FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2024

Approximately 450,000 hours of broadcast program material on video cassettes have been recorded over the years by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation as part of legal deposit recordings. In order to protect these unique broadcasting assets in the long-term, these video cassettes need to be transferred into archive files to be preserved in the National Library of Norway's digital long-term archive.

For this high-volume migration a specialized quality-controlled QUADRIGA Video digitization system from Cube-Tec International has been installed. An additional QC workflow was customized according to the user’s specifications. The entire ingest system is using 16 broadcast video tape recorders. The installation is now completely in productive use, so that one operator transfers about 128 hours of video in one work shift per day in a fully quality-controlled operation.

For the DVCAM cassette collection a special direct readout feature is used. This provides users with real-time monitoring and archiving of the compressed digital video streams straight from DVCAM video cassettes. Working directly from the original format not only improves error detection levels, but the implementation of proprietary algorithms also enables users to apply error correction years, or even decades, after the migration has happened.

The presentation will be given jointly by Stian Rishaug (National Library Norway) who will explain how the installation was realised and the operation is driven, and Tom Lorenz (Cube-Tec International) who will describe how the technical solution was adapted to special requirements at National Library Norway.