MLB scores a DAM slam

Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball, has implemented a new system for editing and managing its growing collection of professional baseball audio and video footage.

MLBAM, which runs mlb.com--the official Web site of Major League Baseball--as well 30 individual team sites, has chosen Open Text Artesia for Digital Asset Management to help edit, manage, prepare and customize its game video for distribution. The Web site offers the opportunity to download digital files and build personalized baseball libraries using features such as "baseball on demand," which provides highlights, condensed games and video box scores to registered users.

Open Text says it worked with Sun Microsystems, leveraging Sun's expertise with networks and Web environments, to deliver a single access point for all of MLB's rich digital media and underlying metadata. With the Artesia solution, MLBAM can reduce the amount of time that editorial video producers spend preparing linear video feeds for the customized video products that mlb.com offers. Official game video, sent directly from baseball parks across the country, is fed to MLBAM video producers who then use the digital asset media (DAM) technology for real-time access to video in a non-linear format.

"Using the solution allows us to quickly and efficiently manipulate the huge amount of digital feeds that result from MLB game coverage," says Justin Shaffer, VP and chief architect for mlb.com. "In addition, the technology from Open Text and Sun Microsystems is robust enough to provide us with expanded editing and archiving tools under one user interface, which is important since we want to avoid placing additional burdens on our team of video editors."

According to a recent press release from Open Text, mlb.com expects to complete the integration of its technology by the All-Star break this summer.