TAMS, short for Time Addressable Media Store, is an open standard that defines a new way to store, index and retrieve video and audio media.

The core idea is straightforward: rather than organising media into discrete files that need to be managed, copied and transcoded whenever you want to use them, TAMS organises media by time. Every segment of content is indexed on a precise timeline, stored in standard object storage, and accessible through a query interface.

The result is a system that is faster to work with, more flexible to build on, and far easier to scale than traditional file-based approaches.

Why “time addressable”?

The name reflects the central idea.

In a traditional media system, you ask: “Where is the file for the 6pm news?” In a TAMS system, you ask: “Give me the media that was recorded between 18:00:00 and 18:27:45 on feed X.” The system handles everything else.

That shift, from locating files to querying time ranges, is what makes TAMS powerful. It means:

• You never need to create a new file just to clip a section of content
• Multiple applications can read from the same stored media simultaneously
• You can start using recorded content while it is still being captured
• Searching for a specific moment is a query, not a manual browse

Where does TAMS come from?

TAMS was originally developed at BBC Research & Development. The BBC’s media operations involve enormous volumes of live content that needs to be captured, indexed, reviewed and reused across many different workflows. Traditional file-based systems created bottlenecks. Every new use case meant new copies, new formats and new storage costs.

TAMS emerged from the need to do better. Rather than treating media as a collection of files, the BBC R&D team designed a system that treats media as a continuous, queryable timeline. The specification was then published openly, so the broader broadcast industry could adopt and build on it.

How TAMS fits into a modern media system

TAMS is not a monolithic product. It is a specification — a definition of how media should be stored, indexed and queried — that sits at the heart of a wider system.

A TAMS-based system typically involves:

Object storage Media is stored in standard S3-compatible object storage — whether that is AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, MinIO, or an on-premises equivalent. TAMS does not prescribe a specific storage vendor, which keeps your infrastructure choices open.

The TAMS server This is the component that manages the timeline index. It records where each piece of media lives in object storage and makes it queryable by time range, source, and other metadata.

TAMS recorders These capture live media — from SDI, IP or other sources — and write it into the TAMS store in real time. Media becomes available for retrieval almost as soon as it arrives.

TAMS players These retrieve media from the store on request, reconstructing the content from the timeline index. Playback can be forward, reverse or at variable speed.

Applications and interfaces Everything above is infrastructure. On top of it, you build the things users actually interact with: a compliance review interface, a news logging dashboard, a multiviewer, a replay tool, or any other workflow your organisation needs.

TAMS and open standards

TAMS is published as an open specification under a permissive licence. That has two practical consequences.

First, anyone can build a TAMS-compatible system without paying a licence fee or depending on a single vendor. If you have the engineering resource, you can implement TAMS yourself from the specification.

Second, it means commercial products built on TAMS can be evaluated and compared by anyone who understands the spec. You are not dependent on a vendor’s marketing — you can read exactly how the system works.

The specification is hosted on GitHub and actively maintained.

Is TAMS right for your organisation?

TAMS is well suited to organisations that:

• Capture multiple live feeds that need to be accessible for compliance, review or reuse
• Run several different workflows against the same source material (compliance, highlights, monitoring, export)
• Want to move away from on-premises hardware systems toward cloud or hybrid infrastructure
• Need browser-based access to media without requiring specialist client software at every location
• Are building new systems and want a modern, open foundation rather than a proprietary one

It is less suited to simple, single-purpose recording tasks where a traditional file-based system is already working well and there is no requirement to scale or integrate.