BBC Studios and Post Production has invested £500,000 in a suite of technologies to standardise its digital workflows and move its customers to file-based delivery.

The three-month project will strengthen the wholly-owned BBC subsidiary’s ability to provide global file delivery, transcoding, media storage, duplication, library digitisation and file-based quality checking.

BBC S&PP head of digital media services Clive Hodge said: “We have offered view-and-approve over FTP sites on a project-by-project basis, but this consolidates all file-manipulation tools under one system.”

Central storage will be handled by Isilon Systems, while transcoding is performed by Telestream Vantage and ingest is based on a “heavily customised” Telestream Pipeline set-up.

Aspera has supplied the secure global file delivery system and automated quality checks run through Interra’s Baton system.

Hodge said that BBC S&PP has delivered file-based material to playout facilities such as Red Bee Media for programmes on channels such as CBBC.

“Those programmes were delivered through internal gateways or specially set-up processes,” he said. “Now we have brought all of that together into one controlled environment and increased the capacity we can handle.”

BBC S&PP is now migrating existing customers off tape to file-based workflows, a move that Hodge said helps projects with partners based outside London.

“Previously, we have mainly had to deal with proxy material, but now we are handling full broadcast material,” Hodge added. “It might be received from US distributors or the BBC, or sent by us to end-users in a facility to work on.”

BBC Studios and Post Production has changed the name of its Media Solutions division to Digital Media Services to reflect the new service.

 

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