to modify the hardware.
• Continuous remote monitoring/maintenance operation functions
The design allows operations that affect performance and mission-critical work to be carried out
reliably and securely.
3. Advantages of the metadata creation system
3.1 Elimination of metadata bottlenecks
The content description metadata of video content
includes a description of the content and segment
metadata that relates to its constituent scenes (title,summary, keywords, start and end times of the content, etc.). The study group on MPEG-7 [2], which isan international standard for multimedia content
description, is promoting the TV-Anytime platform
63

Letters[3] as a standard for content delivery to a home server based on MPEG-7. Although it is known that theability to add content metadata makes the content
easier to manage and distribute, not much work has
been done on improving the trade-off between thecost and effect associated with this work. This iscalled the “metadata bottleneck”.
The metadata creation system of our MAM incorporates a video indexing system called SceneCabinet[4], developed at NTT Laboratories, that automatically detects and displays events such as scene transitions, camerawork such as zooms and pans, superimposed text/image sections, and sections containing
speech or music. This supports the creation of segment metadata, which has been a time-consuming
process in the past, so it should eliminate the metadata bottleneck. The publication “Standard Technologies” produced by the Japanese Patent Officedescribes NTT’s patents as key technologies in thisfield.

• Client/server implementation of SceneCabinet
We implemented a low-cost metadata creation
environment based on simultaneous parallel creation at multiple workstations and reduced the system scale by sharing resources needed by theengines that perform media analysis.
• Indexing tools with a plug-in architecture
The architecture can be scaled to suit the task
requirements, ranging from large-scale configurations including engines specialized for different
genres to small-scale configurations with just thebasic engine. It is also possible to modify the architecture and introduce/replace engines after the system has been introduced.
• Sequential output of metadata
It is possible to perform realtime indexing while
simultaneously recording broadcast content.

3.2 Recent improvements
In this study, we improved our metadata creation
system (Fig. 2) by incorporating a more comprehensive range of metadata creation support functions(scalable automatic indexing) compatible with the
management of broadcast content. This involved
implementing the following functions based on
established techniques:

4.1 Metadata management search tool
MetaConcierge provides functions for flexible storage and management of content description metadata
based on the international MPEG-7 standard and fordiverse and high-speed searching of this metadata. It
supports various techniques including metadata
searching by genre or keywords, high-speed searching of similar scenes based on their atmosphere or

Remote input ofmetadata(client/serverimplementation)

Content holder(e.g., TV station)
Simultaneously
recorded content

4. Advantages of the metadata management
systemScalable performancebased on distributed processing
Programmaterial content

Metadata sequential
output function

Metadata creation system
Service management tool
Content
description metadata

Service management

Camerawork detection
Superimposed text/image detection
Music detection
Speech detection•••(indexing resultsmetadata)

Indexing tools
Indexing management

Indexing management

Indexing tools
Cut detection

Superimposed text/image detection

Metadatamanagement
system•••Music detection
Speech detection•••Scene transition metadata
Start time 00:12:32
End time 00:14:54(Scene information)

Plug-in architecture fordetection/recognition modules(facilitates addition/replacementof genre-specific high-performanceengines, etc.)

Fig. 2. Functional overview of the metadata creation system.

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Content holder(e.g., TV station)
High-speed metadata
registration functions
Metadatacreation
systemContentdescription
metadata(indexing resultsmetadata)

User (e.g., subsidiary key
station, consumer)
ISP

Metadata
Programs/program material

Metadata
Metadata management system
Programs
Metadata management search tool
Metadata management(recording/editing)

Metadata searchingViewing control

Metadata(content, user)
Free database scheme,content abstraction

Similar image
searching

Scenariocontrol

Metadata analysis tool
Metadata collection
Metadata conversion
Metadata storage
Analysis connection

Collection and analysis/
reporting of user history
by scenario control
Reports

Scalable system
performance compatible
with load balancers andparallel distributed
processing
High-speed functions
for searching programs
and materials using
various types of
metadata

Browsing history,
purchase history
Metadata(history)

Infoviser

Fig. 3. Functional overview of the metadata management system.

color using representative scene images as keys, combination searches that combine the above techniques,
and metadata matching techniques that adapt to circumstances such as the recommendations and viewing restrictions for each user segment. The metadatamanagement search tool of the metadata management
system (Fig. 3) is implemented based on MetaConcierge.
• High-speed metadata searchingThis provides diverse high-speed searching
through a combination of images and keywords
representing a scene. (On its own, the similar image
searching function can search through one million
images in 0.4 s.)• High-speed metadata registration
This provides sequential registration of realtime
indexing results along with simultaneous recordingof broadcast content.
• Free database scheme for content description metadata
Content management is implemented without
relying on any particular metadata format such as
MPEG-7, TV-Anytime, LOM, or J/Meta.
• Content abstraction
The framework is compatible with other types ofcontent besides video (such as still images oraudio).

