91Èȱ¬ R&D on saving the archive
Post categories: innovation,Ìýinnovation
| 16:10 UK time, Monday, 29 June 2009
[Editor's note: This piece first appeared in last week.]
For 15 years a dedicated cadre of engineers and managers from R&D has been working to develop tools which will preserve the 91Èȱ¬'s vast archive into the future.
The latest product of their efforts is the ASTOR demonstrator - (aka 'the world's heaviest laptop') which is currently being tested by the archive and network media research engineers. 
It's big, runs pretty hot, weighs close to half a ton, and can store dozens of hours of HD content, but perhaps most amazingly is that in its brief few months of existence, it's clocked up more than 10,000 miles. That's because in April, Rajitha Weerakkody and I took the prototype box along to (the world's largest broadcast technology conference and exhibition) in Las Vegas.
The story began three years ago, when R&D started looking at the best ways to store large amounts of AV content in digital form. We produced a huge amount of data as well as recommendations and proposals, but it was clear that the digital storage industry couldn't match the needs of our archive, nor the needs of the thousands of other broadcasters who faced the same challenge.
Led by the technologist Richard Wright, R&D joined forces with academic researchers and industry experts to develop a new system which could manage the vast volumes of digital data. This became known as the '' research project, and we revealed the first technical prototypes at the NAB. We're hoping to thoroughly test the kit at Kingswood over the summer, before enhancing the platform and possibly incorporating elements of the (also produced in R&D).
In September the kit, plus its trusty band of demonstrators, will take to the road once more - this time to Amsterdam for the .
Ant Miller is Senior Research Manager, 91Èȱ¬ Research and Development.
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Comment number 1.
At 30th Jun 2009, halfamo wrote:Why the doubts about Dirac? I would have thought one of the essential requirements for archival of digital media is being able to retrieve the stuff 10/20/50 years in the future. Unless you have a free, open source codec, how can you guarantee this. It was my understanding that this was the main reason for the 91Èȱ¬ spending money on developing yet another codec. The same applies to the Audio codec and to the container formats.
What formats does ASTOR use at present?
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Comment number 2.
At 30th Jun 2009, mjaddis wrote:In response to halfamo, Astor doesn't tie you into any specific format - you choose whatever file format best matches your content. You're quite right about the benefits of using a free open source codec if you want to keep the same encoding for a long time, e.g. 20 years. The other option is to migrate between file formats as and when they become a risk, e.g. when they are no longer in common use or you can't get the decoders/players. Broadcast archives will often archive content in whatever format is currently used in the production process and then down the line they'll migrate this to something else, including uncompressed if budgets allow. The 91Èȱ¬ D3 project is an example. Loads more info on the Astor approach is on the avatar-m site (www.avatar-m.org.uk) in the whitepapers section.
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Comment number 3.
At 30th Jun 2009, michaelkenward wrote:"For 15 years a dedicated cadre of engineers and managers from R&D"
No.
"For 15 years a cadre of dedicated engineers and managers from R&D..."
Spot the subtle difference.
But what do you expect of engineers?
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Comment number 4.
At 1st Jul 2009, Wyrdtimes wrote:Talking of archives.
why isn't there an accessible, searchable archive of all news stories?
It seems like news stories slip down a memory hole a few days after publication.
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Comment number 5.
At 30th Mar 2010, U14402580 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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At 12th May 2010, U14460911 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 7.
At 20th May 2010, magic1001981 wrote:Very informative and trustworthy blog. Please keep updating with great posts like this one.
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