RTV Slovenia acquires more NOA FrameLector systems

Ljubljana-based national broadcaster Radiotelevizija Slovenija (RTV Slovenia) has streamlined its in-house digitisation process by upgrading its video ingest installation with additional FrameLector systems from NOA.

The basic NOA mediARC archive asset management solution was enhanced in a pilot phase with two dual-channel NOA FrameLectors, designed to transfer SD material at the highest quality and a relatively low cost. Now the broadcaster has decided to accelerate its digitisation of content stored on 80,000 betacam tapes.

This latest NOA FrameLector upgrade, as well as the integration of the NOA QualityChecker, enables RTV Slovenia to benefit from a total of 12 analogous streams, and allows the media company to fast and efficiently digitise in-house its entire repertoire with no outsourcing required. The revamp also means reduced OPEX for RTV Slovenia, which only needs 1.5 operators to manage the entire process as compared to the previously required staff. The NOA QualityChecker ensures accurate monitoring of the digitization workflow at the broadcaster’s site.

The modernised system went live in January and today manages RTV Slovenia’s complete digitisation and archiving of its entire legacy video archive containing approximately 100,000 hours (Betacam, DigiBeta, IMX, 1” C-format, U-matic, DVCPro and DVCam tapes). All files are stored in lossless ffv1 8/10-bit video formats.

“We wanted to first validate our processes and possibilities with the FrameLector before opting for a full upgrade and throughput with 12 parallel streams,” said Martin Zvelc, RTV Slovenia’s head of Mediateka. “The NOA mediARC AAM (Archive Asset Management) solution helps us to efficiently manage all our archive-centric processes and the FrameLector ingest system is an excellent tool for industrial-sized digitisation.”

The FrameLector ingests media directly from tape and simultaneously monitors ISR events and RF levels to reliably detect transfer errors caused by faulty head-tape interaction, enabling a clear differentiation between “error-on-tape” and “error-during-transfer”. This information subsequently allows for pinpoint error correction (e.g. cleaning of tape and/or replaying machine) and is also available for workflow automation, to trigger or skip individual steps according to predefined error thresholds. The NOA QualityChecker oversees production workflows, which improves efficiencies even further and greatly reduces the time required for reliable digitisation.

“RTV Slovenia has been using our mediARC as AAM for its media archive, and this next step was a logical extension for the broadcaster,” said Christophe Kummer, CEO of NOA. “What’s more, RTV Slovenia uses mathematically lossless ffv1 video formats to store its legacy video archive, and breaks from the paradigm that the production format needs to be the archive format.”

NOA´s video ingest system FrameLector has recently been deployed at Slovak TV, ORF, Yle and Sharjah Media Corp.