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Razuna 1.4.1 is here – major update to the popular open source digital asset management

by on January 5, 2011 in Digital Asset Management, Razuna

We would like to welcome you to 2011 with a new release of our Open Source Digital Asset Management solution – Razuna.

Thought, Razuna 1.4.1 might sound like a small point release, it is by no means only a bug fix release. We not only fixed issues crawling in after the last 1.4 release but also included many new features to help you manage your images, videos, audios and documents. Some of the most noteworthy new options are outlined below.

(Make sure to read the new upgrade path for Razuna 1.4.1 and how to download Razuna at the end of this post!)

Folder & Collection RSS, Excel and Word view

Getting notified when new items arrive in a folder or collection is important, both for us and for your team. Now, there is a convenient way to stay up-to-date, that is you can subscribe to each folder/collection by RSS. This allows you to add the RSS feed to your browser (Firefox Live Bookmark, Google Reader, etc) and you will get automatically notified of updates. Additionally, you have the option to view the content of the folder/collection in Excel or in Word (with preview images). These options are also available for shared folders and collections!

Work with those RAW image formats

Razuna could already handle RAW images, but we now enhanced it so that Razuna creates a thumbnail of your RAW image and you are also able to convert it to any format right within Razuna. Of course, the original format is being saved and never tempered with. Razuna support the following RAW formats: .3fr, .ari, .arw, .srf, .sr2, .bay, .crw .cr2, .cap, .iiq, .eip, .dcs, .dcr, .drf, .k25, .kdc, .dng, .erf, .fff, .mef, .mos, .mrw, .nef, .nrw, .orf, .ptx, .pef, .pxn, .R3D, .raf, .rw2, .raw, .rwl, .dng, .rwz, .x3f.

In other words, we are supporting the proprietary format of just about the most camera models our there, be it Nikon, Canon, Sony, Hasselbad, etc.

Recreate or upload your own thumbnail

We are always pleased to satisfy customer demands and thus it gives us much happiness to be able to announce that we have included the possibility to recreate thumbnails from existing assets and the option to upload your own thumbnail in this version of Razuna.

Especially customers that host a lot of videos with us, will be able to add their customer thumbnails now with this feature.

Improved error handling

Yes, bugs and errors are inconvenient. While we try to bring you a hassle free experience with your Digital Asset Management, it always can happen that something goes wrong. But now with the new error handling your experience with those pesky errors has just improved. Instead of a big error message, you will only receive a notification that there has been an error. In the back we are saving the error to a database and you or your administration are then able to view them and even send them directly to our tracking system over at http://issues.razuna.com.

Speed, Speed, Speed

In the recent releases we have always improved performance for your Digital Asset Management. Recently, we made some major code changes in loading and showing previews on the Razuna Hosted Platform and for those customers who are running Razuna with Amazon S3, Nirvanix or Eucalyptus.

Now, we made further changes and recently added database caching to it as well. With database caching we could improve performance by 30% and are now seeing load times for large folders with 1000 or more asets in the millisecond range. Of course, your results might be different due to connections, location, bandwidth, etc. But rest assured that from an application level we are doing application caching, database caching and are trimming just about every bit of code for performance.

Import / Export with SQL script

In Razuna 1.4 we introduced the option to Import and Export your records in the XML format. Since XML might be to verbose for a simple import to another Razuna instance we added the option to export to a SQL script file. This gives you the freedom to import within Razuna’s own import function or pass the script on to your database administrator.

How to get Razuna 1.4.1

Razuna 1.4.1 is available as of now and can be downloaded over at http://razuna.org. As usual you can download the Razuna 1.4.1 Standalone package, download the Razuna 1.4.1 WAR-EAR only, or use our most popular Razuna 1.4.1 Virtual Image Server (probably the easiest, fastest way to deploy Razuna to Amazon EC2, VMWare, etc.).

For those customers already running Razuna we are glad to let you know that we have reworked the way you should upgrade from Razuna 1.4 to Razuna 1.4.1 and forth on. We have outlined the upgrade steps in one convenient Wiki page. Please follow this link for updating your copy of Razuna 1.4 to Razuna 1.4.1.

Customers using our  Razuna Hosted Platform and our Razuna Cloud Server have already been updated to Razuna 1.4.1.

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Innovation in Digital Asset Management and the power of Open Source

by on August 6, 2008 in Digital Asset Management, Razuna

The other day I read a press release of a commercial Digital Asset Management vendor, who shall be not named, that claims “powerful new features” and innovation in his latest release.

While reading trough the “new features”, I could not help myself to wonder how customers could have put up with their application if only now, in its 5th (!!!) version and after 3 years (!!!) the following feature(s) have been implemented;

Reading and editing of XMP/EXIF/IPTC metdata
You got to be kidding me, right? I mean this is the “lifeblood” of images and vendors like Getty Images, Corbis, etc. have been using Metadata since years to create a digital repository. Adobe has been pushing XMP for a long time and it is the “de-facto” standard in metadata.

As you might know, Razuna is a incarnation of a commercial digital asset management which has been featuring XMP/EXIF/IPTC metadata since day 1. Needles to say, that Razuna has this built in already. I wonder how customers of this so called “Enterprise” system have handled images beyond their system? Metadata is not only about finding and tagging images, it is about a complete digital workflow which integrates tighly with their other tools like Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Quark, etc.

Wildcard search and search for within documents
If some could have passed on the missing metadata editing from above, I simply could not believe to read that now in its 5th incarnation, the system “features” a wildcard search and is able to search text within PDF, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files.

Again me wonders, how could their customers find anything in their system? I simply guess, that customers had to use a folder level structure or some sort of date feature. Truly amazing that the company, who shall not be named, had any success with their offering. They must have some great marketing people.

Dear customer…
The time that you had to put up with systems that do not hold up to their promises is now over. Sure, for many years you had no choice in the digital asset management market. Vendors were running after your money and have stuffed their products with needles features that you don’t need and have not been asking for, instead of “features” that really make sense (like metadata editing and a professional search).

Luckily, today you have the choice! SixSigns released Razuna – a professional open source Digital Asset Management solution – to the market some weeks ago. Within a week Razuna will be release a new version which features a embedded database and some more enhancements.

True to the nature of an open source system, you as a customer, has the control over your digital asset management system. Backed by a professional company that has years of experience in the digital asset management market, you can rest assured to receive and work with a system that is both effective and efficient.

We don’t promise you that you won’t find bugs or that we have every feature (a future version will sure have it), but we can promise you that we work hard and are geared toward bringing you the best solution for your digital asset management.

(During the creation of this blog post, no marketing and sales people have been harmed and had any say)

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