Studios
Digital Media Services invests in Front Porch
- Technology investment enables end to end digitisation, transcoding, restoration and archive services -
April 2014: BBC Studios and Post Production’s award-winning Digital Media Services business has invested in Front Porch Digital’s DIVArchive content storage management and DIVAdirector digital asset management systems. This will further enhance the one-stop service it is able to offer clients including digitisation, transcoding, restoration and secure archiving.
The Front Porch Digital systems allow BBC Studios and Post Production’s Digital Media Services team to provide secure long-term storage for clients’ assets alongside existing services such as film and tape digitisation, DI restoration and DPP delivery. The system allows users to extract metadata from any DPP compliant asset, store, fully or partially restore the DPP asset, and check the integrity of any asset via checksum calculation, tracking and storage. The systems also speed up the workflow when ingesting content for long-term archiving, eliminating the need to transfer or deliver large amounts of data to clients. The Digital Media Services business can now also offer migration to new formats as part of its service in order to future proof clients’ assets.
“We are extending our existing services to provide reliable and secure off site backup. This provides our clients with a simple disaster recovery option, safeguarding their precious assets and eliminating the need to invest in their own expensive archive,” explains Kevin Shaw, Lead Technologist at BBC Studios and Post Production Digital Media Services. “In the case of larger customers that are looking to set up their own archive, we already offer a consulting service and this investment broadens the scope of the advice and assistance we can offer them.”
DIVAdirector will allow the team at BBC Studios and Post Production’s Digital Media Services to create a consistent metadata database as a future resource and DIVArchive also provides a cost effective interim storage solution to clients at very short notice. The investment fits with the company’s business model, providing the flexibility to scale up very quickly from smaller projects involving a few film or tape assets, right up to digitisation of hundreds of thousands of tapes, or full restoration of hundreds of hours of film.
The Front Porch Digital DIVArchive and DIVAdirector systems will be up and running for in-house operations by May 2014 and for customers by June 2014.