Modelling and Optimization of Cross-Media Production Processes

In present days, the media industry is looking for concrete business opportunities in publishing the same product across different media. This requires careful planning to minimize the risks of each production without increasing its cost. We consider a cross-media production as a content that is explicitly produced to be distributed across multiple media. We formalize it as a collection of several Media Production Objects (MPOs): abstract representations of the production components such as audio and video footages, 3D models, screenplays, etc. that can be aggregated to become for example a film, a Video Game. We call a “View” the aggregated product ready to be published on a given channel. MPOs can have temporal constraints imposed to their realization, and are characterized by quality and costs metrics. We propose a model for the definition of cross media production, presenting an automatic procedure to create mixed-integer linear programming problems whose solution allows to optimize costs and qualities. This scenario opens a wide range of possibilities, that a MIP solver (in our case, XPRESS–MP) can handle as a black-box tool. This allows efficient what-if analysis under different scenarios.