Issues

Feature: The Cutting Edge

James Careless

The news archiving system has long been the neglected stepchild of many TV newsrooms. The apathy is understandable: Once a story has finished its news cycle, it loses priority in the newsroom’s collective consciousness.

Unless it is something that may have relevance in the future—such as a murder investigation that results in an arrest and subsequent trial—the story becomes out of sight, out of mind.

This said, TV newsrooms have long attempted to retain news footage in an archive. In the most organized newsrooms, this means some form of tape dubbing/filing system, with information (meta data) about each story’s topic, players and date stored on an accessible log; either paper or computer-based. In the most chaotic, tapes are tossed onto shelves or into boxes, rarely
(if ever) to be seen again.

Theory and Reality
The arrival of file-based digital television holds the promise of changing this scenario, at least in theory. In a perfect world, news video fi les should automatically be transferred to some form of long-term digital storage; preferably accessible using computer-based search engines that can
cross-reference each story’s meta data for easy retrieval. Because resolution matters, these stories should all be stored in their original broadcast format, so that HD news stories don’t end up using archival footage stored in Windows Media Player quality.

That’s the theory. In reality, many stations are still using tape-based archival systems, even though they are shooting and producing in digital. Boston ABC affiliate WCVB-TV is one such station. Despite producing its newscast in HD and shooting ENG in 16:9 SD, “we are still archiving news content to DV tape,” says Dave Kaylor, WCVB’s director of engineering. “We would like to be storing our footage digitally, but the cost of doing so is simply prohibitive.”

He adds that Hearst-Argyle, WCVB’s parent company, is evaluating options for a groupwide
digital archiving system for news, and that WCVB itself stores XDCAM HD footage shot for its own nightly news magazine on optical disk. However, the sheer volume of news content—and the challenges of determining what kind of digital storage would be best for retrieving content in a nonlinear editing news environment—is keeping stations such as WVCB on tape for now.

Hearst-Arygle stations aren’t alone; Belo is also standing pat. “At present, we dub news stories from our servers onto tape and stick them on shelves,” says Craig Harper, Belo’s VP of� technology. “For searching, we store meta data about each story and its archival tape number on
iNews. It’s not perfect, but it works well while being quite cost-effective.”

Like Hearst-Argyle, Belo isn’t impressed with the current solutions for digital archiving; at least when it comes to value for money. But Harper is also unenthused about having to install such a system in-house. “When it comes to digital archiving, we want a one-stop-shop solution that someone else integrates seamlessly with our newsroom automation and playout system,” he says. “We don’t want to invest the time or staff to do it ourselves; especially not now when the 2009 analog shutoff is on the horizon.”

NBC’s Digital Archiving Approach
NBC’s 26 O&Os have already been migrated onto a digital archiving platform called BitCentral OASIS. “Clips are stored in an MPEG format and stored locally at the TV station, as well as at our central archive storage site at Universal City, CA,” says Matt Braatz, SVP, of technology & operations for NBC Local Media. “Users access OASIS via web browser where they can perform keyword searches for clips, view the clips and request clips. Requested clips are delivered to the station via our GE/NBCU wide area network and transcoded back into the format needed
on the local news edit/playback system.”

NBC’s digital archive includes O&Oproduced and aired content and selected raw footage to early 2006. “In addition, as footage is pulled from tape archives, it is often added to the OASIS digital archive for further use,” Braatz says. All content is searchable by keywords found in the
script and slug; plus by station and date range. “OASIS automatically archives clips referenced in our iNews rundowns,” he adds, “and it archives the script along with the video.”

So how well has NBC’s digital archiving system performed to date? “Stations have instant� access to all their video (archived since 2006), eliminating the manual labor required to locate video tape and dub it back into the system,” Braatz says. “In addition, since all the NBC &� Telemundo O&O stations participate in the OASIS system, stations are able to access clips from the other stations and avoid the cost of opening satellite windows to feed the stories. This represents a cost avoidance of about $1.5 million annually. The central archive now contains over 300,000 highres clips.”

