The new guide is a primer on the use of ontologies and other semantic web technologies within a modern media landscape characterized by the movement of workflows into the cloud.

The guide explains media ontologies in simple terms, provides a useful discussion of mapping data across different information systems, and offers practical examples of how media organizations are using semantic web technologies to bring greater efficiency to real-world workflows.

Understanding and managing the complex relationships between all elements in the content life cycle — from scripts to assets to the tasks being performed across media workflows — require richer metadata. An ontology provides a framework needed to support application and service integration, asset and content management, and search and discovery, among other functions.

Recognizing a need for greater awareness around this topic, MovieLabs, the EBU, and SMPTE collaborated to provide the industry with an explanation of media-specific ontologies, the ontologies already in existence, where they are applicable, and how to deploy them. The resulting document presents media organizations with a starting point for the move to the cloud and toward microservice-based deployments that integrate semantic technologies.