ITN Source has launched a filebased delivery system, which it says will cut footage costs for the users of its archive service by 50%.

It is the culmination of a project that began in 2006 to digitise an archive that dates back to 1955 and spans 30,000 film cans and legacy tape formats.

Content that is available for download includes digitised ITN footage and selected material from archives represented by ITN Source, such as Reuters.

The delivery system has already been trialled by indies including Open Mike Productions, Twofour and Crackit Productions, which used it to deliver content for its Countdown To Murder series for C5.

ITN Source director of operations Kathey Battrick said: “In trials of this service, we’ve cut delivery times and transfer costs, removed the need to ingest tapes and enabled producers to match timecodes between the H.264 screener and high-quality master version.”

The digitised SD content held by ITN Source is stored as IMX30 PAL assets in ITN’s digital asset management system for delivery via Aspera.

ITN Source said it would continue to offer a traditional delivery service for clients that do not have the bandwidth to support IP-based delivery, or who still operate tape-based workflows.

Battrick said IMX30 was chosen because it eradicated the need for transcoding ITN Source’s XDCam assets, and because it is supported by Avid’s Media Composer and Apple’s Final Cut Pro.

ITN Source is now part way through a project to improve metadata associated with its archive content.

The process of adding rights management information and correctly structuring copyright information and making it easier to understand started in February, and is likely to conclude by the end of next year.

Topics