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You are here: IBIS products | Case studies | Creating an efficient, profitable DAM system

In any multi-media, multi-channel digital environment, content is the underpinning asset. The challenge facing content providers is how to maximize that asset by creating a delivery matrix which provides potential customers with easy access to the right information when they need it.

An international news organization, for instance, may manage a commercial archive of hundreds of thousands of hours of footage of diverse material -> from news, movies, celebrities, art and culture, to politics and history, fashion and wildlife.

With such an archive, there is an inevitable demand for material for use not only in TV broadcasts, but also for new delivery platforms such as the internet and mobile phones. This demand presents tremendous opportunities to generate both current and future revenue.

To maximise the business potential of any content, material - both archive and ongoing production, should be digitized; preferably at both online and broadcast quality. Customers may be both internal and external, and should be able to view, select and order material, deciding between delivery by tape or by a range of digital delivery options. It is also preferable that customers are able to source content directly from their PC, via the internet, thus opening up a wide international market. The ability to complete fulfillment on-line avoids the often prohibitively high cost of using satellite feeds for fulfillment when time is of the essence.

Critical to any such project is the right planning and technology partners. File transfer technology and storage costs and capability are fundamental to a successful business model. A good system integrator/project management team is essential.

IBIS has worked with Sony on just such a project: One of the key requirements for the broadcaster was to make maximum use of their assets, with their picture library providing the cornerstone of the business model, providing pictures, footage and metadata on major news events acquired over the span of many years. Knowing how to access this increasingly large stock for internal and external use was a challenge. There was a need to consider not only how much material to store each day and the amount of restoration to allow for newsroom ‘customers’ , but also how this material could be opened up to users outside the company community. This meant investigating the amount of restoration and file conversion that online customers to their portal website would require. The investigation team produced a detailed requirements specification and after looking at a number of companies who could provide a solution, they chose Sony to act as the prime supplier and system integrator, providing one of the largest Petasite server system installations in Europe.

Sony proposed IBIS to control the movement of media assets around the system using their range of Media Management applications centred around IBIS Server Base. Key to the project was the long developmental and installation experience IBIS has with sQ servers from Quantel and an excellent working partnership between IBIS and Front Porch and their DIVA Hierarchical Storage Management system. The mass storage system chosen was a fully expanded Sony Petasite which will store 100,000 hours of footage at IMX30 resolution on SAIT 2 drives.

The way the system works is that footage to be kept in the data archive arrives on videoserver. This can be acquired in a variety of ways: either via network from the transmission system or, if it is on tape or similar media, ingested via IBIS ServerLoad, from where it is moved to a Sony Petasite by IBIS ServerArchive through HSM middleware from Front Porch Digital.

Control and Media Management of the process takes place in IBIS ServerBase with the media management application constantly updating and maintaining a searchable database of what material is available and where it resides on the system. Triggered by IBIS, a Quicktime browse copy is automatically created and made available over the network to potential internal and external clients. These can be in-house journalists or documentary makers and other news providers who may wish to restore and re-purpose archive footage.

Clients can select and order the precise pieces of footage that they need, in the format they require, whether on file or tape, and material can also be provided in formats compatible with broadcast over digital networks, web or mobile phone platforms.

Proprietary ingest software is used to browse and search for content and after retrieval this can be post-produced. The combination of servers, Front Porch DIVA middleware and IBIS’ user interface provides a powerful combination which allows selection of specific content using precise, timecode-related in and out points.

Throughout the life of each piece of content, Front Porch Digital’s DIVA components can track different versions and allow metadata editing for faster subsequent searches. A clip which has been identified and selected by viewing a browse version can be extracted far more quickly than retrieving the entire file which may represent several hours of media. The Quantel gateway delivers the clip ‘MXF wrapped’ to DIVA on Archive. When the clip is restored it is unwrapped again by the gateway (Portal). There is also the option of using DIVA’s inbuilt Flip Factory to create other versions of the unwrapped MXF files.

The project has been a model of how to bring a system in on time on budget - because all those involved were absolutely expert at what they do.

With this particular project, the contract was split into two halves: the established key component software and the customisation. This meant that the standard elements could be laid down and tested before proceeding with the any customization. This project also demonstrates that it is possible to bring together disparate equipment, complex hierarchical storage and management software, servers, tape drives and a Petasite, with the customer being very specific about how they should work together in a particular way. It is a testament to their interoperability.

Newsroom staff can interact with the new system live at their desktop. They can search for material, view a clean feed or PasB, request it to be restored to their server and watch the progress, marking only the parts that they want. Initially it is only possible to download a spoilt version. If a clean Quicktime version is requested but unavailable, it is possible to make one on the spot, obviating the need to keep a huge repository of available clips offline or to offer partial restoration.

The main point is that this DAM system is so flexible that it can be adapted and utilized in many different ways. A large, powerful storage system for computer files based around moving media and files from one system to another and handling them in a number of different ways, it is immensely stable with a vast capacity. The Petasite itself will take up to twelve tape drives with the ability to section off parts of it, thus providing a considerable scope to expand or re-utilize parts of the system, such as offering content digitizing to a third party.

The result is an elegant, fast, scaleable technical solution that is really what the users want.