SUCCESSFUL CHALLENGES IN PRESERVATION

The Challenges facing RTÉ Archives in its first Digitisation project

FIAT/IFTAWorld Conference

Warsaw15th October 2016

Rossa Lyons

BACKGROUND• RTÉ is mostly a Film and Tape based Archive

within a File based Production System• 130,000+ Analogue (Betacam SP) Tapes in

urgent need of preservation/digitisation• Approx 13,500 hours of film content• 95,000 Digibeta Tapes & 12,000 XDCam Discs• Bespoke Catalogue and Database

management system

• Funding & Resources– External & Internal

• Selecting what to digitise• Technology–No MAM / Digital Library–Must be compatible with TV & News Production

Systems–Must be compatible with existing Archive Database

(MediaWeb, developed by Pivotal Solutions, UK)

CHALLENGES

FUNDING

• External: Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) Archive Scheme

Applicant must contribute a minimum of 20% of total funding for any project – this can rise to 40-50% in some cases

• Internal: For non-BAI funded projects, funding must be found from existing Archive Finances through savings in other areas

RESOURCES•Nearly all of RTÉ Archives’ resources are committed to meeting legal obligation to preserve our current output, not our legacy recordings

•Planning, preparation and implementation for Digitisation Projects are additional to day to day activities, no additional staff resources are possible.

BAI Funding:What Do We Choose ?

• Prior to applying for BAI Funding – decide what collections to digitise from the 130,000 Analogue Tapes– 15 Years of News 1985-

1999 (10,300 Beta SP Tapes)

– 4,000 mixed genre TV Programmes

– 10 Years of News Film – 1960-1969

Additional Collections from Internal Funding

• In partnership with the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) 450 Full Games of Ireland’s National Sport from 1960 to present day (Hurling & Gaelic Football)

• 2,000 TV Programmes originally migrated from 1” & 2” tape

• Additional 6 years of News tapes 2000 to 2005 (2,000+ tapes)

TENDER PROCESS•As a Public Service Broadcaster, RTÉ is obliged to go to tender•Firstly, a tender for Storage and Infrastructure (this would determine some of the technical requirements for the digitisation process)•TMD, UK

•Two Digitisation Partners chosen from Digitisation Tender Process•Picturae, The Netherlands & Vectracom, France

PREPARING THE COLLECTION•Our First Learning Curve

the amount of time and resources required to prepare the tapes for shipment and digitisation

PREPARING THE COLLECTION (contd.)•Being the clever people we are, we decided to re-barcode each of our 10,000+ News Tapes

•Our Second Learning CurveSpeak with your digitisation partners first !!Our new barcodes were not compatible

TECHNOLOGY•RTÉ’s production and transmission systems are totally file based•RTÉ’s Archive is Tape Based•Master Files are dumped to Tape/Disc for archiving•News and Sports day to day archive service is file based, but longterm storage is tape/disc based

•No MAM or Digital Library

TECHNOLOGY (contd.)•The Challenge •Create a prototype Archive storage system incorporated into the Production system that will deliver files for production and commercial partners, utilising existing Archive Database for research

•Everything developed from scratch

TECHNOLGY (contd.)•Develop a method to partially restore files

•Develop simple workflows to speedily deliver files to both the TV and News Production systems without interfering with the delivery of production to transmission.

•No connection between Database and Storage system.

Requirement for users to browse files via link to our Archive database, MediaWeb

DIGITISATION•We commenced with good practice and worked with our Digitisation Partners, who both digitised a small portion of the collections for us to test

•Quality tests and Compatibility tests with our storage infrastructure Passed with flying colours

DIGITISATION (contd.)•Both Digitisation Partners went into full “Production” and delivered the first batch of files on LTO6 tape.

•Archive staff ingested the files to the storage infrastructure.

•Development of delivery method to production systems ongoing at the same time. Technical Challenges.

MAKING EVERYTHING MATCH UP

•Development of the file delivery to production element of our storage infrastructure was still under ongoing development at our end....................

•While at the same time we progressed with ingesting the newly received Digital Files to the Storage System.

MAKING EVERYTHING MATCH UP•The Big Lesson Learnt

•With over 4,000 files already ingested and a further 6,000 lined up to be ingested, while at the same time development of a delivery method continued, RTÉ Technology discovered that the file wrapper was not compatible with the transfer manager for the Production System (AVID)

•File Ingest suspended

•Extremely patient Digitisation Partners and extremely agitated Archivists

•Live Launch date of 19th September postponed

MAKING EVERYTHING MATCH UP•Our two Digitisation Partners immediately gave us a “Fix” for the problem. (the problems were similar but different from both companies)

•Development to deliver “partial restore” workflows to Production is ongoing

•Last week we finally had a breakthrough and successfully delivered some News and GAA Sports clips to the TV production system

•Development work ongoing for delivery to our News production system, which is a different version of AVID with separate storage to our TV System.

•Testing is continuing on the “Fix” for our News files.

•We intend to re-commence ingesting the digitised files in the coming days and hopefully “Go-Live” in mid November.

ADDITIONAL CHALLENGES•Ageing Telecine and Film Grading process

•Identify requirements for a Film Scanner and associated software

•Seek Funding

ONLINE PUBLISHING•We intend to publish the entire News Collection on our Archive Website, www.rte.ie/archives which consists of close to 75,000 individual items/files from 1985 to 1999

•Not publishing original catalogue, but rather a tailor-made easily consumable text for the public in a Day-By-Day Calendar format.

•Project will commence oncewe go-live with our Digitised News Project

SUMMARY•Securing Funding

•Selection and preparation

•Tender Process

•Technical issues / linking to Production Systems / absence of a MAM or Digital Library

The Strategic Value for the Future

•The Experience, Challenges and Lessons Learnt will guide our future strategy for a

Digital Archive and the preservation of our legacy analogue collections on Film and Tape.

Thank You