SONUMA specifies Quantum StorNext 5 for major archival project

Belgium-based SONUMA (Société de NUMérisation et de commercialisation des Archives audiovisuelles) has chosen Quantum’s StorNext 5 content workflow solutions to help with a large-scale digitisation and digital restoration project.

Founded in 2009, SONUMA is a subsidiary of RTBF (Radio Télévision Belge Francophone) and Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles in the Walloon region of Belgium. As the owner of RTBF’s TV and radio archives, SONUMA’s mission is to preserve, digitise and monetise these archives, which are currently stored in a wide range of media formats including 16mm film, Beta SP and digital cassette, CD and DAT.

SONUMA will be digitising 8,000 hours of 16mm film, resulting in more than 8 PB of content. Working with VP Media Solutions, a Quantum reseller, SONUMA purchased a StorNext M441 metadata appliance and StorNext QX-1200 disk storage to address its need. The DPX 2K files resulting from the digitisation process will be ingested directly into StorNext, where digital restoration and transcoding operations will be conducted and the content will be preserved.

“Our archive is a real goldmine, stretching back over more than 80 years of radio and nearly 60 years of television,” said Eric Denis, IT manager, SONUMA. “To accomplish the digitisation, the ingest in 2K format and the real-time transcoding of these 8,000 hours of archive, we chose Quantum’s StorNext 5 solution because of its high performance and seamless integration into our content workflow.”

“Preserving valuable content as technology changes is extremely important but often very challenging,” said Alex Grossman, vice president, Media and Entertainment, Quantum. “StorNext has long played a central role in helping customers meet this challenge, and we look forward to working with SONUMA on this important project.”