UNIVERSAL UNIQUE IDENTIFIERS IN MOVIE AND TELEVISION SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

AN ENTERTAINMENT IDENTIFIER REGISTRY (EIDR)

WHITEPAPER

OCTOBER 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................................... 2 THE NEED FOR UNIQUE IDENTIFIERS ................................................................................................................................................ 2 BENEFITS OF UNIQUE IDENTIFIER SYSTEM ......................................................................................................................................... 3 WHAT MAKES AN IDEAL IDENTIFIER SYSTEM ..................................................................................................................................... 4 INTRODUCING THE ENTERTAINMENT IDENTIFIER REGISTRY (EIDR) ..................................................................................... 5 OBJECTIVES ................................................................................................................................................................................. 5 THE EIDR MODEL ........................................................................................................................................................................ 5 HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS ............................................................................................................................................................. 5 WHY CHOOSE EIDR? ................................................................................................................................................................... 6 EIDR ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNANCE ......................................................................................................................................... 7 MEMBERSHIP TYPES ..................................................................................................................................................................... 8 BECOMING A MEMBER ................................................................................................................................................................. 8

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Digital technology transformed the Movie and Television industry in fundamental ways. These changes have heralded exciting new opportunities for all industry participants but have also created some challenges. There has been an explosion in assets that need to be packaged, syndicated, distributed and tracked as they move from creation to consumption across a complex supply chain before entering the global media marketplace. Making the most of the new opportunities afforded by the digital revolution requires, among other things, the standardization and adoption of a universal unique identifier system for digital media assets. This whitepaper provides an overview of such a system . The Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) was created by a coalition of industry leaders to provide the foundational namespace essential to making supply chain interactions more efficient and enabling newer business models. EIDR offers an inexpensive mechanism for uniquely identifying the complete range of audiovisual assets relevant to commerce including micro-assets such as clips and newer types of objects such as encodings. As an application of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) standard, EIDR is built to be interoperable with other identifier systems such as ISAN, ISRC and Ad-ID, and aims to provide a core service to vendors who wish to develop extended offerings such as rights management and extended metadata services. The EIDR data model can be readily extended to cover new and emerging objects and relationships as the industry evolves over time. EIDR is an industry non-profit organization open to Movie and Television industry participants that wish to be part of this initiative.

EIDR Whitepaper

October 2010

INTRODUCTION
The emergence of digital technologies has transformed every aspect of the professional audiovisual supply chain from content creation and post-production to distribution and consumption and created new opportunities for all stakeholders. With these opportunities also come challenges, such as more complex value chain interactions and an explosion in the number of assets relevant to commerce. Table 1: Opportunities and Challenges

Shift from traditional linear production process to a digital non-linear and iterative workflow Availability of inexpensive tools for capturing, editing and enhancing high quality digital video Increase in low-cost distribution options via Internet, IPTV, mobile, wireless A proliferation of consumption devices, delivery models and formats Many more content creators are now able to produce and sell their content Content owners have many more avenues for monetizing their assets including library or long-tail assets that until now could not be costeffectively distributed. A new category of supply chain service providers, specializing in digital media management, distribution, and archival, offers content owners the opportunity to outsource non-core functions to lower operating costs. Consumers have wider range of choices in content, the delivery method, the timing and mode of consumption The industry supply chain is much more complex with specialized service providers offering outsourced expertise and shared services platforms in various stages of the value chain. As content owners try to meet the differentiated needs of consumers worldwide, they create a greater number of localized or sub-titled versions, specialty edits in a multitude of formats targeted at various consumption devices, and new media versions of assets. This has resulted in an exponential increase in media assets that move across the supply chain.

Recent developments

Resulting opportunities

Challenges

THE NEED FOR UNIQUE IDENTIFIERS

In an effort to make the most of the new opportunities and address the challenges, major content producers have redesigned workflows to make them content-centric, putting in place digital media management infrastructure to help streamline operations. While these efforts support reducing inefficiencies, more can be done. The industry needs to extend the supply chain management beyond the organization to include partners and vendors. A key requirement for such an

EIDR Whitepaper

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industry-wide supply chain management system is standardizing and adopting universal identifiers for assets and a global registry for the identifiers.

BENEFITS OF UNIQUE IDENTIFIER SYSTEM

The benefits of adopting a standardized identifier system include increase in supply chain efficiencies and enabling value added services.

