Capabilities of MediaBeacon 25.07, the latest public version (2026-10-01), grouped by domain. Most facts come from the public 25.07 User Guide and Administrator Guide on docs.esko.com S8 S9 and from the release notes S12 S13. Where the Esko marketing page and the guides differ, the guides are used. Several capabilities are add-ons or depend on the licence; these are flagged below.

Ingestion & storage

Upload methods: upload icon and drag-and-drop in the web UI, with optional upload forms that collect metadata at upload S8; Adobe and Microsoft connectors S8; REST upload / import / checkIn endpoints S1; scheduled or event-driven workflows that import files S3. An asynchronous import option exists for REST uploads S1.
Repository model: assets live in managed directories, which mirror a server file-system tree and are addressed by path or by numeric asset ID S1 S8. Bundles can present folders, searches or selections as a single asset S8.
Large files: S3-integrated environments support multipart upload (24.11: parallel parts, upload time reduced by about 30%) S15. The 25.03 notes refer to multipart handling for files over 100 MB until a higher limit is configured S13. Maximum file size: Not public.
Formats: the user guide lists supported extensions for 3D (DAE, OBJ, GLB, ZAE…), image (camera raw such as CR2/CR3/NEF/ARW/DNG, TIFF, PSD/PSB, AI, EPS, SVG, HEIC, WebP…), layout and office documents (INDD, PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, ODF), video (MOV/QuickTime, M4V, MPEG, MXF, AVI, WMV, WebM, FLV…), audio (MP3, WAV, AIF, M4A, OGG), fonts and archives S8. 24.07 added fonts (OTF), After Effects projects (AEP) and code files (JS, CSS) to the dictionary of recognised types S14. 25.07 added previews for FLV video (MP4 transcode) and TTF fonts S12.
Versioning & check-out: check-out/check-in locks assets during editing. Uploading a file with an existing name can create a new version, also in bulk at upload. Version history is viewable S8 S1.
Duplicates: hash-based duplicate detection at upload with notifications and saved selections of the duplicates S8; a "search for duplicate assets" function arrived in 24.11 S15.
Storage back end: local or network file system for on-premise installs, with remote preview nodes mounting a shared files directory S10; optional AWS S3 integration S13 S15 S3.

Metadata & taxonomy

XMP-native: every field is an XMP property identified by a namespace URI plus a name (e.g. Dublin Core subject). MediaBeacon reads and writes embedded XMP and ships predefined XMP schemas S9 S2. The REST API exposes raw XMP read/write (getXmp, setXmp) S1.
Field types (type validators): string, date (ISO 8601), integer / positive integer / large number, real number, e-mail, phone, asset reference, force dictionary (controlled list), suggest dictionary, hierarchy (hierarchical dictionaries), and repeating data blocks (a sub-form repeated inside a field) S9.
Dictionaries: controlled vocabularies are managed in a Dictionaries dialog and through the REST dictionary / word endpoints S1 S9.
Forms: metadata forms are configured per ACL, with UI elements, validation and rules (on load, on change, on submit, on post-save) S9. A field that is not on any form visible to the caller is not returned by the API (clarified in 25.03) S13.
Bulk edit & stamping: bulk edit, a metadata stamper (preset values applied in one click), and a Metadata Import & Export wizard (CSV) S8; metadata can be stamped during REST upload (since 24.11) S15 S1.
Asset links: typed links between assets (e.g. layout to placed images), searchable by link count since 25.03 S13 S8.

Search & discovery

Engine: "R3Search", MediaBeacon's indexing layer on Apache Solr (with ZooKeeper for clustering) S9 S10.
Modes: quick search, advanced search (criteria with and/or conjunctions), filter search (facets), saved searches, type-ahead suggestions S8 S1. Each indexed field can be set to "Normal" (500 characters) or "Extended" (5,000 characters) for quick search S13.
Visual search: color search (a 21-colour histogram per image, filterable by colour swatches and by Pantone colours) S8; search by image orientation; Reverse Image Search (since 25.03: find visually similar or duplicate images by uploading a reference image, 20 MB limit, based on image fingerprints computed at upload) S8 S13 S16.
Relative dates: $today can be used in date criteria S8.
Natural-language / semantic search: not documented (none found).

AI capabilities

Clarifai Connector (licensed package): automatic or on-demand keyword tagging of images and video through Clarifai's general or custom models, with a confidence threshold. Results are written to Dublin Core keywords, together with scores S8 S9.
Reverse Image Search and fingerprint-based similarity (see above) S13.
Generative AI, OCR, speech transcription, face recognition, an AI assistant or AI governance settings: not documented for MediaBeacon as of 25.07 (none found) S8 S12. Esko publishes a company-level "Statement on Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence" S37.

