The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG), the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) and Motion Pictures Laboratories, Inc. (MovieLabs) have approved and released four updated supply chain specifications for digital distribution of film and TV.
The three organisations jointly developed and reviewed the new specifications through the Digital Supply Chain Alliance which launched in July.
These updates are designed to expand support for international distribution to ensure all territories receive the right content, while facilitating improved automation among participants in the digital supply chain.
The updates are:
- Common Metadata 2.7 – Substantial new features have been added to the Common Metadata specification, including support for franchises and brands, related works, more sophisticated TV internationalisation, and technical metadata improvements
- Media Entertainment Core 2.8 – The Media Entertainment Core Metadata spec defines the core requirements for transferring metadata from publishers to retailers; MEC has been updated to conform to Common Metadata 2.7
- Media Manifest 1.8 – The Media Manifest spec has also been updated to follow Common Metadata 2.7, as well as adding data to support additional workflow use cases, ability to handle cards in playable sequence, and improved support for TV that reduces the need for territory-specific experiences
- Media Manifest Core 2.0 – Media Manifest Core 2.0 is the targeted core specification based on Media Manifest 1.8 and Common Metadata 2.7. It includes all the improvements from those specifications and adds full support for episodic content (TV)
DEG executive director John Powers said: “The Digital Supply Chain Alliance was created to allow us as an industry to move faster and more efficiently towards standards adoption industrywide. We are happy to demonstrate, with the release of these first specs, that this is successfully happening. This is a meaningful step in keeping up with the pace of change in digital distribution.”