INCREASES SUPPLY CHAIN EFFICIENCIES

Universal unique identifiers play a crucial role in improving supply chain efficiencies by: Eliminating costly translations between proprietary ID systems, Lowering risks of misidentification caused by duplication and lack of ID uniqueness, Improving internal asset tracking, Providing greater efficiency and accuracy in tracking external transactions between commercial entities that do not share internal databases, Improving ability to match assets and metadata from different databases, service providers, or metadata suppliers.

ENABLES VALUE ADDED SERVICES

A widely adopted identifier system with the appropriate programmatic interfaces supports the creation of new value-added services. Examples of such enhanced services include: More granular and more accurate rights tracking and reporting down to the level of clips, composites and encodings, Simplified universal search and discovery, Detailed consumption metrics for individual assets.

Other industries have responded to similar supply chain and tracking requirements by implementing and widely adopting unique identifier schemes. Numbers and strings that identify a unique item or entity are widely used in workflows and distribution channels in many commercial areas ranging from product identifiers (UPC) and books (ISBN) to music (ISRC, Grid) and advertising (Ad-ID). However, the movie and television industry has not yet adopted a broad-based unique ID system. This is at least in part due to the lack of an identifier system capable of uniquely identifying the wide range of asset types while meeting other critical business requirements.

EIDR Whitepaper

October 2010

WHAT MAKES AN IDEAL IDENTIFIER SYSTEM

In order to deliver the promised benefits and gain wide-spread adoption, a unique ID system must meet a minimum set of basic requirements.

Table 2: Unique ID Requirements

Requirement Coverage

Definition The system must be able to generate unique identifiers for all types of valid audiovisual content types including the emerging, high-volume categories such as clips. It must support a wide variety of relationships and hierarchies that can exist between assets. It must be readily extensible to accommodate new types of assets that may emerge as the industry evolves. It must be able to handle very large volumes of registrations and perform reliably in order to be integrated into automated workflows. It must make economic sense for the entire ecosystem, even at very high-volume scale. It must support and be able to interoperate with other existing IDs and databases. It must support innovation by focusing first on a unique namespace and identifying metadata, enabling commercial providers to offer new and existing value-added metadata and other services on top of the system without restriction. It must be broadly available and provide easy search and query access to all commercial ecosystem participants.

Flexibility

Extensibility

Scalability

Cost-effectiveness Interoperability Value-added services

Accessibility

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October 2010

INTRODUCING THE ENTERTAINMENT IDENTIFIER REGISTRY (EIDR) OBJECTIVES

The Entertainment Identifier Registry provides the a comprehensive universal identifier system that meets these requirements for all types of movie and television assets ranging from top level titles that represent the original work or intellectual property to various embodiments of the work down to physical SKUs and digital distributions. EIDR provides the foundational namespace required to enable efficient supply chain interactions. It does not replace or compete with providers of value added services, such as extended metadata or rights tracking. Rather, it is designed to facilitate and support providers of these value-added services.

THE EIDR MODEL

The registry assigns a unique universal identifier for all registered assets. EIDR is an opaque ID with all information about the registered asset stored in the central registry. Its structure consists of a standard registry prefix, the unique suffix for each asset and a check digit. The suffix of an asset ID is of the form XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-C, where X is a hexadecimal digit and C is the ISO 7064 Mod 37, 36 check character.

EIDR is purely functional without any implication of ownership, making it persistent enough to remain the same despite any change in control or ownership of the underlying asset. The Registry requires minimal metadata necessary to guarantee uniqueness for the full range of asset types.

HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS

The registry receives and processes registration requests from registrants. Users and applications can look-up and search the registry. Registrants and lookup users can use the web user interface or web services API to interact with the registry.

Figure 1: Entertainment Identifier Registry diagram

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Registrants Submit Assets to the Registry

A registrant submits objects for registration along with core metadata and information such as the type of object and relationship to other objects. The registrant could be a content owner, an aggregator, post-production house or any other entity authorized to register objects.

Registry Assigns EIDR After Verifying Uniqueness

EIDR uses a sophisticated de-duplication system to insure that the object submitted to the registry has not already been registered while allowing the registration of similar and related objects. The centralized registry structure guarantees the uniqueness of objects being registered. If no duplicate object exists, the registry generates an EIDR for the object and stores the new EIDR and the corresponding metadata in the registry.

