Asset management involves archiving, retrieving, deleting, and accessing media clips and the associated meta data that describes them. Because the Video Server Toolkit (VST) cache is limited in size, saving media files out to and retrieving files from an archival server is a common practice.
An archive system is a storehouse for information. It often serves multiple applications, such as asset creation, broadcasting, and compositing applications, as shown in Figure 6-1. VST is designed to work with one or more archive systems of the same type.
VST works in conjunction with StudioCentral 2.0 (SC 2.0) to archive media and associated meta data. VST provides a set of asset management commands to interact with the archive.
For a more complete set of asset management tools, use the tools provided by the archive system. For more information about StudioCentral asset management tools, see the StudioCentral documentation.
This following sections describe the configuration of the archive system and the asset management tools you use with VST to interact with that system:
Media clips
Meta data, which contains descriptive information about the media clips
Meta data contains information descriptive of the media clips associated with them. Information about the media clips includes such things as:
Name
Format
Size
Start time
Duration
You use asset management tools to store and retrieve meta data. You might like to know, for example, the run time of a specific media file, or you might like to list the names of the media clips in the archive.
The elements in the archive system are:
VST server
Archive system
Content server
All of these services can run on the same machine, however, it is recommended to keep the archive on separate, networked machines.
The chain of communication when retrieving clips from the archive:
VST asks an archive system to access a media asset.
The archive system contacts the correct content server.
If the content server is different from the machine running VST, the media is copied to the machine running VST.
If the content server is running on the machine running VST, a link to the requested media is created.
Figure 6-2 shows this communication path.
Figure 6-2 shows that VST can work with multiple archives. The servers that contain media content are usually not on the same system as the one running VST; but not necessarily, as shown by Archive Server 3.
VST can work with many archives. The archive system developed by SGI and supported by VST is StudioCentral, version 2.0 or later.
StudioCentral Digital Asset Management System (StudioCentral) is a library of C++ foundation classes that enables you to build multimedia-based applications with digital asset management capabilities.
For more information about StudioCentral, see the StudioCentral Developer's Guide (part number 007-3246-nnn).
Before VST can successfully perform any archiving operation, the following guidelines must be met:
The Informix or Oracle database server should be installed.
The proper StudioCentral 2.0 images should be installed.
All the CAS datamodels should be installed.
The Informix or Oracle database server should be up and running.
Ideally the database server should automatically start up at boot time.
StudioCentral should be properly configured.
At least one StudioCentral content server should be up and running.
Ideally the content server should automatically start up at boot time.
inetd should be configured to accept connection on behalf of the StudioCentral ATS service.
When VST is configured to use a StudioCentral 2.0 archive system, you can use the VST GUI (mcclips) to:
Locate clips. See “Locating a Clip in the StudioCentral 2.0 Archive System”
Bring a clip into VST from the archive. See “Bringing In a New Clip From the Archive System”
Store a VST clip in the archive. See “Using the Put Clip to Archive Window”
The remainder of this section shows how to use the VST GUI, mcpanel, to accomplish these tasks. However, you can also use the MVCP commands, explained in Table 6-1, to perform these tasks and others.
Table 6-1. Archive-Related MVCP Commands
Command | Description |
|---|---|
AFND | Locate a clip by name in an available StudioCentral 2.0 archive system. |
AFNG | Locate a pending or in-progress get-from-archive command for a clip. |
AGET | Retrieve a clip from a StudioCentral 2.0 archive system. |
ALSG | List the get-from-archive operations that are waiting or being processed. |
ALSP | List the put-to-archive operations that are waiting or being processed. |
APUT | Saves a clip to the archive system. |
To learn more about using MVCP commands, see Appendix A.
 | Note: Only version 2.0 (or greater) of StudioCentral works with VST. Archival tasks require this application to be running. |
To display a list of media assets on StudioCentral, you must log into StudioCentral and use its tools.
To locate a clip in a StudioCentral 2.0 archive system, follow these steps:
Choose Archive > Find from the menu bar in mcpanel or from mcclips. The Find Clip in Archive window, as shown in Figure 6-3, appears.
Enter the clip's name, which corresponds to the value of the archived asset's ClipId attribute.
Click the Find button.
To determine whether the clip was found, see if it appears in the VST log.
To bring in a new clip from the archive system, follow these steps:
Choose Archive > Get New from the menu bar. The Get Clip from Archive window, as shown in Figure 6-4, appears.
Enter the clip's name, which is the value of the archived asset's ClipId attribute.
Click the Get button.
A Get command can fail when there is no port available on the VST system that supports the format of the clip.
| Note: If the clip exists in more than one archive system, the clip is brought in from the first archive system in which it is found. The clip can be brought in from a specified archive system using the MVCP command AGET. |
To write a clip to a the StudioCentral 2.0 archive system, follow these steps:
Do one of the following:
Select the clip in the Clip Manager window and then choose Archive > Put from the menu bar.
If the clip information window for the clip is displayed, click the Put Archive button in the information window.
The Put Clip to Archive window, as shown in Figure 6-5, appears.
Click the Put button to write the clip to the StudioCentral 2.0 archive system.
For more information about the StudioCentral 2.0 archive system, see the Video Server Toolkit Installation and Administration Guide .
| Note: The clip is written to the first StudioCentral 2.0 archive system. That is, if there is more than one StudioCentral 2.0 archive system, the clip is written to the first one. The clip can be put into an StudioCentral 2.0 archive system other than the first one by using the MVCP command APUT. |
Hardware, network, and StudioCentral failures can contribute to failures in storing clips in an archive. The failure. however, may not be reported. You might, for example, be able to AFND a clip on the archive because there is a “ghost” of the clip there, but not AGET it because the clip is really not there. If you find that you cannot AGET a clip, you know you need to use the Put Clip to Archive Window (or APUT) again to store the clip.