Vol. 2 No. 9 Sep. 2004

4.2 Metadata analysis tool
Most video content distribution systems tend toconcentrate on the one-way flow of content from thecontent provider to the users. Although metadata canbe used in this direction, the MAM system also
allows metadata to circulate, leading to a framework
for creating new added value. This was implemented
by adding a history management plug-in to the XML(extensible markup language) sharing platform system [1] and controlling the scenario by linking it with
the Infoviser [5] data analysis engine developed in
NTT Cyber Solution Laboratories.
This framework makes it possible to analyze theusers’ video content browsing and purchasing behavior and produce reports of the results of sales trend
analyses based on data mining techniques. It also
makes it possible to provide users with individually
tailored recommendations by using server scripting
tools such as ASP.
5. Development of MAM services
MAM services are ranked as one of the core applications of broadband networks, and they are expected to find their way into various business fields in thefuture (Fig. 4).
(1) Broadcast content
Work has begun on the development of an intranet
system (for use within TV stations) that can build65

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Solution businessMedia distribution business

Intranet business(corporate content management)
B2B business(external content publishing)B2C business(content delivery services)
Online video delivery

MAM service(metadata editing and management)

Broadcast content

Internet advertising

Educational content

Development into awide range ofbusinesses as a corebroadband application

Museums and art galleries•••

Fig. 4. Development of MAM services.

What are the big
stories in home affairs
at the moment?

If this part of town is getting
redeveloped, I wonder what
they’re going to build?

News browsing
Genre□Home affairs□World affairs□Business &economics…

Archive searching- Uproar over birth of humanclone- Tokyo’s resident otter moves
on…
- Construction companies rush
in to redevelopment areas- Are academic standards falling?
…

My Channel
Personalized news (digest)
MoviesLive baseball
Soccer round-up
First priority recently
given to J-league soccer

Right now78
9
Late at night

HDD
HDD: hard disk drive

Fig. 5. Concept of personal video viewing using metadata.

efficient archives from old and new video content andallow this content to be searched at high speed.
Business-to-business (B2B) applications (betweenTV stations) require solutions for efficient program
searching, distribution, and transactions.
As digital broadcast services continue to expand in
the future, they will probably begin to offer interactive TV functions such as allowing users to select andview interesting parts of programs using simple keywords (Fig. 5). For this purpose it will be essential tocreate and manage metadata related to program content, such as keywords and topics. But it will also be
important to minimize the impact of introducing
these features on existing corporate facilities and toconstruct a system that can be introduced incrementally.
(2) Educational content
We are continuing with the development of packages for the integrated management of educational
resources (content) such as teaching materials that lie
scattered around in schools and teaching facilities.
This will allow content to be shared easily among stu66

dents and teachers by such means as searching andbrowsing.
It will eventually become possible to gain qualifications through educational content distributed in thisway. For this purpose we are considering investigating services for comparing the topics covered by different sources of educational content, searching forthe information required by the user, and providing
the user with a summary of this information.
(3) Museums and art galleries
We are investigating the application of this system
to a framework that provides seamless access to awide variety of digital archives at public facilities
such as museums and art galleries at a wide range oflevels from researchers to the general public.
6. Conclusion
This paper has introduced our MAM system. We
have now completed product development of its basic
functions. In the future we plan to broaden this system’s scope to address the needs of the business comNTT Technical ReviewLettersmunity and enhance its commercial benefits.
Mitsuaki Tsunakawa

References
[1]

[2]
[3]
[4]

[5]

M. Tsunakawa, R. Kataoka, and M. Morimoto, “Framework for Supporting Metadata Services,” NTT Technical Review, Vol. 1, No. 3,
pp. 57-61, 2003.
http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/
http://www.tv-anytime.org/
Y. Taniguchi, A. Akutsu, and Y. Tonomura, “PanoramaExcerpts:
Video Cataloging by Automatic Synthesis and Layout of PanoramicImages,” IEICE Trans. on Information and Systems, Vol. E83-D, No.
12, pp. 2039-2046, 2000.
Y. Iizuka, H. Shiohara, T. Iizuka, and S. Isobe, “Automatic Visualization Method for Visual Data Mining,” 2nd Pacific Asia Conferenceon Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD’98), Melbourne, Australia, pp. 171-185, Mar. 1998.

Senior Research Engineer, Open Source Software Computing Project, NTT Cyber Space Laboratories.
He received the B.S. degree in mathematics
from Tsukuba University, Tsukuba, Ibaraki in1990 and joined NTT Communications andInformation Processing Laboratories the sameyear. He has been researching DBMS technology
and the integration of heterogeneous information
sources. He is currently engaged in R&D of
metadata exchange technologies. He is a memberof the Institute of Electronics, Information andCommunication Engineers (IEICE).

Fumikazu Konishi
Senior Research Engineer, Open Source Software Computing Project, NTT Cyber Space Laboratories.
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees inmechanical engineering from Waseda University, Tokyo in 1991 and 1993, respectively. He
then joined NTT Information and Communication Systems Laboratories, where he researchedobject relational database management systems.
He is currently engaged in R&D of realtime database management systems. He is a member of theInformation Processing Society of Japan and theDatabase Society of Japan.

Tadashi Nakanishi
Senior Research Engineer, Human Interaction
Project, NTT Cyber Solution Laboratories.
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electronics from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo in
1982 and 1984, respectively. In 1984, he joined
the Electrical Communication Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation (now NTT), Kanagawa. He was a visiting
researcher at the Robotics Laboratory and Computer Science Department of Stanford University. He has been engaged in R&D of intelligent
tele-monitoring systems based on digital signal
processing and digital content intellectual property management systems utilizing watermarked-ID and metadata. He is a member ofIEICE.

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