Imagen encourages content digitisation and onboarding with new campaign

Imagen is highlighting the dangers of a primarily tape-based approach to content storage

Enterprise video specialist Imagen is urging broadcast customers to acknowledge the degradation of tape – and the consequent risk to content – and take steps to digitise their archives in a new campaign that it has dubbed the VHS Tape Campaign.

According to the company, the initiative is a response to two primary concerns in the industry at this time. Firstly, it is clear that the degradation of tape is putting prized content at risk. Moreover, professional and consumer tape players and heads are becoming more scarce – so when it comes to digitising and optimising content for new audiences, it really is a case of ‘the sooner the better’.

Secondly, there is evidence of what Imagen terms an “inertia” in adopting cloud services. “This is largely because content is locked away on tape or exists in the digital realm, but is languishing under-utilised, unloved and uncatalogued on drives and servers on premises. [Consequently] it is wasted content,” says Ian Mottashed, VP Marketing.

With the Imagen Content Onboarding Services initiative, the company is helping to unlock this content by subsiding – and, for smaller collections, funding – the digitising and onboarding of content into an Imagen system. Customers licence a system for a set period (typically 1, 3 or 5 years), but “the actual inertia, headache and cost of digitising, cataloguing or onboarding the actual media is reduced or removed”.

To draw attention to the service (https://imagenevp.com/content-onboarding/), Imagen is running a campaign to highlight the dangers of storing content on tape, and pinpoint the opportunities inherent in reviving hidden gems in terms of audience reach and revenue generation.

“We have already amassed some very notable clients for the service,” adds Mottashed, citing the likes of Endemol, ATP and BP.