Media

A cover is not just a JPEG. It has a photographer, an agency, a price, a license period and, eventually, an expiry date. It exists in five sizes for five channels, it appears in three titles and in a social media post, and somebody cropped it last year. If those details are not attached to the file, they sit in a spreadsheet beside it – and after six months that spreadsheet is wrong.

The media library holds both together: the file and everything known about it. It manages images, documents, PDFs, archives, e-book files, audio and video, detecting the format itself along with the matching ONIX code. The collection can be opened as a whole or filtered to a single title or contact. A title's media are the same media – just seen from the perspective of title data.

The overview is a list like the others in the system, with full-text search, filters for content type, format, status, title reference and date created, saved filters, selectable column sets and a favorite star on every row. Upload sits directly above it: choose the file, set content type, format and status, then save. Above that runs the AI bar with two fields, tag search on the left, search by meaning on the right. Alongside the overview, the expiring rights list is the second view.

A single asset opens into tabs, and the row of them is long: general details, copyright, file info, edit, variants, distribution, assignments, contributors, categories, links, keywords, sources, ONIX, other, usage, versions, AI data. At the top sit the preview, file name, format, size and status (draft, review, approved, archived), plus download and share.

File info is not a display but a form, holding IPTC Core, XMP, EXIF including GPS and the PDF metadata, editable field by field, with headline, alt text, keywords, credit, creator and rights. For PDFs, the full text can be pulled out of the file. The editorial side beside it is cut to the trade, with contributors by role and share, categories to VLB, Thema, BISAC, genre and product group, keywords, sources, DOI, related products, e-content with format and DRM, production details, and an ONIX tab of its own with resource type, audience, mode and the flag for the ONIX export.

Copyright is the tab with money attached: license obligation, image ID at the agency and in-house, copyright notice, picture agency, photographer and designer as contacts from the CRM, web link to the agency, net price, country and place, and print-run limits from and to, plus four dates: ordered, expiry, advance warning, invoice. From the expiry and warning dates comes the expiring rights list, holding expired entries and warnings, each row with file, agency, expiry date and the days since it fell due, with status open, acknowledged or done, and a jump to the asset. The totals sit at the top: three expired, one warning, four open.

Editing happens inside the system, not beside it. Images can be resized while keeping their aspect ratio, converted to JPEG, WebP or PNG at a chosen quality, and given a watermark with text, position and opacity. PDFs can have a page range extracted, a watermark applied and be compressed. Every change is applied to the original and raises the version; the history keeps each version ready to download and to restore. Alongside that sit the variants: presets per tenant with maximum width and height, target format and quality, generated at upload if you wish. Web, catalog and social media each get their format without anyone cropping by hand.

Where an asset goes is governed by distribution. Selected assets can be downloaded as a ZIP, as originals or as a variant, with unique file names and as a background job if needed. Public share links can be created per asset with an expiry date, a download limit, a password and a note, and can be revoked at any time. And distribution profiles push a file out over SFTP, FTP, FTPS, S3 or HTTP, triggered by hand or automatically as soon as an asset is approved, with templates and a job history.

What makes deleting safe is the usage tab. For any asset it shows the direct title reference, the linked titles, CRM contacts, contracts, production, works and social media posts from the Media Cockpit. Anyone trying to delete an asset still in use is shown how many uses there are – and can still confirm the deletion.