What is TAMS?
The Time Addressable Media Store (TAMS) is an open-source API specification based on a practical implementation of Time Addressable Media principles developed by BBC Research & Development. TAMS is designed around storing media chunks in object storage, presented through an open API that enables content-centric workflows rather than traditional file-based approaches.
Key Benefits
Convergence: A single TAMS store can serve multiple different purposes and business units. This includes the broadcast, post-production, social media, and VOD teams all being able to source content from a single store.
Cost effective: By using cloud-based technologies and focusing on the use of commodity object storage, removes the need for high performance file systems and de-duplicate the storage. Adding serverless technologiesmeans using TAMS should be significantly cheaper than the traditional approach.
Interoperability: With vendors adopting a common API specification, this should provide interoperability between products supporting the TAMS API, allowing customers to pick and chose the tools they want to use.
Open framework: The TAMS API is an open source specification. This means that any customer or partner can start building around it without needing the support of a single vendor for proprietary technology or license fees.
Bringing together live and file: TAMS is based on the same core reference architecture as Networked Media Open Specifications (NMOS). This means it’s possible to preserve both the timing and identity for content between the live and stored domains, simplifying workflows.
Elasticity: The use of the cloud and cloud-based technologies means that a TAMS solution should be able to scale both up and down with the business need. This is particularly key in live environments where the workloads are rarely constant.
Workflow acceleration: The ability to access segments as soon as they are written to the store and the use of “edit by reference” workflows means that workflows can be achieved faster than traditional file-based approaches.
