If you are interested in implementing or customizing an open source Digital Asset Management system such as Entermedia, it is essential to first have an understanding of the open source tools that form the foundation on which many of these systems are built.
Regardless of the technology platform of the open source DAM system i(i.e. Java, .NET, PHP), almost all use the same four open source utilities to extract metadata information and to render or manipulate assets. Becoming knowledgable in the capabilities of each of these utilities, as well as an understanding in configuring and troubleshooting these tools will go a long way towards the success of your open source DAM project.
1) Image Magick
Image Magick is an open source image transformation utility. Image Magick is generally used by DAM systems to convert image files from one file format to another i.e. Tif to JPG, Tif to PNG etc. Currently Image Magick supports conversion to over 100 different file formats. In addition to format conversions, Image Magick can also be used to extract embedded image metadata, transform an image's color space or scale an image's dimensions.
2) Ghostscript
Ghostscript is an open source PostScript and PDF language interpreter. Most open source DAM systems will utilize Ghostscript to generate thumbnails and read information contained within PDF files.
3) ExifTool
ExifTool, developed by Phil Harvey is an open source pearl library that supports reading and writing embedded metadata from and to a number of different file formats (including Camera RAW images). ExifTool is used by most open source DAM systems to read in Exif, IPTC and XMP information. This embedded metadata information can then be mapped to a particular metadata field within the DAM system and can then be written back out into the asset if the information is changed.
4) FFmpeg
FFmpeg is an open source command line tool to convert multimedia files to different formats. Generally FFmpeg is used by open source DAM systems to read and convert audio and video files. FFmpeg can be used to transcode videos from any number of different formats i.e. MPEG, FLAC, H.264, WMA. These files can then be optimized for streaming or downloading.
There are many other open source utilities that may be utilized as part of an open source DAM solution, however the four tools above usually do a majority of the heavy lifting.
Let me know if think there is another primary open source utility that should be added to the list above!
ResourceSpace
Also note ResourceSpace, an open source DAM that runs on PHP/MySQL and utilizes each of the utilities mentioned in this post.
Razuna
I think we can all say that all open source Digital Asset Management System (like our very own Razuna system) uses theses tools :-)
re: open-source utilities for DAM
I don't think Ivan's citing Entermedia is meant to exclude other open-source DAM projects from using these tools. A number of these utilities are also used by the proprietary vendors as well.
We at DPCI are rooting for a number of different open-source digital asset management projects to continue to mature to the point where they can regularly replace proprietary packages at our enterprise customers. We have had some great experiences with Entermedia in the past year and a half, so that is just one example of a project that we feel is starting to take off nicely.
-Joe Bachana/DPCI