A new freely available software programme could open up proprietary media asset management (MAM) systems so that they can be accessed and analysed by third parties.

Initiated by the Computer Vision laboratory at Kingston University, OpenFARM acts as a bridge between the databases of MAM systems and independently developed software. The aim is to allow for quicker creation of software plug-ins that help broadcasters to search large audio and video files.

“At the moment, there is a big gap between the people who write analysis tools and the vendors of MAM systems,” said Filipe Martins, OpenFARM lead software engineer.

“It is often too expensive for MAM vendors to rewrite their own software for every request they receive. OpenFARM permits any broadcaster, developer or research body to derive particular information from a MAM and implement
it in less than a day.”

Such information can be used to extract scene cuts, text, silence, laughter, facial recognition or specific objects, logos and events.

MAM vendor Pharos has already integrated OpenFARM into its Mediator platform, with Harris due to follow suit.

MTV has expressed interest in an OpenFARM-based swear word detector.