Fully automated end-to-end VOD publishing starting with complete content packages to be processed and published

To give an answer, we need to understand the origin of the content and whether it is ready to be published. Based on the answer, we distinguish a fully automated content publishing from a partly manual content aggregation + fully automated publishing. This article describes the fully automated end-to-end process, starting with complete content packages to be processed and published. The following article describes the end-to-end process starting with the content aggregation: Content Aggregation and VOD Preparation and Live Playout end-2-end Solution.

Larger Video On Demand portals are based on the content from multiple sources that either supply content continuously or in bursts. Usually, the required asset set (e.g. video, audio in multiple languages, subtitles in multiple languages, trailer, posters, thumbnails, scrubber boards, descriptive and technical metadata) is well defined. Content required to deliver it a standard form. So far, the theory.

Technical, operational, business or legal reasons might cause asset packages to be formed differently or incomplete. As long as a certain contributor always sends files in a different form, the ingest workflow can handle that and reform to the expected standard form. And to a certain extend, missing essences can be automatically generated or retrieved from existing sources or partner companies.

Once asset packages have been received in the expected form, audiovisual essences can be transcoded, checked in and, upon success, uploaded to the CDN. Pictures can be re-rendered, scrubber boards can be retrieved and stitched and metadata can be reformed. Finally, all such essences and metadata have been uploaded to the CMS for automatic or manual publishing.

It might happen that the audiovisual content changes or pictures and metadata are updated. In these cases, a reprocessing and update publishing takes place.

And finally, once the publishing end date is reached, all expired assets are automatically deleted from the CDN and the CMS catalogue.

The Workflow Manager (WFM) is a central workflow orchestration and fully automatic processing engine. It connects to all processing services. Such services can be located on-premises, in the cloud or contributed by third-party services. As it controls the end-to-end processing, also allows to monitor the progress of the every asset to be published.

All other processing services like file transfer, virus checking, audio processing (e.g. loudness), video processing (e.g. standard conversions), transcoding, subtitling, metadata transformation, CDN and CMS are managed from the Workflow Manager via API calls.