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View from the Front Lines of the Digital Supply Chain
By
Jun 6, 2007, 19:03

The home entertainment supply chain actually begins well before the disc is stamped, packaged and shipped to retail.  For many studios, the first step begins in an office building in Burbank, California, where Deluxe Digital Studios begins the process of creating the ancillary materials and preparing the master assets for disc replication or download.

Rob Seidel is the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Deluxe Digital Studios, the home entertainment software division of Deluxe, where he manages the hectic and constantly changing process of developing, authoring, transcoding, meta-tagging and formatting home entertainment for the masses. His group employs 800 full-time employees and operates facilities in Burbank, Moosic (Pennsylvania), Montreal, London, Florence and Bangalore, providing digital services for product lines including DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray and an ever-widening number of electronic distribution platforms.  Services include bonus material development and interface design, video editing and compression, audio mastering and encoding, a range of content localization services, authoring and software development, optical disc mastering and small volume disc replication for runs of 40,000 discs or less.  The company also employs 2,200 language translators around the world.  And, check discs created in their Burbank headquarter facility never have to leave the premises as an independent testing company, Testronic Labs, is conveniently located in the same building. 

Each content delivery format has its own challenges, he explains, though Deluxe is evolving a new digital entertainment workflow that is designed to work on all products in parallel, including all worldwide versions of those products, utilizing an end-to-end supply chain (from creative services to worldwide content localization through all the technical production steps up to the point of mass replication or electronic distribution). 

 "Our business model is to tightly couple the individual processes required throughout the home entertainment software supply chain," he explains. "From a chalkboard view, we start with a single set of source masters and assets and we transform them into high quality consumer products for all worldwide territories.  The challenges that lie ahead are consistently voiced by our customers - distribution windows will continue to shorten across all product lines, piracy prevention measures must increase, and home entertainment product complexity will continue to rise.  Our integrated supply chain model is how we're addressing these concerns with real solutions."  
Two of the most significant changes in the home entertainment landscape are the growth of digital distribution and the introduction of web-connected HD DVD and Blu-ray players. 

To help focus on these opportunities, Deluxe brought in industry veteran, Todd Collart, as Senior Vice President of New Technology (Deluxe Digital Studios).  His responsibilities will include the company's new technology initiatives including Blu-ray, HD DVD, electronic distribution and network services), R&D and intellectual property development.  To date, his team has shipped over 700 Blu-ray and HD DVD projects and well over 10,000 digital video files for electronic distribution.

The proliferation of web portals offering video content is the challenge on the digital download side of the business, Collart explains: "There are so many portals and formats out there, each requiring different versions of metadata, codecs and language configurations.  In order to produce these files cost effectively, we automated much of the process with custom tools.  For example, we collect a very wide set of metadata, store the entire set in our database and then provide conversion tools that output metadata files tailored to each portal's specification.  We also built a suite of capture, conversion and QC tools."

In the Blu-ray and HD DVD areas, studio marketing divisions are trying to differentiate their products, while exploring and creating the new format possibilities.  "Disc and feature complexity is significantly on the rise and advanced features, like network connectivity and downloadable content to players, are changing the model and workflow completely", Collart explains.

"The back-end infrastructure to support online connectivity in these players is very complicated.  Disc content and the consumer experience will be dynamic and can change after distribution.  The upside value-add potential for studios and consumers is huge, but the supply chain impact for digital production companies like Deluxe is just as huge.  This has to be well thought-out and addressed with an enterprise level solution, one that allows the studios to manage the process, one that strongly considers the consumer experience, and one that will be around for 10+ years."

Rob Seidel and Todd Collart will be discussing the realities of this process and the efforts that Deluxe is underwriting to integrate this workflow for a growing array of product lines (including portals) as part of a day-two seminar at Entertainment Supply Chain Academy on June 28 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.


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