Third Party Applications September 6, 2005 at 3:12 am

Digital asset management

I wanted to have a consolidated list where myself and others can conveniently find digital asset management solutions. Specifally at the moment, this list excludes records management and web content management software. The software listed varies between business- and enterprise-class scalability and flexibility. Clearly amateur or small-scale solutions are excluded.
They’re organised into (a) those that run Mac server and client-side, and (b) those with Mac clients only. The product name, not company name, is listed.

Only Mac OS X is considered. If a DAM only has OS 9 support, then they don’t count.

====MAC SERVER AND CLIENT====
MediaBeacon http://www.mediabeacon.com/
Cumulus http://www.canto.com/
Portfolio http://www.extensis.com
Xinet http://www.xinet.com/
Image Portal X http://netx2.netx.net/
Optix http://www.mindwrap.com/products/optix.html
Creative Manager http://www.creative-manager.com (appears to be production management but does include DAM)

====MAC CLIENT ONLY=====
North Plains http://www.northplains.com
Chuckwalla http://www.chuckwalla.com
Documentum http://www.documentum.com/products/glossary/digital_asset_manager.htm
Digital Storage Manager http://www.jobmanager.com/products/
Active Media http://www.clearstorysystems.com
MediaBin http://www.interwoven.com/products/dam/

==== MORE RESEARCH REQUIRED ====
Artesia Teams appears to only have an OS 9 client. http://www.artesia.com/html/creative_client.html

Any others I’ve missed?

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  • Alien Brain
    http://www.nxn-software.com/
    Windows Server, Cross-platform client

  • Hows about an OSS solution?
    http://www.dspace.org/ – MIT and HP

    any others?
    d

    “Where can I get some DAM bait?” – Randy Quaid Vegas Vacation

  • Also don’t forget Gallery II at http://gallery.sourceforge.net, which is well on its way to becoming an Open-Source DAM. While it’s nice that there’s a list of DAM solutions on this site, they are all commercial. What especially irks me is the inclusion of Creative-Manager which just stinks (It has IIS on the back-end) and had DAM capabilities that are much worse than Gallery. Gallery supports user-defined metadata, postcript rasterization, import of directory hierarchies, an image shopping cart that prerves directory structure, advanced permissions, watermarking, and much much more. It’s well worth a look where image-browsing takes precedence and workflow integration isn’t a big priority–it can save hundreds of thousands of dollars!

  • • Alien Brain does look very good indeed.

    • DSpace looks good too, although I couldn’t find an explicit statement
    about it running on Mac OS X server, but did find installation notes on one of
    its components on OS X. Its fair to assume its client would run on a Mac
    browser.

    • Gallery looks useful, but I would not call it a DAM. It’s a photo manager,
    albeit a very good one. Worth looking at though, because it’d be ideal for
    some purposes.

    • Opix looks excellent. Says its Mac OS X server and client compatible too.

    • North Plains: I’ve been informed (but not verified) that North Plains is now
    beta testing their product running on Mac OS X (on XServes/XRAIDs). They
    are no longer only a Mac client.

    • Artesia, I’m informed, now has a Mac OS X client (they just hadn’t
    updated their web site screenshots from OS 9), which has plugins for
    InDesign and Quark. Haven’t verified this myself.

    Any others?

    • This is an excellent list. However, so many of these products are geared
      toward the print and web industry. Would any of these DAM solutions fit
      into a small graphics and television design boutique’s budget? Has anybody
      done a compare/contrast of core features for these systems? Price,
      application integration, production management, supported media?

      For my purposes, a DAM that allows check in/out of media associated with
      After Effects and/or Final Cut projects would be VERY useful. Preview of
      QuickTimes and thumbnails of stills of all varieties. Online client approvals
      and production management would be plusses.

      I’m doing the research, but from what I can tell everything is absurdly priced
      for the budget conscious and marketed toward the enterprise systems.

      Would Adobe Bridge qualify as a DAM?

      Wish we could afford a system!

    • Fox,

      in what way is Gallery II lacking that it does not qualify as a DAM? I’d like to know why you included a very lame IIS-based product like Creative Manager as a DAM, but think Gallery II is ***just*** a photo manager, when in fact it supports:

      all raster formats
      Illustrator EPS
      Photoshop EPS
      Photoshop PSD
      PDF
      MS Office Documents
      (Any just about anything else via Mime type ident)

      With a little tweaking, we were able to integrate Adobe XMP, advanced search, searching within text files, spreadsheets, word docs, and PDFs.

      Please let me know where you draw the line!

  • This is an excellent list. However, so many of these products are geared
    toward the print and web industry. Would any of these DAM solutions fit
    into a small graphics and television design boutique’s budget? Has anybody
    done a compare/contrast of core features for these systems? Price,
    application integration, production management, supported media?

    For my purposes, a DAM that allows check in/out of media associated with
    After Effects and/or Final Cut projects would be VERY useful. Preview of
    QuickTimes and thumbnails of stills of all varieties. Online client approvals
    and production management would be plusses.

    I’m doing the research, but from what I can tell everything is absurdly priced
    for the budget conscious and marketed toward the enterprise systems.

    Would Adobe Bridge qualify as a DAM?

    Wish we could afford a system!

  • Both http://www.wavecorp.com and http://www.pine.dk looked unprofessional to me; they
    didn’t appear to be from polished and rigorous companies.

    As for DAM in film, post-production and TVC – it is a different world. Here are a
    two broadcast, high-end players:

    http://www.gallery.co.uk/
    http://www.ardendo.com/

    And here is one afforable option:
    http://www.mediaboardone.com/

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