# The IDOL Platform

Media Server is one of the components in the Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL). You can use Media Server independently or as part of a larger IDOL system.

You can use Media Server independently by writing a custom application that communicates with Media Server. Media Server accepts commands over HTTP and returns responses in XML format. You can use the Autonomy Content Infrastructure (ACI) Client API to develop a custom application.

In a typical IDOL deployment, IDOL Connectors retrieve information from your data repositories for indexing into IDOL Content. You can configure IDOL NiFi Ingest or your Connector Framework Server (CFS) to send images and video to Media Server and request one or more analysis operations. Media Server returns the results of the analysis operations to NiFi Ingest or CFS, which enriches the documents being ingested.

For example, a repository might contain video clips that you want to search or categorize. You could configure NiFi Ingest to send the video to Media Server and request analysis such as face detection, face recognition, object recognition, keyframe extraction and optical character recognition. Media Server returns information about the video content to NiFi Ingest, which might perform additional operations, such as Eduction, before indexing the information into an IDOL index.

For more information about IDOL, refer to the IDOL Getting Started Guide.

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