CNN Affiliate N1 Dnevnik Chooses Sony Optical Disc Archive Managed by XenData

XenData Ltd, a provider of digital video archive solutions to the media and entertainment industry, announced it was chosen by N1 Dnevnik, an exclusive CNN affiliate for Belgrade, Sarajevo and Zagreb for 24-news, to manage a Sony Optical Disc Archive (ODA) library.

N1 Dnevnik focuses on news gathering and broadcast across three offices, creating a situation, which is why N1 needed high professional standards for their equipment and archiving solution.

The optical disc archive consists of a Sony PetaSite library, model ODS-L30M, plus an expansion module, which currently provides a 136TB capacity but may be scaled to more than 800TB. The cartridges provide a stable recording medium with a 50-year archive lifetime. The archive library is managed by a XenData SX-520 Series archive server, which presents the contents of the library as one large file system. This means that the archive interface looks like a giant disk based system with a standard file-folder structure. Files are written to and restored from the archive by an IBIS iFind media asset management system that interfaces with the XenData archive server.

“Speed of access was vital,” says chief technical director, N1, Igor Jovic. “Our production teams are revisiting older news recordings from the deep archive for a lot of material to supplement bulletins on a daily basis. Restoring material from the PetaSite Optical Disc Archive [integrated with XenData middleware] is not only reliable, but it is fast, especially for the small size video files which we tend to produce.“

Benefits of the Sony Optical Disc library managed by XenData, include:

• The Optical Disc Archive can carry thousands of small files as well as full programs, and gives production teams the ability to search, access and retrieve particular content from the archive.
• Journalists and producers can access files from any workstation – from the deep archive or central storage – and retrieve them for editing and go straight to air.
• Producers no longer need to wait several days waiting for the restoration of archived news material, making for a much more efficient system.
  

“N1 is now equipped with a future-proofed, scalable archive solution to retrieve media at any time for future use,” said Phil Storey, XenData CEO. “The company will no longer have to depend on video tape archives that provide little assurance of meeting long-term archive needs.“

The complete Sony, XenData and IBIS system offers a combination of technology, flexibility, longevity and value.

“When launching new projects to air our company has a policy of using the most cutting edge advanced technology in the world,” added Jovic. “This enables us to not only become the number one news channel in our region, but a leading news broadcaster internationally.“