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Interview with Peter Rowsell, Polar Graphics

If you don’t recognise the name Peter Rowsell instantly you no doubt would recognise him in person, from the famous ‘Pink Coconut’ parties during IBC (Brighton) in the 80s or the name ‘Polar Video or Polar Graphics’ both companies which he’s built up over the years. Entering his 43rd NAB (yes 43rd, that is NOT a typo!) who better to catch up with t...

Submitted by Polar

Published 26 March 2018

Meeting the Challenges of Media Assett Management

It's been 20 years since Microsoft founder Bill Gates uttered the words "content is king,\" and never has that statement been more true in media production environments. And yet, ask producers in any high-pressure broadcast operation to name their biggest challenges, and you can bet that managing video assets - finding them, accessing them, and usi...

Submitted by Dave Clack

Published 14 June 2016

High-speed archiving in a high-res world

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

Four must-haves for modern media workflows: Enhancing you...

by Laurent Fanichet Issue 97 - January 2015 It\'s always been about the struggle to manage lots of assets and adapt your MAM to suit in the world of digital media workflows. In the early years, enterprise storage infrastructure couldn\'t keep pace with the demands of SD, so the first non-linear editing systems were turnkey solutions with proprietar...

Submitted by Laurent Fanichet

Published 01 February 2015

Do Not Be Cheap With Your Data

by Kieron Seth Issue 94 - October 2014 Everyone used to leave a Betacam or DVCPro tape on the shelf for years. It would probably work fine a decade later (as long as the VTR still worked). Now production companies are stacked high with external hard drives full of archived video projects and media files. It\'s a recipe for catastrophe - apparently...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 November 2014

Disaster Recovery the broadcast emergancy service

by Lee Sheppard & Paul Moran Issue 90 - June 2014 Weve all heard the phrase Disaster Recovery (DR), but what does it actually mean for broadcasters and content owners, and what constitutes a disaster?DR is a broad term that encompasses a range of scenarios, from catastrophic disaster (for instance, the complete destruction of a whole facility), to...

Submitted by Lee Sheppard

Published 01 July 2014

Bringing increased efficiencies to file-based workflows

by Reed HaslamIssue 80 - August 2013 Most professionals in todays broadcast and media industries can remember a time when the videotape format was ubiquitous. It was the defacto recording, storage, and playback medium for many years, and fragments of the medium still exist today. What clearly contributed to the success of tape is its compact packag...

Submitted by Reed Haslam

Published 01 September 2013

Redefining the archive with Raj Patel

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

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

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

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

Protecting your assets, safe storage and long life archiv...

A vast amount of information exists out on the Internet that can be very helpful but also misleading and confusing on how best to protect digital content over time both from degradation of content and from piracy. Thinking back on my twenty plus years in the industry, it is my personal opinion the first creative professionals to experience problems...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2011

Introducing Front Porch Digitals Archive eXchange Format

Ever since the Tower of Babel fell, human beings have sought a common way to communicate with one another and with future generations. Technological innovations — writing, for example — did a lot to preserve communication but at the same time posed new problems. Today the diversity of discrete formats for processing and storing digital media makes...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2011

Tape is dead. Long live Tape

An area that has been a vital part of television – defining much of ‘how’ and ‘what’ things are done – is recording. At first film was the medium, then in 1956, Ampex invented the video tape recorder with the prime aim of providing delayed programmes across the USA. Soon video tape editing, and other applications rapidly expanded and the 2-inch qua...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2010