What is a Mezzanine?

A mezzanine can be thought of as a piece of footage that is an ersatz or inferior representation of a higher quality piece of footage. 

The mezzanine is typically much smaller in size than the principal, higher quality footage. 

It is often desirable to make use of the mezzanine on a temporary basis until such time that it can be replaced/superseded by the principal footage.

NOTE: Until the principal file is ingested, exports and hi-res delivery will not be available as Curator will only be aware of the Mezzanine file.

NOTE: Additional costs may apply in order for this feature to become available.

Prerequisites

In order to configure a mezzanine in Curator:

• You must be using Curator 3.3 or higher
• You must have Curator Connect Unified ingest configured.

If you do not have the prerequisites, you will be required to upgrade your system and migrate to Unified ingest. There is documentation available for both to be carried out.

It is also assumed you are using S3HiResPath as the metadataname to report where the HiRes files are located.

Required MediaStores and Workflows

To begin the installation steps, you will need to import the following MediaStores:

NOTE: Process Engine now has a MediaStore import option within the ‘MediaStores’ tab, download the below files and import them as required.

(These have been attached. Click below to download)

MEZZANINE-HIRESPATH-METADATA.json

MEZZANINE-STICKERID-METADATA.json

SCAVENGE-MEZZANINE-POST-INGEST.json

You will also be required to import the following workflows into Process Designer.

(These have been attached. Click below to download )

PEA - Annotate Asset List from CC Manifest.xml

PEA - Convert Asset List to Ingest XML.xml

Once all have been added, head your CURATORCONNECT-PLACEHOLDER MediaStore, ensure that the key UpdateMatchMetadata exists
with a value OriginalPath||StickerId:{MezzanineStickerId}  marked against it.

Configuration in Curator System Administrator

To arrange for Curator Connect to perform extra work that will try and support forming associations between mezzanines and principals, the Curator Connect user will need to turn on a boolean switch (if it is present) in the metadata view that they are filling in within Curator Connect's Add Metadata stage/section.

The details concerning the boolean switch can be configured using CSA.

In the Configuration section of Curator System Administrator (CSA), with Curator Connect selected from the first dropdown, and the relevant workgroup selected, there is a new section titled Mezzanine Association Facilities. Within that section is a field named Enabler Metadata Name. That field should be filled in with the name of a boolean metadata name that will control whether to use mezzanine association facilities, and then any metadata views that want to offer the ability to turn on mezzanine association facilities should include that metadata name so that the user will be presented with a boolean switch.

For example, create and then use a new boolean type metadata name such as MezzanineAssociationFacilities with Display name as Associate Mezzanines as the default in the Enabler Metadata Name field. 

To arrange for Curator Connect to perform extra work that will try and support forming associations between mezzanines and principals, the Curator Connect user will need to turn on the above configured boolean switch (if it is present) in the metadata view that they are filling in within Curator Connect's Add Metadata stage/section.

Below is a screenshot annotated with coloured ellipses to help give an idea how various bits of CSA configuration relate/contribute to getting the boolean switch to be present when the Curator Connect user enters information into a destination's metadata view:

In this example, a Stand Together Content Destination has been added to the CSA configuration for the workgroup with an associated Metadata View of  ST_ContentView, enabling the boolean switch to appear in Curator Connect.

Business Rules for the structural formatting of Mezzanine material on disk/card (prior to uploading with Curator Connect)

Attached are some files which can be used for Mezzanine ingests for testing purposes.

Click  here to download.

Making associations between potential "mezzanine" and "principal" material requires business rules. 

Rather than provide a means to specify business rules through configuration, we have opted to try and avoid the need for configuration by hardcoding an implicit business rule:

If a folder contains a lone piece of footage that is a solitary file (i.e. not a camera card) and the name of the folder starts with the prefix "Mezzanine_of_" then we will look to search a sibling folder whose name is the same except without the "Mezzanine_of_" prefix for the principal footage.

e.g. If the following folder contained a lone piece of footage that was a solitary file then it would be classed as a "mezzanine":
\\mynetworkshare\subdirA\Mezzanine_of_MyVideo

Then one would infer that the following folder should be searched for a lone piece of footage that is either a single solitary file or a single camera card that would then be classed as a "principal":
\\mynetworkshare\subdirA\MyVideo

For testing, you would likely want to organize your footage similarly to what is depicted in this image:

If material from both matching locations is located and the Associate Mezzanines boolean switch is activated in the Curator Connect View, then during upload (of either piece of material) the association will be made and relevant side-car files should be created in both locations.

These side-car files start with the common prefix ipv dash (i.e. ipv- ) so that they are easily recognisable as files that IPV have added.

It is therefore necessary for the mezzanine/principal functionality to work that the Curator Connect client have write access to both mezzanine and principal folder locations.

To test, drop the folder of your Mezzanine content into Curator Connect ensuring that your Mezzanine boolean flag is set to true.
Once the ingest has been triggered, allow for Process Engine to complete its ingest tasks.
When confirmed, drop the folder which houses the principal files into Curator Connect again ensuring that the Mezzanine flag is set to true.

When the ingest has been triggered for a second time, you can head to Process Engine Monitor and open the ingest job.
Dropdown the processes to show all the available child processes, then select and open the job Process Metadata for FileName.

Once open within the tracking records, there will be an available dropdown. Once open, it should give a description that the asset has been updated rather than a newly created (an image is attached below to show an example).

Another check which can be done for confirmation is to head to the assets and confirm within the metadata that the S3HiResPath is now pointing towards the principal files rather than the before mezzanine files.

Processing and reconciliation of Mezzanine vs hi-res source files

Note that the processing and reconciliation of mezzanine vs hi-res source files is still dependent upon Process Engine Core module work which is currently in development, and which will be available in a future release of Curator (possibly v3.5 or later).