Content owners need to move away from “digital islands” towards fully fledged asset management systems, according to Avid’s director of media enterprise Alan Hoff.

“The only way to drive efficiencies and manage all the assets, file types and deliveries without hiring a lot more people is to go truly asset management-based,” he said.

He gave the example of Mad Men producer AMC, which produced 333 tapes as well as airline, hotel, awards, VoD, Amazon and iTunes versions of the drama for one series.

“These were disparate disconnected elements so it was easy to lose track of an asset,” said Hoff.

AMC has since moved to what he described as “a classic supply chain”. “What was important was for them to ingest once and create a master format from which all subsequent deliverables could be derived, with a workflow which could spit out all the different versions they needed.”