Dear Industry Colleagues,

ISAN Canada has been registering International Standard Audiovisual Numbers for just over a year now.  More than 160 Canadian producers have thus far registered with ISAN Canada and for those of you not completely familiar with the benefits of registering films, television series, advertisements, internet content and games with our agency, we’d like to provide an update and share with you some basics.

As you may already know, the International Standard Audiovisual Number (ISAN) is a numbering system for the identification of audiovisual content.  ISANs are used to uniquely distinguish one audiovisual work, or version of a work, from all others. The numbers are centrally registered and permanently attached to your production.

ISAN is an ISO (International Standards Organization) standard and is recommended or required as the international audiovisual identifier of choice for producers, studios, broadcasters, internet media providers and video games publishers who need to encode, track, and distribute audiovisual works in a variety of formats and is incorporated in many standards such as iTunes, AACS (Advanced Access Content System), DCI (Digital Cinema), MPEG, DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting), and ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee).

As productions are increasingly made available to the public in a variety of formats and versions across a variety of distribution platforms, including some that can only be tracked electronically such as downloads to computers and mobile devices, it is critical to have a unique identifier capable of linking information from a variety of sources in an accurate and cost-effective manner.  ISAN is that identifier. ISAN also greatly facilitates the management of payments to rights-holders, including to producers, distributors and talent.

In Canada an ISAN is now requested or required by:

• DGC (Article DR23.00 of the DGC IPA 2006-2009)
• ACTRA (Article A506(c) of the ACTRA IPA 2007-2009)
• WGC (Article C1001 (iii) of the WGC IPA 2006-2009)
• CRTC (Canadian Program Certification)
• Telefilm Canada
• Canadian Television Fund
• CAVCO
• AACS [Blu-ray DVD releases]
• Independent Production Fund
• Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund
• Cogeco Program Development Fund
• SOCAN (The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada)
• SODRAC (Societe du droit de reproduction des auteurs, compositeurs et editeurs au Canada)ISAN Canada Update