Organization

Managed directories (folder tree), lightbox, cart, saved selections / saved collections (shareable with users), saved searches S8 S1.
Bundles: info folders, transparent/opaque folders, search bundles and selection bundles shown as assets S8.
Brand Books: multi-page document views for PDF, AI, INDD and PPT with paging and rotation S8.
Brand Portals: workspaces configured as guided entry pages for internal users S9. External Portals: styled portals for non-users, which require an AWS S3 bucket S9.
Workspaces: configurable UI made of components (search, view, info, action components), assigned per ACL S9.

Workflow & collaboration

Approvals: approval process with multiple approvers and an approval status form S8.
Discussion: per-asset comment threads (also writable via REST setDiscussion) S8 S1.
Subscriptions & notifications: users subscribe to assets or folders and receive notifications; a global subscription view arrived in 24.11 S8 S15.
Workflow engine: JavaScript workflows (server-side, on Mozilla Rhino) or Visual Workflow Editor (drag-and-drop nodes), triggered manually, on a schedule, on login, by client-side buttons, or by asset events (added, modified, moved, renamed, removed, downloaded, copied, checked in, permission changes) S9 S3.
Creative integration: Adobe Connector for InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator (place, FPO, upload versions, PDF proofs) S8; see Integrations.
Packaging workflow: integration with Esko WebCenter (artwork management and approval) S30 S41 S15.

Rights & governance

Permission model: users → groups → ACLs. Each ACL defines visible directories, forms, workspaces and a list of permission restrictions (e.g. "Trigger Workflow", "External Brand Portal") S9. Three user types: Global Administrator, Group Administrator, General User S9.
Conditional Download: download, crop, e-mail and check-out are blocked for assets that fall outside a configured saved search (e.g. an expiry-date rule) S8.
Restricted Assets Access: users can see restricted assets and request download permission from an approver; requests and approvals are tracked with history and metrics S8.
Rights management partner: FADEL Rights Cloud integration (announced 2021) S27.
Audit: history log of asset and system events (including log-ins); a Metrics workspace for filtering and reporting on them S9.
Watermarking, retention policies: Unknown (not found in the 25.07 guides).

Distribution & delivery

Download conversions: administrator-defined conversion types (format, colour space, scale, resolution) applied on download or via REST conversion S9 S1. Original download is the default since 24.07 S14. Partial video download is supported S12.
External Links: download links for people without a login, with an expiry date (30 days by default), a maximum download count and download e-mail alerts S8.
Published renditions: with a renditions licence, preset renditions are published to S3 and returned as public URLs in API responses S1. S3 rendition URLs are available in Visual Workflow (24.07) S14.
Contact sheets (PDF) with configurable cover pages S9.
Dynamic image transformation CDN or web-to-print templating: not documented (none found).

Video & rich media

Video previews generated by a command-line video worker; FLV is transcoded to MP4 for preview (25.03/25.07) S13 S12.
Integration with Telestream Vantage (version 5+, with Transcode, Analysis and Metadata Conversion licences) for transcoding S10.
3D: DAE, OBJ, GLB and other 3D formats are recognised S8; Esko markets support for 3D models S20.
Streaming, subtitles, video annotation: Unknown.

Analytics & reporting

Metrics component / Metrics workspace: filter and chart recorded events (actions, users, assets, field changes, API-key users) over time, with report buttons. The default view covers 30 days S9.
System Status dialog: statistics, API keys, triggers, preview queue S9.
Restricted-asset request history and metrics S8.

Administration

Admin Core application for users, groups, fields, forms and conversion types; plus web-UI admin mode for workspaces, dictionaries, workflows, R3Search and system status S9.
Provisioning: user invitations, IdP-based just-in-time accounts and group sync (SAML) S12 S9; REST admin endpoints for users, groups and ACLs S1. SCIM: Unknown.
Deployment topology (on-premise): primary server, enterprise search nodes, "User Concurrency Pack" webheads (Tomcat), remote preview and import nodes, R3Search cluster. Sizing guidance is given for about 500k assets and about 200 concurrent users. Windows Server or macOS; MS SQL Server 2022 or MySQL 8.0 S10.
Configuration: many behaviours are toggled through system properties (mediabeacon.properties) S9 S8.
Multi-tenant / multi-brand: handled through groups, ACLs and brand portals inside one installation S9. Sandbox environments: staging and development sizing is documented for self-hosted installs S10; for MediaBeacon Cloud, Not public.

MediaBeacon Features