(hint: probably not, but they’ll greatly simplify your media life!)

I mentioned in a previous blog post that I wanted to spend more time talking about Dalet’s MediaBins, as they can completely transform your production workflow, so let me tell you more…

‘MediaBin’ is often uttered by the Dalet team with great excitement, assuming everyone knows about it. And no, it is not a media waste container… It is actually the opposite!

So, what’s a MediaBin?  

Commonly used in news and sports production workflows, a MediaBin is a collection of media that is attached to a story and travels through its entire lifecycle, through to distribution and archiving.

What can I put in my MediaBins?  

You can store any kind of media that is stored inside your Dalet Library. Audio, video, pictures, a collection of assets, audio and video clips, graphic objects, wires, RSS posts, social media posts, contacts, Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint files, etc.), PDFs, or PDF-ed emails and external web links/objects such as YouTube videos. This collection of media is there to help the journalist and video editors to create their story.

Who can feed a MediaBin? 

Any Dalet user! Usually, you start feeding the MediaBin during the planning phase. Even an event has its MediaBin before it becomes a story. A Planning Editor, for instance, might add a couple of social posts and a wire that are relevant to a particular event. The Chief Editor decides to make it a leading story. Some footage is coming from user-generated content and is attached to the story in addition to the original material via the MediaBin. Then additional material arrives from the field – it is attached to the MediaBin, and so on. Anyone can contribute to the MediaBin, which is also accessible by librarians, so they can also organize archived content into the MediaBin. 

Even feed recordings can be placed directly in the MediaBin, so there is a connection between what’s coming in, and the story.

How I can use a MediaBin? 

Obviously, you can consult your MediaBin at any time while you work on your story. You can also search for MediaBins and within MediaBins, including filtering.  You can open a MediaBin in a video editor, whether Dalet OneCut or Adobe Premiere Pro through Dalet Xtend, so that you can focus on the relevant material (audio, video, images, graphics, …) saving considerable editing time!

So not only is the MediaBin a real collaboration entity attached to your story, it can also be used within the extended Dalet ecosystem.

And there’s more… 

Yes! Dalet’s Recommendation Panel brings Artificial Intelligence to help you feed the MediaBin. Thanks to a deep semantic analysis of stories, wires, audio and video transcripts, the Dalet Recommendation Panel suggests media that is not yet stored in your MediaBin. This surfaces content you would have not likely identified before and help you find relevant material for your story much quicker.  

So there you have it… The Dalet MediaBin brings you speed, efficiency and relevant content so you can create compelling stories. No wonder so many of us at Dalet are enthusiastic about it! 

In a future blog post, I’ll tell you more about Dalet Recommendations, as we’re working on set of new algorithms that will bring our users a whole new experience – a true game changer… Watch this space!