Bryson Jones
Bryson Jones (aka the “High-Def Cowboy’) is a self-confessed techno-junkie from
Los Angeles. He fronts country rock bands The Snakehandlers and the
Sweethearts of the Rodeo All-star Band. As a media asset management guru
his passion in life is organising chaos in the post-production environment. Jones
provided delegates at the recent Screen Africa Production + Technology
Conference in Johannesburg valuable insight on how to avoid confusion in
managing tapeless workflows.
Bryson Jones’ life experiences have shown that there really is little difference
between wrangling livestock on a ranch and managing data in the tapeless
work environment. Just like cattle have numbered ear tags and branding for
identification in the field, everything recorded on card based cameras or
produced in non-linear edit suites have metadata (data about data), which can
be used to manage the media and keep track of it.
“No matter what you’re moving, whether it’s media assets or cows, they’re your
power,’ said Jones.
Working in Los Angeles on a number of Hollywood reality shows such as
Celebrity Rehab and Destination Truth, where hundreds of hours of footage had
to be logged and tracked, Jones realises the importance of asset management
“When you see a file marked untitled 1 on your hard drive, what is it?’
The importance of using metadata can turn your untitled 1 shot (relabelled Lion
Kill) into a usable asset that can be sold because you now know what it is.
Jones emphasised that in traditional tape based workflows the raw material
was kept as an archival copy of the footage.
“In the “old days’ you had a tape and you knew there was about an hour of
material on it and it was pretty manageable; now you can have hundreds of
hours of files on a single hard drive. So drives have become the new tape, which
is not something they were ever meant to be. Therefore we need something to
give us order,’ he stated.
Definition
Jones calls digital asset management the management of tasks and decisions
surrounding the ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and
distribution of digital assets. “I’ve found that smaller companies are paralysed
when it comes to digital asset management,’ said Jones.
He emphasised that mid-sized productions need to allocate time in their
workflows to allow files to exit gracefully and to know where they go and what’s
in them.
“Where does one start the process? The first step is to employ naming
conventions – a show code, a date of shooting, a camera ID and a reel number.
Basically no more files called “untitled 1’ are allowed to sit on your hard drive.
Secondly, create coherent folder structures that are repeatable so that when
you can go somewhere you can find things. These are obvious things that
people are just not doing.
“Next collect metadata about these files and make sure that your data is
exportable and transportable. Start small and have someone in your company
take ownership of the process. This is very important as editors and producers
claim they have no time to do this,’ stressed Jones.
Sufficient storage
In doing research for his Screen Africa presentation, one thing that astounded
Jones was the attitude of most local production companies in South Africa
towards storage. “Don’t skimp on storage and if you can’t afford shared storage
to start with, then at least have enough of the inexpensive storage to see the
project through to archiving,’ he advised.
Clients today often implement economically driven solutions using flash or hard
disk media that require sharing and re-use of the footage. These “stitch in time’
solutions unfortunately do not provide efficiency for long term archiving on
permanent media.
“In terms of archiving it’s very important to have two copies of everything,
preferably in different locations. My first law of digital data is that if data doesn’t
exist in two places, it doesn’t exist,’ said Jones.
He advocates tape based systems such as LTO 5. This is a format introduced in
2010 with data capacity of 1.5TB per cartridge and data transfer rates up to 140
MB/s. LTO 5 features LTFS (Linear Tape File System). This file system makes
accessing stored files look similar to accessing files stored on other forms of
storage media such as disk or removable flash drives; therefore it is easy to use
because it looks familiar to us. LTO 5 has a shelf life of 35 to 50 years.
Jones’ visit to South Africa was an eye opener not only for himself but for those
who had the opportunity to spend time with him.
“Johannesburg is much like Los Angeles in many ways – the landscape, the
climate. I really enjoy the people too and it seems like there is so much potential
for growth here. It’s an exciting place to be right now,’ he concluded.