Unfortunately, Braatz adds, the OASIS system archives only in long-GOP MPEG. “We would like to start archiving in DV25 for standard-defi nition material,” he says. “OASIS does not yet support that.”

FOX’s New Online Archiving System
The Fox Interactive Media’s newly formed Digital Publishing Group (DPG) has just unveiled a content management system for Web-based news delivery including a video archiving/retrieval system that is being made available to all broadcasters on a fee-forservice basis. “This system allows broadcasters to store all of their stories, images and video with us on Akamai and� Limelight’s server farm,” says Ron Berryman, DPG SVP and GM. “We will then index and� categorize it for them, using whatever meta data they supply with it. Then, when they need it, they can pull their content off the Web back to their own fi le-based editing systems.”

DPG’s digital archiving platform will store HD video in its original resolution. Best yet, the system does not require a huge outlay in storage equipment; all the station needs is a high-speed datalink to DPG. “This product provides stations with a cost-effective, easy-to-use and reliable way to store their footage, and the chance to use their shelf space for something else,” Berryman says.

The Bottom Line
So although digital archiving solutions do exist, some station managers struggling with DTV conversion costs have chosen not to invest in a fully tapeless archiving system; money is definitely the bottom line when it comes to archiving news footage. For many news directors, this may mean adding more shelf space in your tape room, rather than achieving instantly accessible archive footage on your NLE.—James Careless has been a broadcast journalist since 1981.

Digital Archiving Solutions

FOR-A Corporation is tackling digital archiving as part of an end-to-end video workflow product called Media-Concierge. “This is a system that can ingest broadband formats, compressed SD
and HD files, image files and audio files,” says the company’s VP, Andrew Alexander. “Once ingested this material is searchable by name, type and various meta data tags. Files can also be sent to longterm archive storage. Media-Concierge can also output SD or HD broadband or as a variety of fi le output types.”

Harris provides FTP capability to its NEXIO storage area network, which allows the easy moving of content between the SAN and an archive. This could be to another RAID-based disk array, such as the Harris/Isilon NXIQ clustered storage solution, direct-attached USB hard drives, or� optical disks like Blu-ray or DLT tape. Basic search functions inside newsroom computer systems such as ENPS allow simple fi le name matches. Sophisticated searching is supported by Harris Invenio and Comperio digital asset management solutions.

Ikegami is selling its InPhase 300GB external holographic drive for tapeless archiving of large HDTV video files finished on nonlinear editing systems and acquired using tapeless� camcorders. According to the company, this drive should have a shelf life of 50 years. They
are now developing 800GB and 1.6TB drives; both will be backward-compatible.

SnapStream doesn’t make a digital archiving system per se, but its Enterprise TV search engine can make using such a device faster and easier; sort of a “TiVo crossed with Google,” says company spokesperson Lynne Burke. “The SnapStream TV search appliance allows its users to record thousands of hours of television and then search within those recordings for
whatever it is they’re looking for. Once a clip is found, users can easily create clips, burn them to DVD, e-mail them to others, view them on any iPhone/iPod and import them into third-party video
editing applications.”

Digital archiving is just a function in Vizrt’s Viz Ardome and Viz Video Hub, the company’s two media asset management systems. “The systems we deliver take care of every aspect of a video’s lifetime, beginning with ingest of video content from tape, file, feed, mobile phone, P2 cameras to video feeds (with traffic),” says Petter Ole Jakobsen, Vizrt’s CTO. “In addition to this, the system comes with tools for manipulating the video such as editing and browse editing (and other managing aspects).”

Volicon’s Observer is designed to log and archive live broadcasts as video files. Those stored on the system’s hard disk(s) are overwritten over time, “but we can also export all or just selected clips on a DVD,” says Volicon marketing VP Julius Perl. “A typical application can store 24 hours worth of data on a single DVD.” Stored content can be searched using closed caption
text and station automation data.