Coming into the 75th Engineering, Science & Technology Emmys, held Oct. 18 in Los Angeles, more than 2.8 million unique EIDR IDs had been created to date. After the ceremony, you could add two more: unique EIDR IDs were created to honor MovieLabs’ Jim Helman, CTO, and Raymond Drewry, chief scientist and VP of EMEA operations, who took home Engineering, Science & Technology Emmys for the creation of EIDR.
With both EIDR and MovieLabs leadership in attendance at the event, the Emmy Awards for Helman and Drewry honor 13 years of success for EIDR, which unifies the commercial film and television industry around one standardized content ID, one infrastructure for creating and sharing the ID, and one nested data model for describing the relationships between abstract titles, specific edits of them, and packages for distribution.
MovieLabs created the data model and architecture for EIDR, led the detailed technical design, and managed the software development process through testing and deployment in late 2010. The completed registry was transferred to a newly formed EIDR organization that continues to run the EIDR registry today. MovieLabs has continued to provide technical and governance support for EIDR throughout the years, with EIDR being utilized in automation and digital supply chain workflows by more than 70 media and entertainment companies.
A video honoring Helman and Drewry shown during the awards ceremony saw industry executives praising EIDR and its success in providing a cohesive asset identification approach for the industry.
“Before EIDR there was no common ID standard broadly used, no common data model, and no common infrastructure for registering TV and film in an automated way,” said former EIDR chairman Kip Welch. “We needed something as simple as a UPC barcode so that everyone could agree how to identify and deliver a creative work. And not just a [single] creative work, but many tens of thousands of works and their edits every day.”
Added Eddie Drake, head of technology for Marvel Studios: “EIDR supports the creation of IDs at scale, enabling both catalog registration and matching. I don’t see how we could have OTT services with the global scale and the libraries the size of Disney+ without foundational technologies like EIDR.”
Richard Berger, CEO of MovieLabs, said the success of EIDR demonstrates the benefits and collaborative approach the group continues to take in addressing industrywide technical challenges. “When we’re all aligned, we can solve the most challenging technical issues together,” he said.
“Wide use and accuracy of EIDR IDs gives users confidence that they’re getting the right content and metadata and allows us to trust more in our automated systems,” added Ellen Goodridge, head of worldwide media management and distribution for Amazon Studios.
Hollie Choi, managing director of EIDR, led off the video noting that the “biggest names in entertainment rely on EIDR to be the bridge between content creators and distributors,” while Helman said the approach he and Drewry took designing EIDR “was to engage the entire community, studios, distributors, and partners, like metadata companies.”
For more information, visit movielabs.com or eidr.org.