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Preserving the British Film Institute Archive

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Today, the media and entertainment industry faces numerous challenges. To remain successful and competitive, these organisations must be ever innovative, agile and cost efficient in the way they produce, store, manage and distribute their digital assets. Content creators have traditionally relied upon outdated storage models, comprised of legacy in...

Submitted by David Feller

Published 21 March 2019

Looking for the Silver Lining

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According to the World Meteorological Organisation, there are 10 different types of cloud, each of which can be divided further into sub-types. They range from the cirrus, the thin floaty clouds which generally serve only to make the sky look beautiful to the towering, all-embracing cumulonimbus which can deliver fearful quantities of rain – the bi...

Submitted by Harry Grinling

Published 21 March 2019

21st Century Technology for 20th Century Content

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A big challenge facing owners of legacy content is rationalising and archiving their tape and film-based media in cost effective and efficient ways, whilst also adding value. Normally the result of this is to find a low cost means of digitising the content – usually leaving them with a bunch of assets on HDD. But then what? How can content owners h...

Submitted by James Hall

Published 25 January 2019

Thinking clearly about the cloud

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As someone who is constantly trying to build better products, I\'m always asking questions and listening to the ones I get asked. For several years now I\'ve asked every broadcaster and media production company I\'ve met what they plan to do about \'the cloud\'. I\'ve had replies which range from \'the media must never leave the premises\' (imagine...

Submitted by Chris Steel 2

Published 19 May 2017

In media monitoring, as in medicine, a quick fix is not a...

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by Simen Frostad Issue 107 - November 2015 A man is rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack. The priorities of the medical team that treats him are clear: keep the patient alive, contain the damage to the heart as far as possible, stabilise the situation until the patient is out of danger. They work under the pressure of these immediate pr...

Submitted by Simen Frostad

Published 01 December 2015

Tapeless Workflows, MAM and Archive: Back to Basics

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by Mike Shore Issue 103 - July 2015 The broadcast industrys appetite for file-based workflows existed long before the technology required to implement them was available. With the emergence of cheap capture hardware, the continually decreasing cost of storage and the ever-increasing capabilities of inexpensive computing power, the transition from t...

Submitted by Michael Shore

Published 01 August 2015

Combining on-site and cloud storage

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by Alan Hoggarth Issue 102 - June 2015 Technology and profitability have an intimate and often complicated relationship. A new invention may open up the possibility of new forms of business, or greater efficiency in existing businesses. Sometimes the invention may be a response to a clear need necessity being the mother of invention. But on other o...

Submitted by Alan Hoggarth

Published 01 July 2015

High-speed archiving in a high-res world

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by Lee Sheppard Issue 102 - June 2015 SGL has partnered with Avid for the past 11 years and the companies continue to deliver solutions that are required by today\'s modern broadcast facilities. SGL FlashNet, the engine that drives Avid Interplay Archive, provides customers around the world with an integrated MAM/PAM archive solution. Built around...

Submitted by Lee Sheppard

Published 01 July 2015

Archiving as a service at BBC Studios and Post Production

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by Kevin Shaw Issue 97 - January 2015 BBC Studios and Post Production (BBC S&PP) is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC that competes for work from both the BBC and the market at large. In the Digital Media Services (DMS) department, we provide an end-to-end solution for what we refer to as "post-post production.\" Our services include digitization...

Submitted by Kevin Shaw

Published 01 February 2015

Ask the Experts

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by Matthew Rehrer Issue 90 - June 2014 What trends are you seeing with respect to investment in archiving solutions?Investment in archiving solutions has been shaped by several major trends, all fundamentally driven by the desire to store and manage media content in such a way that it can better support effective and/or profitable use of those asse...

Submitted by Matthew Rehrer

Published 01 July 2014

Archive eXchange format (AXF) explained

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by S Merrill Weiss Issue 85 - January 2014 The proprietary nature of archive storage long has made it challenging for content producers and owners to exchange archive files and media between systems. Thus, when faced with the need either to migrate archives to new generations of storage technology or to consolidate archives, media companies have be...

Submitted by S. Merrill Weiss

Published 01 February 2014

Redefining the archive with Raj Patel

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by Raj PatelIssue 80 - August 2013 The entire broadcast workflow has changed dramatically in recent years. Predictably, its been a slow-process. The enormity of transitioning from an analogue to a digital workflow is huge for a variety of reasons - planning, testing, implementation and budget, can mean some installations taking up to two years to c...

Submitted by Raj Patel

Published 01 September 2013

Ask the experts with TMD looking at LTFS

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by Tony TaylorIssue 80 - August 2013 Not another acronym! What is LTFS?LTFS stands for Linear Tape File System. It is a file system for data archives, developed by IBM but published as an open standard and now widely adopted by all the leading vendors of large-scale data archiving. If it is a data product, why am I reading about it in a broadcast m...

Submitted by Tony Taylor

Published 01 September 2013

Protecting the archive

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Over the last 20 years or so we have all become accustomed to the expression “asset management” and, as ever, familiarity has bred contempt. In this case, the expression has become a loose descriptor for almost anything with a bit of a database in it. We need to stop and think about what we are trying to achieve. In any media enterprise, the conten...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

Parting the Cloud

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Every so often a trend looms over the broadcast horizon that gathers pace so quickly it soon becomes the buzzword at every launch and trade show. A few years ago it was MAM and more recently stereoscopic; now the big buzz in town is the cloud. But despite its recent rise to fame in the broadcast sector there’s still a lot of confusion regarding how...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012