Lookup users can search the Registry

The Registry provides both a web-based UI and web-services APIs to enable a user or application to search the registry using various search criteria. Developers can use the APIs to integrate the registry features with their applications and automated workflows.

WHY CHOOSE EIDR?

The following key characteristics of EIDR make it an ideal unique identifier system for the movie and television industry.

SUPPORTS WIDE RANGE OF ASSETS AND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THEM

EIDR has been specifically designed to address a critical need for a universal ID system that encompasses the entire range of asset types which are relevant to the supply chain from the abstract title that represents the most basic concept of the work to various types of assets that are derived from the basic work down to clips. The Registry assigns EIDRs for the full range of movie and television asset types including: Feature films TV shows, TV series, seasons and episodes Short films Promotional material (trailers) Interactive material

At the most basic level, an EIDR is registered for a work. EIDRs for new objects can be derived from it or associated with a previously registered object. Each object is referred to by its EIDR and has metadata associated with it. Some example levels are: Basic objects from which inheritance flows, such as a movie, series, or TV show Derivative and related assets, such as edits, language versions, clips, and trailers Instances of an asset, or manifestations which include encoding information Composite works, such as mashups or sequences of clips Adjunct material, such as alternate content

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EXTENSIBLE TO MEET FUTURE NEEDS

The first version of Registry will support a prioritized list of workflow use cases in the supply chain. However, EIDR is built on a flexible data model that can be easily expanded to support additional use cases as more supply chain participants across the globe adopt the Registry and integrate its use with their workflows. The Registry maintains a roadmap for enhancements informed by the needs of the industry and will periodically release updated versions to meet these needs.

INTEROPERABLE WITH OTHER IDENTIFIER SYST EMS

There are other ID systems in use in the supply chain for identifying specific subset of asset types supported by EIDR, such as UPC for physical assets. In addition, major content owners and metadata suppliers have developed their own proprietary ID schemes. To support easy workflow integration, EIDR can include alternate IDs at registration and use the alternate IDs for queries and searches. EIDR supports making alternate identifiers fully actionable so that they are equivalent to a native EIDR in the context of the registry. As an application of the DOI system, EIDR has been designed from the start to support interoperability between different identifiers, registries, and repositories, and cross-referencing of other identifers and making those references actionable is a core capability of the system. This feature is also critical to enabling other service providers to build new offerings such as extended metadata services, rights tracking, etc.

LOW COST AND FAVORABLE TERMS OF USE

EIDR is designed to be cost-effective for large-scale use and provides an inexpensive mechanism for tracking micro-assets such as clips and encodings and combinations. With a cost-recovery business structure, EIDR will provide IDs at very low costs. Once issued, EIDRs will be available without restriction for subsequent use in commercial or other transactions, including in value-added metadata services. EIDR permits partners to take a snapshot of the Registry and mirror it internally to meet their own business and technical needs.

OPEN PLATFORM FOR VALUE-ADDED SERVICE PROVIDERS

Developers who wish to offer new services or adapt existing services to take advantage of EIDR can use public web-services APIs to do so. EIDR aims to provide a foundation for a wide array of services and business models without bias. To this end, it maintains a policy of openness and neutrality toward all service providers regardless of whether they are non-profit or for-profit.

EIDR ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNANCE

EIDR was conceived, designed and built by key stakeholders in the movie and television industry including major content owners, post production houses, Multi-System Operators (MSOs), retailers and other service providers. It is an independent non-profit supported by member fees. Membership in the registry is open to any business entity that is part of the industry. The fee structure is tiered and based on type of membership, extent of usage and size of the member company.

EIDR Whitepaper

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MEMBERSHIP TYPES LOOKUP USER

Offers both UI-based as well as programmatic web-based interface to query and search the registry as well as mirror it for private use. This membership is appropriate for value-added service providers as well as supply chain participants who need to lookup EIDRs but do not need to register assets with EIDR.

REGISTRANT
Provides the ability to register assets as well as lookup and search the registry either via web UI or programmatically via API. This is aimed at content owners, post-production houses and other vendors and suppliers involved in enhancing, packaging, syndicating and distributing content.

PROMOTER
Intended for organizations wishing to actively participate in the development and governance of the registry. Promoters get a seat on the advisory board, eligibility for board membership, voting rights and all the benefits of a registrant at the highest tier.

BECOMING A MEMBER
If your organization is interested in becoming a member of EIDR, please contact us at info@eidr.org

EIDR Whitepaper

October 2010